Office

While I’m showing you the office, I need to ask about school. How would you evaluate your school performance? Not the grades, exactly, but more your attitude and work ethic. Did you turn in assignments on time? When did test studying, report writing, and project doing happen? Were you at concerts, ball games or shopping the night before tests and deadlines because the work was already done, or because the only thing ready was your excuse? Did you really read all those assigned literature books? How much non-required reading did you do? How excited were you with science experiments?

Life Evaluations

I’m not really trying to ruin a perfectly good day, by dredging up memories of the worst years of your life, nasty teachers, or classes whose high point was how creatively they were skipped.  It’s just that school is a wonderful place to assess how well we receive evaluations about ourselves from others because evaluations happen in the office. We evaluate ourselves by asking painful questions, and when that fails, we receive evaluations about ourselves from others. But we can only do that when we accept evaluations as God intended.

Stunted Growth for Life Evaluations

Unfortunately, quite a few of us have skewed ideas about evaluations stemming from years of wasted habit-building experiences during schooling. We still have kid laziness habits and kid petulance at correction, not yet brought up to adult standards. Fortunately, I know four men who can teach us a lot about giving and receiving evaluations.

Two Men’s Responses to Negative Evaluations

Two of the men were kings, important people able to do whatever they wanted, not your every day, run of the mill, little people who are supposed to do what the important people want. Each of these kings had an evaluator—counselor, prophet, teacher, if you will—whose job was to tell his king where things really stood. They, like all good counselors, prophets, teachers, and evaluators were to speak truth.

Ahab and Micaiah

One day while Jehoshaphat (Judah’s king) was visiting Ahab (Israel’s king)—yes, that Ahab, the one who allowed his wife to kill an innocent man, so Ahab could get the innocent man’s property—Ahab asks about going into battle together to wrest the city of Ramoth in Gilead from the Syrians. Jehoshaphat is open to the idea, but asks that Ahab consult the Lord about the plan. In traipse about 400 hear-the-truth-from-us prophets, who unanimously pronounce a victory from the Lord if they go up to battle.

Well, not so fast, replies Jehoshaphat. Not entirely convinced, he asks specifically if a prophet of the Lord was available to weigh in on the matter. Ahab’s response is classic. Well, there is one more man (who, coincidentally, was not part of original crowd), named Micaiah. Of course, Ahab hates him, because the man never says anything good about him.

Micaiah is summoned, and advised by Zedekiah (one of the hear-the-truth-from-us men) that the prophets have already unanimously declared good for the king, so Micaiah should do the same. Brazenly, and worrisomely, Micaiah says he must declare whatever the Lord tells him to say.

When he appears before the two kings, he promptly tells Ahab to go up, because the Lord will give them the city.

Now here the story takes an unexpected turn. Ahab has 401 votes for going, even the man who, apparently, rarely tells him what he wants to hear. Based on Macaiah’s approval, Jehoshaphat probably is going to be onboard, but instead of Ahab plunging ahead with this good news, he rebukes Micaiah, reminding him that Ahab has previously adjured (solemnly commanded) Micaiah to tell him the Lord’s truth. Micaiah promptly changes his story for a far less positive one, one that sounds like the people’s leader (Ahab) is no longer on the scene. Now Ahab turns to Jehoshaphat and says, “Didn’t I tell you he would not say good concerning me, but evil?”

Most of us have read enough stories, and seen enough people in action to know what happens next. The go-to-battle spokesman, Zedekiah, puts on a show of strength (operating from the “when wrong be strong” philosophy). Micaiah gets sent to prison. Ahab and Jehoshaphat go to battle, but, just to be on the safe side, Ahab disguises himself. Only Jehoshaphat rides into battle decked out in true kingly fashion. On a chance shot, someone shoots an arrow at one of the regular looking soldiers, and the arrow just happens to fit into a crack in his battle gear, and that just happens to mortally wound the regular looking soldier, who, of course, is really Ahab.

David and Nathan

The second king is David—yes, that David, who had a man killed so he could take the innocent man’s wife for himself—is met one day by Nathan, his evaluator, prophet, teacher, counselor, and is told an account of a rich man, a poor man, and the poor man’s lamb. When the rich man had a visitor, instead of taking one of his own sheep from his extensive flocks, he takes the poor man’s only sheep, the one that has been cared for like a child in the family. The rich man has it killed to feed his guest, leaving the poor man with absolutely nothing.

David is incensed at this gross injustice, declaring that the man who did such a thing should surely die and return four times what he took from the poor man. Justice prevails, we cheer, but Nathan intones, “Thou art the man,” and goes on to explain the Lord’s evaluation of David’s murdering, adulterous behavior. David, not following the familiar storyline, does not have Nathan imprisoned or killed. No, the king stands there and says one thing: “I have sinned against the Lord.”

In this case, the verdict is not that David will die, but the child produced by the wrong relationship. During the child’s sickness, David fasts, and moans, and prays. The servants are petrified to tell him when the child has died, assuming he’ll be even more distressed and broken once any hope of recovery is gone.

Instead, he quits crying out, gets cleaned up, and goes and worships God. The servants are baffled and ask about his odd behavior of being more distressed before death than after. David explains that prior to the child’s death he was earnestly begging for the child, because while there was life, there was also the possibility that the Lord might graciously intervene and allow the child to live. The child’s death was David’s answer, which he humbly accepted.

The Bottom Line

Two kings. Two wrongs. Two evaluators. Two trajectories. The difference was not in the evaluators, but in the kings. One accepted bad news when it was the truth and responded by changing himself, not by punishing the truth teller or blaming God. One refused to accept the truth, pushed forward, overriding deep-seated misgivings, trying to alter the playing field, and punishing the truth teller all to make “truth” conform to what he wanted, not what was reality.

What kind of king are you?

While we may be the little people everywhere else in the world, in our homes we are the kings and queens, the ones who can face truth or excuse it away. We are the ones who can value painful evaluations or expend vast efforts to prove truth wrong by punishing the news bearers, and orchestrating ways to avoid the inevitable consequences. We are the ones who can ask for advice, and upon hearing inconvenient truth, bury it because avoiding inconvenience means more to us than upholding truth. We are the ones who can hear unsolicited advice, and upon hearing inconvenient truth, can embrace it, because upholding truth means more to us than the image damage the inconvenience is going to bring.

Back to the Office

This is what happens in the office. Because we want to test the value of our living faith before others assess it for us (1 Peter 4:17), we ask ourselves questions, painful questions, geared to strip away the what-we-wants, the what-we-think, the what-they-think roadblocks to embracing truth. When interrogating ourselves at regular intervals still doesn’t unearth our deep-seated blind spots or dislodge our intransigent sin, we seek out genuine truth-tellers to get evaluations, counsel, prophecies, and teaching, by-passing the yes men. When even that does not do the house cleaning the Lord needs done, we treasure the unsolicited evaluation and its bearer, even when we are blindsided, rather than overriding or discrediting them, not falling into the trap of trying to convince ourselves or others that the information is inaccurate and the truth bearer in the wrong. The office is where we defend truth, not ourselves.

Embracing the Practice for Growth, if not in school, then in life

The fact that Ahab’s account is such a familiar, predictable story line, in novels and news accounts, in the world and in the church, in the work place and in the home, should warn us that having a David office is going to be one of the biggest challenges in building our homes. Who would have thought all this challenging growth practice was hiding in those homework assignments, public speaking evaluations, and project reviews in the schooling we were quick to ignore, dismiss, and excuse?