Today’s column is not Bible trivia but about the need to know your gifts, responsibilities or your priorities and “whose job is it?”
So, who were the first waiters in the Christian world? If you answered, the Apostles, you got it. The details on the first “waiters” appear in Acts 6:1-4:
“In those days, when the number of disciples was increasing, the ‘Greek’ Jews among them complained against the ‘Hebrew’ Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.
“So, the twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, ‘It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables.’
“Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and we will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.”
If you step away from the ball of confusion we have in the Philippines, you might agree that in many cases, we are a mess because the majority of Filipinos don’t understand what their role, purpose or significance is in the fundamental order of things.
In like manner, many Filipinos delegate or ascribe responsibilities, expectations that are not in the job description of people, politicians and institutions.
In the developing hurricane of school shootings, insults and false burdens, teachers were blamed for not being strict or inculcating the right values. A teacher suggested online that the right to discipline (punish) students should be given back to teachers.
Others criticized the child-friendly legislation protecting minors from prosecution and imprisonment. Several others claimed that there are too many loose firearms in the country. What they are saying is someone is not doing their job.
Almost 26 years ago, our church leadership in Victory Christian Fellowship pursued a vision of establishing a Christian school to provide quality education for all our children while strengthening their faith and values.
The vision was well received and soon Victory Christian International School came to be. After maybe a decade of success, the senior pastors of VCF decided to turn over the management of the school to a secular group.
Much like the disciples choosing to spread the gospel instead of waiting on tables, the senior pastors realized that running a growing school was taking up a lot of their time that should be focused on the church.
This put parents in panic mode, some felt abandoned. Others worried that a “secular” set-up would weaken the core vision of faith and values of the children.
In a meeting with a senior pastor, parents openly expressed their fear and concern that the church and leaders were disengaging. I was at that meeting and once most parents had their say, the senior pastor calmly but firmly addressed all the questions.
What stayed with me that morning was the reminder to parents that it is not the responsibility of school, not even of pastors, to instruct and strengthen the spiritual discipline and values of their children. That rests mainly on the parents.
It is a responsibility that cannot be “assigned” to teachers and pastors. When the Bible tell us to “raise up a child in the way they should go,” it was talking to you and referring to “your child,” not to government or law enforcement.
The values they build up will be a direct reflection of your behavior, also known as “Your Values.” For my generation, the big crime was domestic violence. Guess what, it is not genetic but hereditary, a case of “monkey see – monkey do.”
In relation to all the incidents of school bullying, violence and shootings, some have suggested that it is all the result of too much social media exposure, or careless storage of weapons or mental illness.
People talk about the kids being fearless because the law protects them as minors who can’t be convicted as adults. Clearly we all have an answer or a hypothesis with very little science, no due diligence and blame-throwing away from parents and the home.
Everything begins at home. We are a country with a history of premature parents due to unintended pregnancies, made worse by failure to practice family planning, resulting in financial hardship.
To remedy the situation, we turn to jobs, punishing schedules or double income families eventually embracing a job, turning it into a career that becomes their life. As a result, many have become absentee parents.
Others avoid the discipline and opt to be their children’s BFF and, worst of all, buying technology to compensate for the absence of human presence and human touch and make the child shut up, thereby rewarding them for the wrong things.
Being a committed parent is difficult, wrought with sacrifice and pain but that is the real job description of what real love is. That is what the book of John in Chapter 3:16 has been trying to tell us.
After countless retelling, a slow and deliberate reading of John 3:16 shows us how much our children, how much we matter to God to the point that he was willing to make the biggest sacrifice the world has ever seen.
I hope we can all understand the depth and love in that sacrifice and give our children, our families, that kind of sacrificial love. For everyone else, Yoda tells us “Do or Do not” – there is no try.
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