“Love … has good manners” (1 Corinthians 13:5 Phillips). Sounds reasonable enough doesn’t it? Except that somehow at work, I seem to find all sorts of reasons to be bad-mannered to others.
There are all sorts of behaviors tied in with this. The Greek word translated “rude” in the NIV (aschemoneo for those who care) has the sense of “to act improperly, dishonorably, indecently.” What does this look like at work? When I get frustrated with a customer service representative at a vendor and raise my voice, or make the issue personal, I am being rude. When I am short with an employee who is trying to explain why something went wrong, I am being rude. When I use language that is not normally acceptable in “polite company” in our culture, I am being rude. And so the examples could continue through this whole post.
Why is this rudeness a problem? After all, it is generally just a matter of words. Other people must understand how stressful and frustrating my job is – they should make allowances. Right? Well that would be nice, but it isn’t a reasonable expectation. Why not? Because of what I am doing to each of these people in the way I react to them. I am failing to show the respect, honor and courtesy due to a person created in the image of our gracious God. In fact, I am in a sense dehumanizing them, and down-valuing them. This is quite the opposite of love.
Love will look at every other person as an individual with unique value, as someone whom God considers of exceptional importance. I have developed some bad habits in my lack of love. Perhaps a particularly insidious one is my rudeness with people on the phone. I think it is perhaps subconsciously easier for me to be rude when I can’t see that there is a real person on the receiving end. Not that my rudeness is restricted just to the phone – any time things don’t go my way, I’m likely to take it out on whoever I happen to be dealing with. Usually it is someone who has no control over the situation, which further compounds the rudeness.
My solution is similar to that proposed in previous posts on this topic – through prayer, I need to learn the habit of seeing others, as it were, through God’s eyes. That’s why prayer is critical – that two-way communication is the primary time that God opens my eyes to His perspective. Without it, my vision of others is seriously flawed. This is a challenge for me. Perhaps it is for you too. If so, I invite you to join me in putting on this seemingly rather trivial but actually very important aspect of love!
In my experience, one of the most important marks of a strong leaders is consistency in their behavior with others. In other words, they don't run hot and cold emotionally, or come in to work certain days with a rotten, rude attitude, and other days are fine. They manage their behavior towards others no matter what is going on in their personal or emotional life. This is what it means to not be rude.
ReplyDeleteAll that to say, I couldn't agree with you more about the tendency towards rudeness- we all slip into to it at times. Sometimes it's not what we say - it's what we don't say. Just not listening to someone while their talking to us is rude.
LIke you say, we could go on and on with this one! But at the end, the best and highest approach is to see everyone through the eyes of God.
I think some of our rudeness is a reflection of the culture at large -- which is extremely rude and insensitive. We just don't car what others think.
ReplyDeleteMaybe eventually culture will say 'enough' and we will return to civility which will reflect in the workplace
Badley I very much agree with your comment on the need for consistency - I think this is at least in part the "self-control" aspect of the fruit of the SPirit (Gal 5:23) - I still have a long way to go there! But David is right too that this is a cultural flaw - another way in which we need to "not be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds" (Rom 12:2). For culture to say "enough", the leaven of Christian culture must bear its fruit (if you'll forgive the mixed metaphor!)
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