Love @ Work Keeps No Record of Wrongs

Jesus told Peter that he should forgive not just seven times, but seventy times seven. But surely an employee can’t keep making the same mistake? How does this square with workplace realities?

There’s a delicate distinction here that we could easily hide behind in the workplace. I had an employee once who consistently failed to carry out an important part of his responsibilities adequately. We would discuss it, he would seem to show understanding of the failure, then turn around and fail at it again. This got very frustrating – needless to say that I as his manager bore the responsibility and the consequences of this failure, particularly since it was something I couldn’t just pick up and do myself or give to someone else. Ultimately disciplinary action was unavoidable, and he had to find a job to which he was better suited – this was just a not fit for him.

The distinction that is really hard to make is between the managerial accountability for effective employee performance, and the personal responsibility for the individual employee. Because this employee’s repeated failures impacted me professionally, each time it occurred I got more and more frustrated, and it impacted my view of the person. I kept a record of his wrongs, not just as a manager but also as a fellow-human. The first was OK, and the second was not. Disentangling them is really hard though.

The different roles in which we inter-relate with people make some of these statements about love quite difficult to work through. In a non-work relationship we often have a hard time treating each new “wrong” as though it were the first – forgiving for the 7th or the 490th time. Hurts don’t go away just like that and with the best will in the world they build on one another to the extent that we simply don’t know how to treat the 7th occurrence the same way as the first. Perhaps that’s not the point though. God has observed and been offended or hurt by each one of our sins, our disobedient acts, our ignoring of Him, denying of Him and all the other ways we turn our backs on Him. And yet, His forgiveness of our latest slight is every bit as full and unconditional as the first. It is this behavior we are to model, and this behavior that is represented in keeping no record of wrongs.

At work we cannot ignore this call to model true agape love, 1 Corinthians 13 love, even while we meet our occupational responsibilities. I guess it is a variant on seeing the sin not the sinner … in this case seeing the person behind the worker, and valuing God’s image behind the imperfect employee. It’s a struggle sometimes, particularly when we’re under deadline or performance pressure, but it’s a struggle that can be addressed by prayer. Note to self …