Motivation backfiring.

The sermon yesterday was on Job, and the pastor (at Grace Presbyterian) began by talking about doing jigsaw puzzles and missing pieces, or not seeing the big picture. Today I’m starting with a lousy photo from a tea room.

I saw this in Waikouati. It appealed to the irony in me, because it covered all the positive messages of this world, all the facebook slogans, all the motivational speakers… in one image.

These people exhort us to deal with the burdens of the day. They are akin to the psychopathic boss in Glengarry Glen Ross “First sales prize is a Cadillac. Second prize is steak knives. Third prize… you are fired”.

It also speaks to the modern Pharisees, who are religious and secular.

Seven Woes to the Scribes and Pharisees

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

(Matthew 23:1-12 ESV)

You do not get a better example of content and process. You also see why Jesus accused the pharisees of acting, of faking righteousness. It is an inevitable problem if you have professional clergy: and before the secular consider they are off the hook consider this…

University of Auckland associate professor in clinical psychology Dr Ian Lambie believed man flu was more sociological than medically-based. “Some men – not all – like to go back to their childhoods and be looked after and mothered and that sort of thing.” He said the results did not surprise him and from time-time everyone wanted some type of special attention.

And while man flu is still the subject of such cynicism, overseas research has found women have a different immune system which could affect how they react differently to colds and flu. Ghent University in Belgium found women had a built-in advantage to their immune system. This was supported by an earlier study from Canada’s McGill University which showed oestrogen boosts women’s immune systems.

The online survey was carried out in May by external research company Perceptive Omnibus on behalf of Vicks to investigate how New Zealand adults behave when they suffer from a cold or flu and to establish whether men and women believed the phenomena of a man behaving like a child when sick.

Ian Lambie made a fundamental error. He took a marketing survey, based on the internetz, with a skewed sampling frame, as correct. He also needed to look at the assumptions underlying a “man flu” survey — one can imagine how the secular clerisy would damn a survey that looked at the female illness behaviour using similar assumptions.

This picture was taken on the same trip, halfway up the hill: most of the photos were taken with something better (one film camera around the neck, one in my down jacket — yes, it is winter). On the top of the hill there is a historic place, predating the Treaty of Waitangi. Because, by 1835, Moeraki was a whaling station. Whaling is now banned: indeed on this Sunday walk I saw a whalespout. But the regulations we have destroyed an industry: some would say for good. We now have fishing quotas, and the result is something like this…

Our regulations and our polite fictions — particularly about being green, or righteous, or together get in the way of our salvation. Our status in the world stops us weeping and confessing. This should not be so. Christ inverted the power structure of the world: in the kingdom of heaven those with great power are expected to do great service, and have greater responsibility.

This has been lost by those who are advocating for wimmenz and gheyz in the clergy, as if the church was a secular foundation such as firefox, with diversity quotas (quotae?).

Again, Paul applies this teaching. He says that we should take the role we are in, as a (wage) slave. child, wife or noble, as if we are in an army, with a rank, under authority, and obey the authority we can see as a practice for obeying the God we cannot see.

Until there is a clash. Until the secular clerisy takes the things which belong to God: until they demand that we praise their lies, and worship their false Gods.

At that point we obey God, not man. Regardless of the cost.