day 776: Do The Right Thing - Part 8: Stumbles

“...or do anything else if it will cause another Christian to stumble.”

It wouldn’t be called competition if it wasn’t about someone winning and someone losing. We each go to work, to our companies or organizations, to win at what we do. I always laughed at the Avis commercial that basically has given up on ever being number one in the market. I mean, if you say, “We’re number two so we try harder”, what would happen if they did become number one? I am sure they debated long and hard about the pros and cons of sending the message to the marketplace that they have found their way by being number two. I hope they did the same with their employees who might not want to be associated with being number two. There are those, regardless of the new attitude in sports (at least up to a certain age) that it’s more important to participate than win, where being second place is actually being the first loser. Before we look down on companies that are competitive let’s be sure we don’t forget to celebrate the companies that only because they wouldn’t accept being second, found their way into global market leadership. These are the companies that we count on for our economy, for jobs, and for the products and services that are better than everyone else. All this said, companies that become too competitive may find themselves making some mistakes because the blind ambition to win got in front of their integrity. GE’s mantra that their divisions would either be only number one or number two in the market or else they could expect to be cut or sold from GE had some bad outcomes in a number of areas of their business. These are the types of stumbles that no company needs or wants and be tempering and metering the competitive extremes, we can avoid those missteps.

As believers we must always also watch what we do and how we could cause someone else to stumble. As simple as it sounds, even in how we work with others can either build up or tear down those around us. The smallest word of either praise or criticism can make the difference to another’s attitude about their work, and about us. The higher standard that we must reach because we have the courage and faith to tell others what we believe must have us watching what we do and how it affects those around us. The fine line that we walk every day is a critical one for our personal testimony both spoken and viewed from afar. Purposed worKING comes with that scrutiny. If we can start first by considering what we might be doing or might do to cause other believers to stumble and get ourselves to the place of doing the right thing for them, then we will have likely not caused the non-believer to pause when they see what we do or who we work. This is the thing, the stakes are too high to not care enough about what we can do differently to be sure that no one around us stumbles further away from God.

Reference: Romans 14:21