Lessons from a Company Man

Lessons from A Company Man--November 4, 2016

"If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the death has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ." [1 Corinthians 15:19-22]

My grandfather was a company man.

In a cynical age like ours, in which people are constantly on the look-out for a better deal at the firm next door, and in which companies no longer promise you the same job, or even any job, for a whole career, that is a rare thing.  It is, in fact, sometimes difficult to read my grandfather's old work correspondence without a smirk--the sheer optimism, the dedication to helping the company succeed, the assumption that all his subordinates would share his unqualified commitment to hard work for the sake of hard work, those are all hallmarks of a different era that can seem foreign to the early 21st century. 

But my grandfather was not naïve.  He worked hard as an accountant for a big well-known company, and he put himself into his work with dedication for decades there--and then, at least as the family storytelling goes, he was pushed out and forced to retire when it suited "the company's interests" with little fanfare and hardly sufficient appreciation. But my grandfather was never one to let on.  He never said a word about it, not in all the years I knew him, and not in all those conversations.  He had drunk deeply from the words of the great poem by Kipling,

"If you can make a heap of all your winnings, and risk it on one turn of pitch and toss/ And lose, and start again at your beginnings, and never breathe a word about your loss..."

That is to say, my grandfather worked hard for a company with great loyalty and great dedication, and got rewarded with a shove out the door... but he never moaned and complained about it, because he had known better than to put his trust in "the Company."  (And truthfully, I don't know that it would have been a good thing for him to have stayed in the business any longer than he did--I don't know how well he would have gotten along with the rise of computers and technology anyhow, and the ways they made it possible to skimp on thoroughness.) 

I think often of that part of my family history, because I think that kind of voice, that kind of mentality, is sadly missing in our day and age.  Ours is an age and a culture that gets whiny and entitled when a business or an industry changes, or that acts surprised when a company lets you down.  I was talking with someone the other day about a business that had closed a few years ago in a nearby town, and the other person remarked, "It's sad that they went out of business," with a sort of simmering anger as though an injustice had been done.  Perhaps it is my own cynicism coming to the surface here, but that rather seems naïve to me--it is sad for the people who lost their jobs, to be sure, but I sometimes wonder where we ever got the notion that we should expect "the Company" to be there for us.  The market doesn't care about giving people jobs.  The market doesn't care about how many families are struggling.  The market doesn't care whether an old industry goes belly-up--it didn't when telegraph operators stopped being in demand, and it doesn't care now as people stop buying print newspapers and magazines to read them online.  The market is basically a jerk. If we are putting our trust in "the Company" or "the Market" to be good to us, we are in for disappointment.

These days I hear a lot of anger, and a lot of wistfulness for "how it used to be," and that is often tied in with a wish for business to be "the way it used to be."  Some part of me gets that... but at the same time, I wonder why we ever expected "the world" to be fair or right or just.  The world will yank the rug out from under you--in Hemingway's words, "the world breaks everyone... but afterward, many are strong at the broken places."  We can either stew in anger over a world that doesn't reward us the way we would like and that is changing faster than our towns and communities can keep up with, or we can ask again where our hope should have been all along.  Because... maybe The Company was an empty and dumb idol all along.  And unmasking it--calling an idol an idol--removes its power over us.

Look--"the Company" is going to continue to be at best indifferent to you, to me, to all of us.  "The Company" is, along with "The Government" and "The System" and "The Media" and "The World," one of what the New Testament calls the powers.  They are forces bigger than any one of us, and they are not looking to do us good.  But the followers of Jesus were never meant to put their hope in the Company, or the Government, or the System.  We are supposed to know better. 

That doesn't make us cynical--it should make us free, and focused.  Instead of complaining or stewing that the world is changing right underneath us, instead of demanding that business stay the same as it was thirty or fifty years ago, and instead of bemoaning that nobody is buying telegraphs anymore or railing against the Government for regulating lead in gasoline and making it less profitable, we are meant to be people who put our trust in the living God who promises to put all things right at the last.  "The Company" never will care about you, not really--if you put your trust there, you are bound for disappointment.  "The Market" is deaf and blind to your concerns; don't be fooled.  "The Government" will never love you--it can count, tax, regulate, or even organize you, but it will never love you. The rest of "The System" is all the same, too--once we are free from expecting the powers to save the day, we are able to focus on the One who does care about us, and who has already saved the day.

The World is going to treat you and me, and everybody else, pretty rough from time to time.  I can moan about it, or I can admit that "the world" was never looking to do me any favors in the first place. And once I'm free of that illusion "the world" has no power over me anymore.  I am free instead to find God has been faithful all along.

As Paul says it, "if for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied."  It's not about expecting The System to be sweet and kind, or even to stay the same.  No, our hope is in Christ.  And then we are freed to give ourselves fully--yes, even to work hard in our jobs for "the Company," but to do it because the work is worth doing, the energy is worth putting in, and the effort is worth making, regardless of whether "the Company" gives you a plaque  or certificate of appreciation or not.  We will pour ourselves into what we do like we are risking everything on one turn of pitch-and-toss... but we aren't doing it to impress or win favors from the Powers of the day.  We are done with that nonsense.  We will spend our lives, our energy, and our days in response to grace, not because the Company found a new carrot to dangle in front of me.

So I am done with whining and excuse-making about how "things are different from how they used to be." I am done with angry, petty Facebook posts wishing to make today into some supposedly great era that has past.  I am done with the bitterness of having expected The System to do more or do better for me.  The System, the Market, the Industry, the Company, and the Government, were always bound to let me down.  They cannot hold power over me anymore, because I am done with putting my hope in getting more stuff in this life.  The System no longer has the power to let us down; our hope is not rooted there.

My hope, and yours, too, and all of ours in Christ, is instead on the One who promises that grace will raise us up at the last, the One who promises life beyond the grip of death, the One who is loyal and faithful even when The Company isn't, or when The Industry packs up and moves on.

Do you feel it now?  We are free.

Lord God, keep us rooted in your promise to make all things right, so that we will not put our trust in the empty idols of our day.