Greatness!

September 17th, 2016| Topic: RaMbLeS | 0

What with the election around the corner and all ….

A recent study has found that 21% of corporate executives are psychopaths. About the same rate as among those inhabiting our prisons.

psy●cho●path (sìke-pàth’) noun = A person with an antisocial personality disorder, especially one manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior.

Clinically significant levels of psychopathic traits were found in one in five of 261 senior professionals in the United States. It is about one in a hundred in the general population.

Pathological traits include: manipulativeness, deceitfulness, callousness, hostility, irresponsibility, impulsivity, and risk taking.

Yup, one in five of CEOs.

Nathan Brooks, a forensic psychologist in Australia who conducted the study, along with colleagues from Bond University in Queensland and the University of San Diego, warned that recruitment screening should be improved.

Says Brooks:

We hope to implement our screening tool in businesses so that there’s an adequate assessment to hopefully identify this problem —to stop people sneaking through into positions in the business that can become very costly.”

Indeed. Not just in companies. But across the board. Even in churches. And in Christendom.

James and John, two of Jesus’ disciples, came to Jesus with a question:

“Teacher, we want You to do for us whatever we ask You.”
Mark 10:35

This, right after Jesus had told his disciples he was going to die. Maybe the brothers hadn’t been listening. Maybe they heard only that part about Jesus’ resurrection. In any case, they make a presumptuous demand.

“Grant to us that we may sit, one on your right and one on your left, in your glory.”
Mark 10:37

Whoa!

One would have thought that Jesus’ lesson of the previous chapter would have taught them something.

“If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.”
Mark 9:35

They probably weren’t listening then either. So he repeats the lesson. (Some of us take a long time to learn.)

Jesus said to them,
“You know that those recognized as rulers of the Gentiles lord over them,
and their great men exercise authority over them.
But it is not this way among you,
but whoever wants to become great among you shall be your servant,
and whoever wants to be first among you shall be slave of all.”
Mark 10:42–44

Nope, psychopaths need not apply for greatness in God’s economy.

Notice the structure of Jesus’ utterance, a sandwich structure, centered on the different way of Jesus followers.

And then we have one of the most powerful verses of Mark’s Gospel, indeed, of all Scripture.

“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many.”
Mark 10:45

So here we have a pattern for us, disciples, not to give our lives as a ransom, of course, but to do so for Jesus’ mission and for the sake of the gospel. Disciples, like Jesus, must also serve rather than be served; they too must be ready to lay down their lives. This, Jesus implies, is no time for clawing and clamoring for earthly greatness, a path that is completely antithetical to the ways of God and the principles of the divine kingdom.

Nope, manipulativeness, deceitfulness, callousness, hostility, irresponsibility, impulsivity, and extreme risk taking, have no place in discipleship. Instead, a different way: that of service, the way of our Lord.