Self-Importance Strikes Again

The text for my Friday morning bible study this week was 1 Peter 2:13-25. We discussed what it meant to suffer unjustly, turn the other cheek, etc. and had a difficult time identifying examples of what that would look like in practice. As we closed in prayer, the Holy Spirit pointed out to me that 1 Peter 2:18 instructs me to submit myself (as a wage-slave) to my master (employer), and I missed an opportunity to bring Him glory by obeying that instruction.

Wednesday night, someone mentioned in an email thread that I had committed to resolving an issue that night (after work hours). I had not, in fact, agreed to any such thing. My reply was “Err… nobody ever asked if I could do this tonight, but I will arrange to do so. In the future, it would be nice if I were asked before a commitment is made on my behalf so that if I’m completely unavailable for some reason, we can make other arrangements.”

My reply wasn’t so terrible from a human perspective, but this was a clear opportunity for me to put 1 Peter 2:18 into practice, and I blew it. I grumbled, drew attention to the fact that I was not being treated fairly, and essentially whined that I wasn’t being treated justly. This wasn’t a case where work was coming into conflict with family responsibilities, and I didn’t have an internal debate as to whether I should do the work; the only debate was whether I whined about doing it, or just did it, and I made the wrong decision.

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