Naivete of the Righteous

We all know Christians who are what we term "good people." They have a heart for Jesus and base their life on Godly principals. You may even be one of God’s sweet souls. You see the world through your own gentleness and kindness. You project Godly qualities and assume the best of others because your mind and heart just never go to that place of sin. Not that you are sinless, you just try very hard to be in the Word and practice those principals daily and in earnest.

I would hope this is the standard we all hold to in the work place. I found many employees that had deep faith in God tended to be naive about people issues. That naivete made supervision harder in some ways. They were often the best supervisors but their ability to predict, understand, and handle the ungodly is often more difficult. This is especially true for those that have never walked in ugly sin prior to committing their life to Christ. God forgive us our sins, but those of us who came to Christ after hitting bottom understand the sinful and disobedient better than the Christian who turned to Christ through a good experience.

I never hope to change the pure of heart into a cynic. I would offer some suggestions to help you supervise with a deeper understanding of human nature.

Employees come in all shades and shapes. I’m not talking about physical appearance, but I’m talking about what makes them tick. An understanding of human nature, your own personal experience, and an intuition for what is abnormal vs. normal all help you supervise. Not having those attributes puts you at a distinct disadvantage in the workplace. One of your most important qualities needs to be looking beyond here and now: the word said and the word not said, the inflection and the body language, the motives, and predicting based on evidence both seen and hidden. Sounds like the makings of a detective story.

Expecting the best from employees is a good quality and supervisory attitude. Understanding you will not always get the best from employees is also a good quality and supervisory attitude. Being able to predict those incidences will allow you to be prepared. Being able to quickly recover from those incidences will help you keep the workplace sane. To recover quickly, you will need some level of expectation based on reality. A Christian who is naive will be thrown into a funk very quickly when other people act less than stellar. Having your naivete shattered during an emotionally charged work issue puts you in a reactionary mode, lessening the effectiveness of solving and remedying the situation quickly and efficiently.

As a Christian, submersing yourself in the Word should bring you out of your innocense and into human situations that show all possible human frailties as if they were in today’s workplace. At no time in Biblical stories was there not examples of the average Joe (or the saint for that matter) failing to rise above temptation and sin. The scriptures are full of employees who make wrong choices, suffer severe consequences, and hurt others. By absorbing these examples, you should broaden your perspective of human nature.

And after the situation is over and resolved, you may turn your beautiful faith towards the God that has guided you through the situations of life. This is where you will allow yourself the innocence of the sweet child to cling to the grace that God is in control and always will be.

I Peter 4:16 "Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf."