Carmen LaBerge
Our friend Bill English is back from bible and business. Hello, Bill.
Bill English
Hey. Good morning, Carmen.
Carmen LaBerge
I have all kinds of thoughtful and silly questions for you about the Christmas season and going to work.
Bill English
For some reason, silly is not a word that I associate with you.
Carmen LaBerge
I know, but let’s just imagine for a moment all of the silliness that takes place in relationship to work and workplaces during the Christmas season. There’s like, Secret Santa, which can get quite naughty. There are expressly Christmas parties and events, and yet we live in a secular culture. I wonder about that. There’s all kinds of debauchery that takes place. Apparently, 20% of employees who participate in Christmas activities with their workplace that excludes their spouses leads to all kinds of extramarital naughtiness. I got all kinds of conversations we could have in relationship to this Christmas season or the Christmas season and the workplace. But I want to start with Daniel because you wrote a whole book on this, working for a difficult boss. Let’s talk about Daniel and his faithfulness, even in a job that he didn’t necessarily want. Certainly not a job that he applied for. I mean, he’s conscripted into it. Linden, let’s talk about serving under a bad boss.
Bill English
All right.
Carmen LaBerge
Yeah, so just jump in. Let’s talk about…
Bill English
Remind us- I thought you had all these questions.
Carmen LaBerge
I know. I’m full of questions. That is my nature. I am a curious person. Talk about Daniel. Assume that somebody listening doesn’t know who he is. Let’s just assume that. We regard Daniel as this incredibly, incredibly faithful man. But Why so? Tell us about Daniel.
Bill English
Daniel is, along with Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, his three friends. Those are the four main characters in the first six chapters of Daniel. They are young Jewish men, somewhere between 18 and 22, I’m guessing, who are deported from Judah to Babylon, and they never see their homeland again. Interestingly enough, Ezekiel is also part of that deportation, but that’s a conversation for another day. These men are top talent is how we would put it in business terms. They’re sons of nobility. I think they being groomed to be part of the government in Judah and to be leaders of that country. Maybe not king, but certainly leaders. Nebuchadnezzar recognizes in these four young men a great deal of talent. As Nebuchadnezzar was known for, he would take top talent of every country that he conquered and move that talent to Babylon and then, as you said, conscript them into working for his government. And that’s exactly what happened to these four young men. And they, right off the bat, you see in chapter one, Daniel and his friends realizing that their faith in God, their faith in Yahweh, is more important than making Nebuchadnezzar happy. And so they go through a series of decisions that make them remain faithful to God.
Bill English
They do some things to honor the Lord, but they end up completing the training course and working for Nebuchadnezzar as part of his, as you said in your lead up spot, the astrologers, magicians, enchanters, and I forget the fourth category. But that was the area that they worked in. Daniel gives Nebuchadnezzar a very difficult interpretation to a dream, saves of every Magi in Babylon as a result. That’s in chapter 2. As you said, later on in chapter 5, verse 11, Nebuchadnezzar ends up appointing him as the leader of that whole Magi group. By the time we get to Daniel in the Lion’s Den, which is a story everybody knows, we estimate he’s somewhere between 75 and 80 years old.
Carmen LaBerge
He Which is not at all the visual we have.
Bill English
No, the pictures we have is a young man. He’s not.
Carmen LaBerge
We perpetually think of Daniel as a young man. He’s like a frozen in I’m a teenager, but he’s not.
Bill English
He’s not. He probably had a walker with tennis balls by the time he gets there. But he served, by my research, if I remember correctly, He served, I think, seven or eight different kings, and only two or three of them are mentioned in the Book of Daniel. But research, archeology would tell you that he served a number of other kings. He was a very successful, very talented administrator who was faithful to God and yet knew how to work for very godless bosses and to provide an excellent work product in each of those administrations.
Carmen LaBerge
There’s so much that we can learn from the life of Daniel about how to thrive, even in a work environment that you didn’t choose, and maybe under a series of difficult bosses. That’s actually what Bill English’s entire book is about, Working for a Difficult Boss: Lessons from the Life of Daniel. We’re going to continue this conversation in just a moment. Maybe thinking about Nebuchadnezzar or the Babylonian or other kings of the time is hard for you to imagine, but maybe you Can you imagine working for Ebeneezer Scrooge? Maybe you could imagine what it was like to be Bob Cratchet. Can you still thrive? Can you still faithfully thrive under a bad boss? Even at Christmas, We’re going to continue the conversation here in just a moment. You’re listening to Mornings with Carmen. Feelings, nothing more than feelings. I mean, seriously, if all we had was nothing more than feelings, we would just be lost in a sea of mush. Hello, friend. I’m sure you have noticed by now that feelings are a terrible barometer of the truth. Our feelings are affected by the weather, world events, what we ate last night, whether or not someone we like or love texted or tagged us in a social post, how badly someone else sings.
Carmen LaBerge
Yeah, If you’re feeling lonely right now, I want you to ask yourself, Am I really ever truly alone? Of course not. As a follower of Christ, Jesus promises to be with you always. He’s literally with you right now in the thick of it, in the midst of whatever circumstances you’re dealing with in your life. I want to be a source of hope and encouragement to you today. If you are struggling to make it, even just to the next moment, if you’re feeling lonely, Text the word hope to 877-933-2484. Daniel lived during a time period when his country, Israel, was overrun by foreign forces, and he was deported as the son of a noble and conscripted into a job that he didn’t necessarily want under first a boss and then a series of bosses as one kingdom was overcome by another. We’re talking with Bill English about his book, Working for a Difficult Boss: Lessons from the Life of Daniel, and we’re doing so because It is because of Daniel and Daniel’s service and Daniel’s prophcies in relationship to the king that will one day be born under a natal star, that the magi actually show up in the Christmas story.
Carmen LaBerge
They actually know that there will be a king of the Jews, and they know where he will be born, and they know what to be looking for in the sky because of Daniel’s faithfulness in his job over the course of so many Bill, let’s talk about not just maybe Daniel, but also Bob Cratchet. Bob Cratchet, who works for Ebenezer Scrooge, that’s a bad boss, right? That guy is a bad boss. And yet we have scenes where Bob Cratchet is not only faithfully and humbly serving, but he prays for him. At their meal, at his house, they’re praying for Ebenezer Scrooge.
Bill English
Yeah, it’s working for a difficult… I’ve worked for a difficult boss, and it is difficult. It consumes. It just saps your energy. And if you let it, it saps your your thought cycles, maybe I can put it that way, and your emotional cycles, even when you’re not at work. Praying for your difficult boss is probably one of the few things that you can do where you don’t have to interact with that boss. But yet, if we really believe in prayer, if we are Christians who claim and genuinely believe in the power of prayer, then prayer is probably the one thing that we can do that has the most impact on a given situation. I have prayed for my difficult boss on more than one occasion, and I can tell you that this boss has moderated over time a great deal And I think in part because God is getting a hold of this guy and is working in his heart. But it is not easy. It’s just got hard to work for a difficult boss. People feel called in for-profit businesses many times. Many Christians feel called to be in a certain business because they know that their difficult boss needs them, but not in the way that everybody thinks.
Bill English
They know that that boss needs them from a spiritual and an emotional standpoint, not necessarily a skills standpoint, if I can put it that way. What’s really difficult, I think, or is at least equally difficult, is when your difficult boss is a ministry leader and you feel called to serve God in a particular ministry, and your difficult boss is the senior pastor or is the ministry leader or is one of the board members. I have seen people age, twice their age, and so to speak, because of a difficult boss in ministry. It’s not pretty. You wonder, why do people stay? Will they stay because God called them? They will tell you, I’ve asked God to release me. He won’t release me. I’ve got to stay here and serve. Daniel didn’t have that option to be released, but he still serve these difficult bosses in astounding ways.
Carmen LaBerge
I’m thinking about the stories that Os Guinness tells, and we know about the Guinness family and how they saw the needs of the average people who were working for them and how they actually introduced the whole concept of employee benefits. When we think about what’s available today in particular environments, unemployment compensation, unions, welfare, even neighbors and friends who have enough to share, I think that it’s hard for us to imagine circumstances where all of those versions of the safety net don’t exist and where employers did not see themselves as needing to be concerned for the welfare of their people. Whatever you’re experiencing today in your work environment, just recognize that there are now around the world more people serving in conscripted roles, we would call it modern day slavery, than at any other time in human history. If you think these days are gone, if you think the days of Daniel are gone, if you think the days of Bob Cratchet are gone, they are not. I hope that you are not suffering in that particular way in a conscriptive role. But if you are, we want to lift up Daniel today as an exemplar.
Carmen LaBerge
I also want to say that God sees you, and God knows right where you are. He knows your suffering. He knows your need. In the midst of it, you can be faithful to him, even in a job you don’t necessarily want, and even under a boss who is not treating you as the image bearer that you know you are. We want to encourage you during this Christmas season, and I certainly want to encourage you, if you are a boss, to treat your people well and exemplify the nature of good godliness in your employ of precious people. Bill, maybe speak a word to business owners during this holiday season and encourage them to do what you do, which is to treat I want to pick up on something that you said that bosses decades ago just didn’t treat their employees well at all.
Bill English
That still goes on today. I would love to see God, and my whole life is about trying to provide theological reasoning for business owners. I’d love to see Christian business owners, and I estimate there’s about 2 million nationally, to begin to think theologically about their businesses. To those who are business owners today, you have a unique stewardship opportunity and responsibility before the Lord to manage your business, to further the Kingdom of God. That business is not yours. Those profits are not yours. Everything that you have belongs to the Lord and should be managed under God’s direction. Please leverage any one of the many ministries out there to help you learn how to think theologically before you think of what I’ll call American conventional wisdom when it comes to your business. There’s C12, there’s CBMC, there’s several faith and work groups out there. There’s my site, Bible and business. But you got to learn to think about what you do, the decisions you make, the people you employ, how you manage them, the profits that you generate. It all has to come under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Until you get there, you’re really not going to hit the mark of what God is after for entrusting a business to you.
Carmen LaBerge
It all belongs to him. It does. And those who belong to him need to live and lead as if it all belongs to him. And that’s so helpful. Hey, Bill English is available to help you think theologically and live into your calling as a good steward of all that God has placed you over as his manager in the world today. And so check out what’s going on at Bibleandbusiness. Com. The book we talked about today, Working for a Difficult Boss: Lessons from the Life of Daniel. It’s a great encouragement for each and everyone who maybe you’re in a job that you don’t necessarily want or you’re serving under a boss that is less than the fullest expression of Christ in the world today. That’s pretty much all of us. Bill, as always, what a blessing. Thank you so much. You bet.
Bill English
Thank you, Carmen.