God-Esteem, Holy Week Devotion, Tuesday

It is helpful if you read Monday's Devotion first to have the background for today.



In 1990 I was 27 years old and sales manager of the largest ready-mix concrete company in St. Louis. We had 26 competitors but contolled roughly half the market. I had an expense account that included golf several times per week, lunches with customers daily, sporting events in box seats and luxury boxes. I was flying high.

And then the bubble burst. Our company was purchased by a national company which was purchased by a French company, which was purchased by a Swiss company which is the largest construction materials company in the world. The current CEO is let go and a new President of Operations is brought in from Ireland. Without even meeting me he decides that 27 is too young to be sales manager and demotes me. To say I was devastated would be an understatement. I had come to appreciate my status with the company and what it meant to have reached the level I had in my short number of years.

It didn't take me long to figure out what you already know; companies, employers, businesses and stock holders have no heart. I'm not referring to the people themselves. Most people who work in a business envioronment are fine upstanding individuals. Many of them are church goers and some of those actually try to make sure that all of their decisions are influenced by their faith. However, it's not the individuals that are the problem. The problem lies with the corporate group of individuals.

Corporate are a group of people who gather each work day with a common goal; to produce, complete, resource, outsource, combine, buy, sell, or whatever they do and to do it in accordance with the corporation's mission statement. Those mission statements are usually rather high-minded and say something about how they are going to increase the well being of all of humanity. In the end, the mission of all corporations is very simple... to increase the wealth of shareholders. Sound cynical? I challenge you to point out a corporation over 20 years old (even younger today as things change so fast) that hasn't done one of the following; (a) change the marketing strategy of their product line to maximize sales, (b) increase the product line to increase market share (thus edging out competition), downsize to decrease the cost of production and therefore increase the profit margin.

Corporations, and other business, have no heart really. They are motivated by profitability and the security of those at the highest level of employment. So I was demoted based upon a decision of an individual who hadn't met me, didn't know my skills, had not spent a moment in the St. Louis construction market, but who assumed that I wasn't the right person for the job. Ouch... that was heartless. Not that he was heartless (though future decisions of his left that question on the table) but that he was acting on behalf of the heartless corporation whose mission we've already established.

So why is it that we (me included) attach so much significance to that which is heartless (meaning the organization that is not motivated by a primary sense of love but rather motivated by the bottom line?) The only thing that I know of that has a primary motivation of pure love is the God that is made known in Jesus Christ. If I allow the company that demotes, lays off, fires, or burns through my retirement account, to be the deciding factor on my sense of self-worth, I have put my heart in the hands of the heartless. However, if I decide to put my life in the hands of one who has my best interest at heart, the Lord and only the Lord, then my identity is one that is worth billions, even trillions, more than all the shareholder wealth the Dow Jones can muster.

Once again, why don't you pray that prayer from St. Patrick found here?