The Story of Zacchae'us the Chief Tax Collector

The Story of Zacchae'us the Chief Tax Collector
by Bryan J. Neva, Sr.

As Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through, there was a man named Zacchae'us who was a chief tax collector and rich.  He wanted to see Jesus but couldn’t on account of the crowd because he was a dwarf.  So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see Jesus for he was about to pass that way.  And when Jesus came to the tree, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchae'us, come down quickly because I’m going to stay at your house today.”  So he quickly climbed down, and happily received him.  And when the crowd saw these they all murmured, "Jesus has gone in to be the guest of a sinful man."  And Zacchae'us stood and said to the Lord, "Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I’ll give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I’ll repay it four times over."  And Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house… for the Son of man came to seek and to save the lost."  (Luke 19:1-10)

In Jesus’ time, tax collectors were despised and treated as outcasts because they typically over-charged people and dishonestly accumulated great wealth at the expense of others.  Zacchae'us, as a chief tax collector, was especially despised by his fellow Jews for compromising his principles and collaborating with Rome (the enemy of the Jewish people).   Zacchae’us had been anything but honest and ethical.  But he repented and subsequently was saved.

I think Zacchae'us epitomized the Profit-at-any-price attitude of many people and businesses today.  They’ll do anything: lie, cheat, steal, and sacrifice their souls just to get ahead.  Zacchae'us too didn’t earn his wealth honestly and ethically.  There’s absolutely nothing wrong with earning money (even great wealth) as long as it’s done in an honest and ethical manner.  So when Zacchae'us repented, he promised to make restitution for his sins by giving half of his wealth to the poor and repaying anyone he cheated four-times over.  This probably left Zacchae'us a poor man.  But in a spiritual sense, Zacchae'us actually became even wealthier by gaining a share in the Kingdom of God.  He lost his life in order to find it again.

Mother Teresa On Sacrifice

On Suffering

My younger brother Todd was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) a few years ago.  Suffering is a great mystery which man has pondered for thousands of years yet still doesn't completely understand.  We ask questions like, "Why do bad things happen to good people?"; "Why do good things happen to bad people?"; "Why do the good die young?"; "Why does God allow suffering?"  In a talk my brother recently gave to his church, he too tries to make sense of suffering.  You can listen to his inspirational talk by following this link:

http://www.evangelbaptist.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/13-10-20-head-and-heart-of-sufferring.mp3

A Moving Target

A Moving Target

by Bryan J. Neva, Sr. 

If you were ever in the military and had to qualify for marksmanship with a weapon, you know how hard it can be to consistently hit 40 stationary targets at various distances (50 to 300 meters away) from various shooting positions.  First, you have to shoot from the prone position (lying on your stomach) with the rifle resting on sandbags.  That’s the easiest position to shoot from; any twelve-year-old kid could do it.  Next, you have to shoot from the sitting, kneeling, and standing positions.  To qualify as a marksman you have to hit 40 stationary targets 24 times (60% success rate), as a sharpshooter 29 times (73% success rate), and as an expert 36 times (90% success rate).  (I qualified as a sharpshooter with an M-14 rifle while in the Navy. Qualifying with an M-16 rifle is even harder as it's about half the weight of an M-14.)

Now imagine how hard it would be to consistently hit the target if it were moving?  You’d have to be an expertly trained sniper to do that.  On April 12^th 2009, a three-man U.S. Navy SEAL sniper team firing from the fantail of the U.S.S. Bainbridge (DDG-96) simultaneously killed three Somali pirates on a moving lifeboat saving the life of their hostage Captain Richard Phillips.  Imagine how hard that would be with the ship and the lifeboat simultaneously bobbing up and down in the ocean?  Very few people in the world could pull those shots off.

Most organizations have target goals they want their employees to shoot for.  Maybe their target goal is to have a certain level of sales; maybe it’s a certain level of customer satisfaction, or maybe it’s some other metrics they want their employees to hit.  Of course, there are rules to follow while doing these (distance and shooting positions): you have to abide by the organization's policies, procedures, and guidelines.  An ethical company would teach you that how you shoot is as important as hitting the target.  It’s pretty easy to hit 40 targets from 50 meters in the prone position, but not from further distances or in the sitting, kneeling, or standing positions.  Hitting the target goals would even be harder if they were moving such as in the case of the Navy SEALs and Somali pirates.

When I worked for PHILIPS Healthcare, they set multiple target goals every year.  The big targets to hit though were sales, service, and customer satisfaction.  The hard part was that most of the issues I had to deal with were moving targets (ambiguous situations).  Every day the targets moved and the rules changed.  I had to think on my feet while trying to make wise decisions (there wasn’t a company guidebook to help me).  I only knew that if the customer or the company weren't happy with my decisions there would be hell to pay.  So I had to balance sales, service, and customer satisfaction, with making me and my family happy.  In other words, I had to find a win-win-win solution to most issues.  I was one man doing the job of ten for the good of hundreds, and there simply weren't enough hours in the day or week to provide deluxe service to everyone.

Unfortunately, most of the time it was a win for the company (they made money), it was a win for the customer (they were satisfied), but a lose for me and my family as I had to consistently work and sacrifice over-and-above the norm without any rewards or recognition.  I could have hit the moving target 90% of the time during the year, but it would be the 10% of the time that I missed the company would penalize me for.  In fact, when it came time for annual reviews, the company’s attitude was “You missed the target 10% of the time . . . no raise for you!”  In other words, they wanted a highly trained expert Navy SEAL sniper that could hit a moving target 100% of the time.  (I suspect the real reasons for their lack of generosity were they didn't want to share the wealth or vindictive managers who just wanted to get rid of someone.)    

One thing I learned in business school is that it’s important to set realistic and attainable goals for your employees and to reward them fairly just as the military does for their marksmanship qualification.  The military doesn't expect the average sailor, soldier, airman, or marine to be 100% accurate 100% of the time; 60% to 90% is acceptable.  In fact, in actual combat, their expectations are that their accuracy will decline 50% because of stress.  They don’t expect everyone to be as good as a U.S. Navy SEAL sniper shooting at a moving target. Psychologists have shown that the average person makes at least a dozen mistakes an hour and that mistakes double or triple while in stressful situations.  And this should put your mind at ease the next time you're flying: the average pilot makes at least two dozen mistakes an hour! 

Companies too have to be realistic about their performance expectations of their employees.  Some can only be average performers (marksman), some can be high performers (sharpshooters), some can be star performers (experts), and maybe rarely can one be a superstar performer (sniper).  You can’t expect everyone to be a superstar sniper and only reward superstar performance.  The marksman, sharpshooter, and expert deserve recognition and rewards too.  There's no faster way to demotivate employees than to set unrealistic and unattainable goals. 

In my case, while I usually hit the moving targets 90% of the time (an expert marksman), PHILIPS' failure to account for the moving targets and reward success eventually burned me out and I quit after an eighteen-year career with them.  Ironically enough, the last year I worked for them I was number one in sales and customer satisfaction.  Someone once said, “Any fool can applaud, real appreciation comes in the form of folding green cash!”

Moving the Goal Post by Allen Laudenslager

This guest blog comes from my good friend Allen.  Read his blog A Voice in the Wilderness at http://allenandson.blogspot.com/ 

I once worked as a foreman in a factory that made wooden ladders, stepladders, extension ladders, tall ladders and short ladders.  Production was measured in feet of ladder per day so a 6-foot tall stepladder counted as 6 feet of production and a 32-foot tall extension ladder counted as 32 feet of production and so on.

The extension ladder department that I worked in was producing about 900 feet of ladder a day when I took over as the department manger.  Management offered the workers a bonus on every foot of ladder built over 1,000 feet produced.  So I reorganized the work area to create a better workflow and within a few days the output had risen to 1,200 feet a day.  The workers were overjoyed because without working any harder (just a little smarter) they were earning bonus money.

The factory manager and the owners had seen how much extra money these workers were earning in bonuses every week and decided to move the goal posts.  The workers would now have to produce 1,800 feet of ladder to make their bonuses.  

My team worked harder, but was only able to reach 1,500 feet of ladder a day.  So I looked at the workflow again, made some improvements in how the work was performed, and before we all knew it production jumped to 2,000 feet of ladder per day.   Once again my workers made their bonuses.

I started to see the strain in my workers.  In order to produce 2,000 feet of ladder a day, they not only had to work smarter, they had to work much harder as well.  I did what I could to improve moral and keep the work interesting by rotating daily tasks and the like, but I felt my team had reached their maximum potential.

Unfortunately, the factory manager and the owners looked at how much money the workers in my department were making compared with the rest of the factory and moved the goal post yet again to 2,200 feet a day! 

My team pushed as hard as they could and finally got up to 2,300 feet a day and earned small bonuses.  But by the end of the next month my workers began to quit in droves.  They were working much harder than the rest of the factory, and they could find less physically demanding work with other companies for the same pay.  And as the experienced workers left, production declined back to 900 feet a day.   So the factory manager and the owners moved the goal post back down to 1,200 feet.  

The mentality of the factory manager and owners was “these workers are making too much money, we need to keep that money we’re paying in bonuses for ourselves.”  This kind of short-term thinking caused them to loose two ways in the long-term: first, they didn’t have a dependable production team in that department which could consistently produce 2,000 feet of ladder a day (double what they were originally producing); and second, they didn’t see the improvements I as a foreman made and ask themselves “how can we use these methods in other departments in the factory to raise production?”

As the cycle began to repeat itself I finally recognized the game the factory manager and the owners were playing was nothing more than a sophisticated version of the old “dangle a carrot in front of a donkey trick.”  I soon followed my workers and left for another job!

The last time I heard, they were still stable around 1,000 feet of ladder a day from the same assembly line that had been producing a stable 1,800 feet a day. So much for continuous process improvement!

What is Truth?

“Pilate said to him, ‘So you are a king?’  Jesus answered, ‘You say that I am a king.  For this reason I was born, and for this reason I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth.  Everyone who is committed to the truth listens to me.’  Pilate [sarcastically] said to him, ‘What is truth?’” –John 18:37, 38

“What is truth?” seems like a simple enough question, but the answer is not simple at all.  Philosophers, scientist, and great thinkers throughout the ages have debated this very question.  And institutions of higher learning throughout all generations and civilizations have dedicated themselves to discovering and discerning the truth in all its varied forms.  We as humans with finite, limited minds can only grasp so much; we’re not omniscient or all-knowing and all-seeing.

Throughout our history, mankind, by our very nature, has always been drawn to the truth.  Although we’ve always been deluded by lies, falsehoods, misunderstandings, misconceptions, prejudices, superstitions, and the like, we’ve all tended to look for the truth because truth can be very liberating.  Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32).

Webster’s defines truth as the true or actual state of a matter; conformity with fact, reality, actuality, or actual existence; a verified or indisputable fact, proposition, principle, observation, or the like (e.g. mathematical or scientific truths).

Throughout the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, discovering and revealing the truth is a common theme.  The Old Testament asserts that God is the source of all truth, and the New Testament asserts that Jesus Christ is the manifestation of the whole truth about God.  Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me.” (John 14:6).

Truth can be a demanding task master.  Living a life of truth can be a hard, rocky, and difficult path to follow.  Falsehood is easy.  Committing yourself to the truth can cost you a lot; it can mean the difference between worldly success or failure, fame or obscurity, fortune or poverty, pleasure or pain, reward or sacrifice, life or death, etcetera, etcetera. 

So why live by the truth if living by lies and falsehood is so much easier and rewarding?  That is a question each one of us must answer for ourselves; but it’s probably why so few of us actively pursue and live by the truth.  Personally, I believe that being committed to the truth is its own reward, and being a follower of Jesus Christ demands that one live according to the truth and not lies.  Being truthful in all that we say and do, being discrete and not divulging secrets, and being careful not to be duplicitous or hypocritical is a virtue worth striving for.  St. Thomas Aquinas once said, “Men could not live with one another if there were not mutual confidence that they were being truthful to one another.”

Saint Francis of Assisi (1182 - 1226)

Today (Friday, October 4th) is the Memorial of Saint Francis of Assisi (1182 - 1226).

(The following was taken from a Wikipedia article)  Saint Francis was an Italian Catholic friar and preacher.  He founded the men's religious Order of Friars Minor (OFM or the Franciscans), the women’s Order of St. Clare (the Poor Clares), and the Order of Brothers and Sisters of Penance (the Third Order) for men and women not able to live the lives of itinerant preachers.  Though he was never ordained to the Catholic priesthood, Francis is one of the most venerated religious figures in history.

Francis' father was a prosperous silk merchant.  Francis lived the high-spirited life typical of a wealthy young man, even fighting as a soldier for Assisi.  While going off to war in 1204, Francis had a vision that directed him back to Assisi, where he lost his taste for his worldly life.  On a pilgrimage to Rome, he joined the poor in begging at St. Peter's Basilica.  The experience moved him to live in poverty.  Francis returned home, began preaching on the streets, and soon amassed a following.  His Order was authorized by Pope Innocent III in 1210. 

In 1219, he went to Egypt in an attempt to convert the Sultan to put an end to the conflict of the Crusades.  In 1224, he received the stigmata, making him the first recorded person to bear the wounds of Christ's Passion.  He died during the evening hours of October 3, 1226, while listening to a reading he had requested of Psalm 140.

On July 16, 1228, he was pronounced a saint by Pope Gregory IX. He is known as the patron saint of animals, the environment, and is one of the two patron saints of Italy (with Catherine of Siena).  It is customary for Catholic and Anglican churches to hold ceremonies blessing animals on his feast day of October 4.  He is also known for his love of the Eucharist, his sorrow during the Stations of the Cross, and for the creation of the Christmas Nativity Scene.

My thoughts:  
Saint Francis literally lived Jesus' Sermon on the Mount: "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."; "Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth."; "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God."  

We are not all called to live a life of poverty as Saint Francis was, but he is an excellent roll model for us to follow.  In a world that lives by a "profit at any price" attitude, it's grounding to keep in mind the example of Saint Francis that money can't buy lasting happiness. 

Those with the most gold get to rule

Thank you Allen for sending me this article found at:  http://mac360.com/2013/10/apple-and-the-21st-century-golden-rule-those-with-the-most-gold-get-to-rule/

This is an example of Accounting & Finance 101: when a startup company needs to raise capital they go to Wall Street and have an Initial Public Offering (IPO).  They offer shares of ownership in the company at a certain price (let's say $10.00 per share to make the math easy).  They raise $1,000,000, which would be 100,000 shares of ownership in the company.  After that, the startup company doesn't make anything if their share price increases (say to $20.00 per share); that profit goes to the person who bought the shares at $10.00.

Now that the Accounting & Finance 101 lesson is over, my take is this is just another example of greed and "profit at any price" thinking.  This relates to the article I wrote previously call "If you had all the money in the world".

Apple And The 21st Century Golden Rule (those with the most gold get to rule)

Thursday, October 3, 2013 | Kate MacKenzie Posted In News and Comment

Apple is a money making machine and that’s not in dispute by the legions of Apple watchers, technology pundits, or anyone on Wall Street.

What’s really at issue is what Apple should do with all those billions in riches, right? The options are numerous. Sit on the cash. Give cash to shareholders. Buy stock to inflate the stock price. Acquire a company or buy into new technology.

My personal fear is that the 21st century Golden Rule will apply to Apple’s future.

A Circle Of Sharks

The option that scares me the most is one proffered by none other than corporate raider and shark extraordinaire, Carl Icahn who wants Apple to buy back $150-billion in stock.

Apple has about $150-billion in cash. Does the option to spend it all on stock make sense? It does if you apply the 21st century Golden Rule.

Icahn claims to have $2-billion in Apple stock. If the stock goes up, Icahn becomes richer than rich. If the stock stagnates, Icahn becomes a publicly noisy shareholder (but still rich).

It would be less expensive for Apple to give Icahn $3-billion for his $2-billion worth of stock just to make him go away. That, however, sets a bad precedent for the future.

The problem I have with this whole ‘return of capital to Apple’s shareholders‘ movement is that it’s based on a false premise. As a company, Apple gains little from an exuberant stock price, and loses little from a crazy low price-to-earnings ratio and a low stock price. What does Apple gain by giving money to shareholders in the form of a dividend or a stock buy back?

Less noisy shareholders. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Icahn did not give Apple $2-billion in exchange for stock. Apple doesn’t profit from Icahn as a shareholder. Only Icahn profits, and only if Apple’s stock rises, or Apple’s dividends grow, or the company buys its own stock to temporarily inflate the stock price.

To the extent that Icahn and other sharks can intimidate or influence Apple’s executives and board of directors in his favor, the new Golden Rule applies. Those with the most gold get to rule.

What disappoints me about Apple is that the company is not creative enough or daring enough to know what to do with $150-billion in cash other than to give it away to shareholders who don’t provide anything in return. Apple’s shareholders don’t invest in Apple. They invest in Apple’s stock in a form of legalized and popular Las Vegas-like betting on the price.

Those with the most gold can influence Apple’s decision making in ways not available to you or me. That’s the new Golden Rule.