Does Competence Matter?

Philip All right, welcome to All Are Yours. This is episode 15, and we will not be saying our names this time, because you know who you are.

Sean Good. I was informed today by my wife — she actually just started listening to our podcast, our most recent podcast, which is the one right before this one.

Philip That’s right.

Sean She just started listening to it today, while we’re recording.

Philip Okay.

Sean The day on which we’re recording, she started listening to it, and she corrected me: she has two kids named after her.

Philip Oh.

Sean Now, I said only one.

Philip But we don’t know what name that is, because we don’t know whose voice this is.

Sean Good.

Philip So there you go. We’ll leave it at that.

Sean Yeah.

Philip But a year ago — it happens — the unnamed man sitting across from me pointed out to me that it was a year ago that we had recorded episode four of All Are Yours, which was kind of like a bonus recording. We did a Q&A after our morning service.

Sean Live studio audience.

Philip There you go, that’s what it was. And the Inquisinator, aka Jonathan Sarr — him we can name.

Sean Yes, we’ll name him.

Philip He asked us some questions. And we thought maybe it was finally time we could follow up on something that was said there.

Sean Because I am no longer on painkilling drugs, like I presumably was that day. I think I was supposed to preach. I assumed I was going to be able to preach in the morning.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean Because I had had surgery the previous Monday, and the last time I had had that exact surgery I felt better within a couple days. This time it didn’t go as well. So I didn’t preach that morning. I was actually not feeling well. I was on drugs.

Philip That’s right. So who knows what you said that time. This —

Sean — this quote that we’re going to reference, of what I said.

Philip Yes. So either it was really good or it was way off. But either way, it requires further conversation.

Sean Right.

Philip So —

Sean So many things can be a launching point.

Philip Correct. You use what you have.

Sean Yeah.

Philip So Mr. Sarr asked us something along the lines of, what does Marysville need? What is the one thing Marysville needs most, something like that.

Sean Yeah.

Philip And so these were Sean’s words — yes, named. So here he goes. This was Sean’s answer to what Marysville needs most.

He said: “What Marysville needs more than anything else is for the elders slash pastors of TEC to be better, stronger, faster, wiser, and more fruitful. The people need to be encouraged and strengthened and blessed for their labors. Pastors are responsible to be the first line of equipping the saints for the work of ministry. So who’s it come down to? It comes down to starting with shepherds. That means we as shepherds need to be wiser, stronger, faster, to increase this sort of worldview of fruitful living extended.”

So that was from episode four of All Are Yours. And that pretty much ended that episode. So —

Sean Now, that was either the mic drop or —

Philip — cut it now.

Sean Yeah.

Philip That’s right.

And so I wanted to contrast that with also a quote that we have said before around our circles, around our founding sort of circles — people who are founding things, starting things. And we’ve at least said a part of the quote, and I’ll only quote the part, I won’t put it in context: but from G. K. Chesterton, when Chesterton said, “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”

And so that sounds in some sort of conflict, maybe. And both quotes, both aspirations maybe, are happening in our circle. And so we thought that maybe it’d be good to expand on that a little bit and talk about competence. What does it mean? What does it look like? Should we pursue it? How should we pursue it? How can we be better, stronger, faster, wiser, more fruitful? And also how to understand that in the context of, if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.

Sean Yeah, you care about competence a lot for your own personal spreadsheet and where your life is going. You care about competence in material productions. So, in my line of work, as it were, I am dealing in much more intangible things that somewhere down the road do have some tangible material consequences, for sure. But you’re over a bunch of companies that actually are producing a thing, an actual product, and needing to be competent in the making of those things.

Philip Right.

Sean And those things holding up.

Philip Right. Yeah, I do talk about the context of business profit. I think it is naturally ingrained to require competence, require excellence. Maybe in the intangible world a person can get away with a lack of excellence, or faking it.

Sean Right.

Philip But in business, if you are not doing a good job, customers stop buying, you don’t have a business. So you’re naturally required to do at least a good enough job for customers to continue buying from you.

Sean That feedback loop is faster, and more measurable, and less excusable.

Philip Right.

Sean That’s just different ways to say what you said. In the worldview realm —

Philip Right.

Sean — in the faith realm, in the “I’m growing as a Christian” realm, potentially there are more rationalizations for why it’s not working. “I’m doing as best as I can.”

Philip Right.

Sean But the result is still not working. You know, Jeremiah prophesied for forty years. Nobody listened to what he had to say.

Philip Right.

Sean As in, obeyed what he had to say, or changed their tune because of his work. So, well, God is sovereign, and Jeremiah was faithful and successful in God’s eyes, and the negativity around him, that wasn’t his fault.

So yeah, in a “I’m making this widget and this widget fails,” or “I’m making this fence and everybody falls through it” — well, that’s immediate feedback, and —

Philip Right.

Sean — demonstrates a lack of competence, which is going to put you out of business.

Philip And you have business people making excuses all the time. So being in business does not keep you away from making excuses, but the business just doesn’t care about your excuses. You could say, oh, it was market conditions. Or it was my employees messed this up, or the customer wasn’t clear. All right. Maybe some of that is true, maybe it’s not. It doesn’t matter. You’re still out of business.

And so the excuses make no room for you. You actually have to produce results, as opposed to just put in the effort.

And I think in what we’re trying to do, when we talk about building, battling, blessing — we’re talking about making Marysville a destination, being jealousable and that sort of thing. All of that has to do with exporting something that is impactful, that is influential. We would like to persuade, we’d like to draw, right?

And so how to go about doing that? It seems like Proverbs gives us at least an answer — maybe it’s not the one, but it’s there. Proverbs 22:29 says, “Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men.” And so the part that has some leverage, has some action in actually standing before kings, making an impact, being influential, is skill in that work.

Sean Our friend Ryan, who loves the professional wrestler Randy Savage.

Philip We’re naming all sorts of people this time.

Sean Yeah. “Cream rises to the top.”

Philip Yeah, there you go.

Sean That was one of Randy Savage’s famous comments. It’s the professional wrestler version of Solomon there, from Proverbs.

Philip Yeah, there you go.

So, Sean and I at least are both on the search for competence. We’d like to get more competent, we’d like to get better, and we want to invite others down that journey.

Sean Yeah. Unlike — well, I’m trying to think, do I know anybody whose answer would be no, do not be competent or God won’t get the glory? I can’t say that I know somebody who would explicitly say that. But it’s much more like apathy —

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean — with some rationalization for not pursuing competence more proactively, more diligently.

Philip Right. Or a lack of zeal, a lack of that spoudē.

Sean It’s all about the lukewarm.

Philip That’s right.

Sean Lukewarm competence. Should that exist? No.

Philip So, I think I heard the G. K. Chesterton quote first within our community.

Sean Okay.

Philip That’s where I was introduced to it. Can you maybe expand a little more on that? I don’t know if it was you who introduced it to our community, but at least you were in the realms of all of that. So when Chesterton says, if a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly — how should we understand that? What are we to do with that?

Sean Yeah, I first came across it when we were specifically trying to start ECS. So in ACCS — Association of Classical Christian Schools — sort of circles, where there were a whole bunch of startup classical schools. And in almost all of those cases, a new classical Christian school following that model would have been a first-generation thing. Because Logos School in Moscow, they have to be forty or fifty years old or something like that at this point. So they were on the front lines of trying to get it going.

And then as other people read a couple of the books about it — myself included — in those circles where you start to get the vision for this model of education and schooling that you yourself didn’t get, then you could immediately be discouraged, because there’s no way we’re going to do it excellently, certainly not at the start. Which, how many things can you actually do excellently right from the first step anyway? Probably not that many.

But there was great discouragement in this whole group of people trying to start schools, especially in the classical model. And in that group is where then I heard, if a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly. And that could apply to specific subjects — okay, art, or teaching Latin, or whatever the particulars are of the trivium: grammar, logic, rhetoric.

Okay. You didn’t get that when you were going through school. Fine, you see that it’s a good thing. Well, it’s better to try doing something than to continue doing what was not as good. You know it wasn’t as good. Try to do the better thing, even if badly.

So the Chesterton quote I heard a bunch of times, and then it seemed reasonable to bring it into our own context for the sake of encouragement. Okay, we’ll try. You can’t improve on what’s not there, so do something. And then I think it is intended to be also — which is part of the point of this discussion — okay, well then, don’t just find it as the end that you did something. Okay, it’s bad, but it exists. Fine for now. But what about next week? Can we make it better?

Anyway, the original — and Chesterton apparently used that kind of description in a couple different places at least — at least the first time I read it in context, as opposed to just the quote itself, he was talking about a country in particular. In fact, the first place I read a version of this was in an essay on patriotism and sports, which seems like an odd connection. Which, Chesterton was connecting a lot of odd things.

Patriotism and sports. It was talking about how in a country, if you have a bunch of people who are playing a sport badly, that is actually better for the country than when you have only a few super select group of skilled people playing that sport.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean And he applies it out even then to art. I think he even includes painting and maybe sculpting. So, is painting worth doing? Yes. Well, how do you most know that something is worthy? Well, you have a bunch of people trying to do it. As soon as it’s limited to only those people who can do it awesome —

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean — then it actually is probably going to get lost anyway. Because those people, if they don’t reproduce it — and how do you get to a super skilled level anyway? Well, lots of time, very narrow. But if it’s really a great thing, then you’d think a bunch of people would be trying it.

So he connects it to certain sports as well as then to certain art things as well. Not to say there can’t be any awesome people at it, but to say that there ought to be a whole bunch of people who are trying it and then making progress toward being awesome. It doesn’t mean that everybody is at the same level. It just means the thing is worth multiple people pursuing.

Back into then the school — starting a school, or even trying a class, a subject in a school that you don’t have a teacher who is excellent at yet. Well, is Latin worth learning? It definitely is worth learning, for a whole bunch of reasons. What if you don’t have an expert at Latin? Well, start, and try, and then see what can develop out of that.

There obviously would be — and Chesterton’s one-liners obviously can be abused. There’s lots of almost any one-liner, I think, probably gets to a point where it can be abused. But yeah, my take on it is he’s not saying at all that you don’t seek for competence, or that you avoid competence. He’s definitely not saying that. He’s just saying, well, on your way to getting competence, go ahead and try.

Philip Right.

Sean And it’s better to get going than to fear. And different productivity people talk about not producing anything because you’re afraid that it won’t be perfect.

Philip Right.

Sean Well, no, it’s worth writing the draft, it’s worth roughing out a sketch, to try something and then hopefully iterate on that and get better.

Philip Right. To not wait until you’re competent in order to even start.

Sean Yeah.

Philip And I think there’s maybe a little bit of that also in Taleb’s antifragility, that framework, when he brings up that the restaurant industry as a whole is antifragile, but each restaurant on its own is fragile. But it’s the fragility of each restaurant that makes the whole industry antifragile, where it continues getting better, specialists continue improving in what they’re doing.

And so, kind of even through that, each iteration creates that baseline — even what you’re talking about regarding the sports, or music, or whatever else there is. You have a lot of people doing it, and so it gives an opportunity for some people to rise to the top, some people to get better, to learn on that.

Sean Which — yeah, and that last part, the learning, even as we’re talking about it, and going with the restaurant illustration that you gave as well: that learning is oftentimes coming from failure. Or, even if it’s not failure, it’s recognizing, it’s being honest and recognizing that something is not great, and paying close enough attention to what is not great about it to try to improve it.

And maybe one of the reasons that we don’t have a lot of success and competence is because we have too much pride, and we don’t want to acknowledge that what we made doesn’t even deserve to get a magnet on the fridge. It’s not even that great. We want the pride of immediate gratification, or the pride of expecting immediate success, immediate acknowledgment that we made the awesome thing — or even just the pride of not wanting to admit that we’re not as good, and honestly say, this is how I’m still not as good.

That can be paralyzing. But I guess both are paralyzing.

Philip Right.

Sean The pride paralyzes you — you think you’re awesome, you’re not, then you don’t actually get better. Or you’re just afraid, which is the other side of the coin of pride, I suppose, of, it’s not going to be great, so therefore I can’t do it.

But the restaurant failing is a way that then you get feedback. And even like you were talking about at the beginning, with the customers — they stop buying your thing. Well, that could be good feedback.

Philip Right.

Sean That could help. But you have to be willing to then learn from that in order to get better.

Philip Yeah, it’s feedback toward your actual substance, as opposed to toward the consequence, toward the eventual results. Eventually it gets to the results and consequence. But what it’s getting at is that you need to have better substance. You need to have actual better effort, or whatever else that you’re doing in that sense, as opposed to again, feedback to the results.

But kind of what you were talking about earlier, even in the — it’s easier to hide, maybe, in the intangible spheres, when there’s excuse making, and even specifically for Christians, maybe bringing down some of that competence. I do think that overall, in today’s world, we see a lot more immediate effort, we see a lot more substantive competence, from unbelievers across the spheres out there, as opposed to Christians halfway trying whatever else they’re doing.

Some of that I think has to do with this sort of dualistic nature. The unbelievers think that this is all they have — they’re going to die tomorrow and not exist, so I’m going to give it all I have right now. Where a Christian maybe has a more dualistic approach, or is tempted to have that, where, what matters is eternity. This world doesn’t really matter, so I don’t need to try as much.

Sean It’s all going to burn.

Philip That’s right. It’s all going to burn, and so my effort, my competence, isn’t there.

But in a different way also, I think there’s a sort of cop-out that I hear from Christians, excusing — and you mentioned this as well — excusing God’s sovereignty for their poor results, or maybe even for their poor effort. So you see poor results, and instead of drawing the line to your own poor effort, you end up drawing the line to, clearly it wasn’t God’s will.

This happens with parenting, with much closer-to-home issues. This happens with pastors in church, this happens with relationships, with all sorts of things. And even when Christians are out there in the world, kind of outside of churchy things, it’s happening there. “My work is not going well, I’m not getting the results I need.” And so instead of drawing the line back to, okay, how can I get better effort, I just back off and excuse myself toward God’s sovereignty.

And so being able to hold yourself to the fire, as opposed to attributing — or maybe even blaming — God for your lack of results, is also a type of care for competence.

Sean Yeah. Well, because competence — even when we decided this is the subject we were going to talk about, I did look up the definition of competence, and meaning: you can do something successfully or efficiently.

Competence, then, as it applies to building the fence, means that you’re able to put a fence together that holds together, that lasts how it’s supposed to, that keeps people from falling over the edge of the building or the edge of the road, or whatever it is. So the tangible thing demonstrates whether you could successfully accomplish that product, that project.

On the intangible things, we need some — okay, well, what do we mean by successful? To accomplish what? And we started with my comments about the elders. Could have summarized that paragraph with, what is going to benefit Marysville the most is if the elders are competent. Well, competent in what, to accomplish what goal?

And those things ought to be able to be defined. I think even in the comment I made, quoting Ephesians 4:12, to equip the saints for the work of ministry. Another way would be Colossians 1:28, where every person is complete in Christ — they’re learning more and more and embodying more and more Christlikeness, which would include having the same sort of scale and interest that Christ has. What does he care about? Well, he cares about everything that he made. So then we can scale up in our interest, to care about more and more of the things that Christ made.

So those are some ways that you could see: are the elders competent at helping others learn how to minister to each other? Are the elders competent at helping the disciples take on Christlike-sized interests? Are they growing in that? Are they caring more?

There are other specifics about husbands and fathers, and how they lead their wives and children. Wives in Titus 2 sorts of ways. Are the young men becoming more choice men? Are they growing in self-control and readiness to take on responsibility? So, are those kinds of things increasing? That is what is feedback to the elders, and whether they’re competent in that or not. And finding those things, and then learning where it’s not happening.

I mean, the more I think about it, the more I am like, okay, well, there are a lot of other things that can be done and can be done less badly. So if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly — which also means that if a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing less badly.

Philip Correct.

Sean As time goes on.

Philip Correct.

Sean So, getting to the point. In fact, I learned from the recording of that podcast, episode four, when I listened to part of it later — I’ve learned a bunch of things from just recording this podcast.

Philip There you go. You’re welcome.

Sean Yeah. I guess. Thank you.

Yeah, I think from the very beginning it was the issue of reluctance. Okay, well — if we’re going to do it, it’s worth doing badly, but also it’s worth being less bad at it. And part of what is bad at it is sounding like you don’t even want to answer the questions.

Philip Right.

Sean So, can’t be reluctant. Do it, or don’t do it.

Philip Right.

Sean It was worth getting started, to try that, when we had the live Q&A recording of the podcast.

I actually have it as a note. I’m supposed to review it once a month, where I remind myself: get to the point. So, for whatever was happening that day, I felt like my answers were wandering around. And I actually have this as a thing that the people closest to me — especially the person who is closest to me — does not really appreciate, that I bury the lede.

In my own personal storytelling, oftentimes I find when I’m writing a sentence, I like putting all the qualifiers up front and then the punch comes at the end. And, well, that’s not as good as it could be. So I keep learning things, you know: get to the point.

And you have encouraged me to offer various definitions, to help other people so that they know what the point is, so that they can get to the point themselves. These are ways that even in the intangible you can still see what you’re trying to accomplish, and figure out what increase in competence looks like.

Philip Right. So yeah, there’s a place to not freak out, not be anxious, when you see poor results from your own effort, from your own work.

Sean Are you saying that to me or to yourself?

Philip To the audience.

Sean That was the third group. There’s a place to not freak out when you don’t see the results you want as fast as you want to.

Philip That’s right. Yes. I have my own mental notes as well.

Sean Yep.

Philip And also, kind of building off of the “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly” — if it’s worth doing, it’s worth getting good at.

And so starting with something, and then putting in that effort, putting in the care to actually grow in competence, is worthy work. As opposed to just checking off the box that we’ve started all these things, we’ve founded these things. Well, are there results, and what can we do to improve those results, to get them better? That is a certain question that should be asked.

Sean Related to one-liners that can be abused is “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean And as soon as that becomes an excuse for a lazy patience rather than a plodding patience.

Philip Right.

Sean Because Rome wasn’t built in a day, but they didn’t take a lot of days off either.

Philip Right.

Sean They were always working on it, even though it was a project that was going to take a long time. Okay, fine — but you can’t just say, well, it’s going to take a long time, so therefore I don’t need to do anything. So, getting good at it, or just not even doing anything at all: these are ways to miss it.

Philip I like Romans 2:7. It says something like, those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality. Like, those are big categories: glory, honor, immortality. And in that way, it’s not just patiently sitting around. So it requires patience, meaning you’re not freaking out, you’re not trying to grab something that is not given to you yet — you’re patiently at it. But you’re patiently in well-doing. You’re patiently working, you’re trying to get better. So there is effort and pursuit and a hunt that is happening.

And so if what is required for the results is to grow your own skill first — meaning that it’s not just a matter of production of output, but it is a matter of skill — then that well-doing has to do with growing your own skill, getting better, learning more, putting in the effort on that scale of it.

Sean Yeah. So, home improvement: learning how to measure twice, cut once. I’m probably actually not going to focus a lot of my increase in competence there. I’m probably still going to need to depend on some other people for that.

But yeah, home improvement. Because I’m trying to think, what spheres are our listeners — our four or five listeners — trying to increase their competence in?

Philip It’s not even my wife.

Sean So your wife listens to just our episode —

Philip No, my wife — she’s not even going to hear me saying this.

Sean Yeah. Well, good. We can say whatever we want.

Philip That’s right.

Sean Yeah, so home improvement. Or I think it would connect with relationships. So, I want to be more competent as a husband. And what’s success as a husband look like? That has some bullet points to it. What does success as a father look like? How can I increase my fathering competence?

Being an employee — because how many entrepreneur or business owner guys do we have? I mean, we have some. We have more that have a job. And what does competence at their job look like? Maybe it just looks like not getting fired.

Philip Like —

Sean — maintaining their paycheck.

Philip That’s a baseline.

Sean Yeah. And that is a thing. Good job, don’t get fired. Make your stuff.

But in terms of increasing ownership, and really what for all Christians they should be desiring to see — the specifics scaling up for the sake of what I think we could argue is dominion taking and rule. And this is going to be setting you up for your Luke 12.

Philip There you go.

Sean Is that the right passage?

Philip That’s right.

Sean So get ready.

Philip That’s right.

Sean But even from the beginning, image bearers are to be dominion takers. So the cultural mandate is one way to describe it; a dominion mandate is sort of the other way that it gets labeled. We’re to be increasing in our competence to rule.

We have various spheres of rule, from the one-foot level to the thirty-thousand-foot level. Or it could be in terms of how many other people we are governing, or leading. But ultimately, we are headed as Christians into ruling. So the original assignment as human beings was ruling. The promise for those who are under Christ — because he is the head, I mean he is the King of kings, so we’re not ruling instead of him, we’re ruling on behalf of him.

And even now there is effort toward that and increasing in our competence to rule. Whatever it is — and I’ll let you go here in just a second — but related to that glory and honor and immortality, what are we trying to do? Well, we’re actually trying to govern. We’re trying to bring order where there is chaos. We’re trying to bring fruitfulness where there was barrenness. We’re trying to see, whether it’s thirtyfold, sixtyfold, or a hundredfold, on the seed that we sow, the investments that we make — we want there to be a profit as we give answer to the master, as his stewards.

And that’s just a way bigger — to say “vision” makes it sound like we are just making it up. But it’s not our vision, it’s Christ’s purpose. Where we’re elect unto forgiveness, yes; fellowship with him, yes; but then a fruitfulness in behaving like him, where we’re caring about what he cares about and ruling like he rules.

Philip Right.

Sean And even you recently have been thinking about what we’re doing now, maybe badly, for the sake of getting better at later.

Philip Right.

Sean And —

Philip Yeah. I’d like to talk a little more about this even on an upcoming evening service.

Sean Yeah.

Philip But yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot about Luke 19. When —

Sean Nineteen, okay.

Philip — when Jesus is talking about the parable of the ten minas. Is it mee-nas?

Sean Yeah.

Philip It’s not my-nas?

Sean I would say mee-nas.

Philip Okay, all right. Well, mee-nas. In Russian it’s also mee-nas.

Sean Yeah.

Philip But anytime Jesus gives a parable about that sort of reward-mindedness — whether that one, or the talents, with the hundredfold, sixtyfold, thirtyfold — that sort of parable, his reward connects back to the results that the steward brought to him. The results that the one whom he entrusted with the resources brought back, and the reward that he gave, was comparable. It wasn’t that everybody got the same reward.

And so that seems like something worthy to take note of. When Paul talks about running to win the race; him punching — he wants to punch not like he’s just beating the air; he wants to discipline his body, bring it under control, in order to win something. That also does not sound like he believes everybody is going to be getting the same equal, egalitarian reward. This is something beyond just salvation. This is something that goes past, again, that fellowship with God, into the realm of fruitful glory.

And so specifically, even Luke 19:17, when in that parable of the ten minas the master tells the servant who brought him a tenfold return, he says, “Well done, good servant. Because you have been faithful in very little, you shall have authority over ten cities.”

And so this is a parable. In that sense, it is symbolic. And so whatever ten cities is talking about here in this parable, in God’s kingdom it’s that much more. And so the ambition, the interest that Christ is giving us to strive for, to work for, is to rule ten cities in his kingdom, in the new heavens and new earth. That is what we’re after.

So it’s not just trying to get competent so that we could have a good reputation amongst our people here, or so that when we die people could remember us a certain way. We are working toward being faithful with what we’ve been entrusted, so that in the next life we can be entrusted with a comparable reward — to be able to be more fruitful even in that reward. The intention there with those ten cities is not just that you’ve arrived and you’re relaxing. You are continuing to work and be fruitful even in Christ’s eternal kingdom.

And so having that sort of ambition, again, for that glory, honor, immortality, and aligning your effort, your work, your level of exhaustion here with that future vision, like what you were saying — seems like it’s what Christ wants us to do. He wants us to make that sort of connection: that the amount of effort you’re putting in that leads to good results is comparable with that future reward. We want to make that connection.

Sean Even in the meantime — that is more of the ultimate end. A significant subordinate end, on the trajectory of what you just described, I would say is the place for jealousability. So, reputation is good. Kind of close to home are the good for you and the good for your people. But then also the jealousability that is even in a Romans 11 sort of way, God blessing people in a way that’s provocative.

Philip Right.

Sean Moving even on an eschatological timeline toward provoking a whole people group, like the Jews, to want the Christ who gives that sort of blessing — that sort of blessing that is visible and obvious from the fruit that comes about through God’s grace bringing about good works, in the Ephesians 2 sense. We do live in good works that have been prepared beforehand.

So actually our rule taking has been, like I said earlier, that’s part of why he elected us. He elected us to confess our sins. He elected us to have communion with him. And he elected us to be productive and increasing in our ability to hold on to his blessings, manage and steward his blessings, be competent in that. And the more that we do that here, the more ready we are, like you said, even for then the next stage, where he rewards us with more responsibility — just without the same kind of sinful environment, ultimately, where we can keep working and keep being fruitful and having the rule on his behalf with the ten cities.

But we care too little about any of those ultimate or subordinate ends to then do anything but turn the TV off.

Philip Right. Well, in Hebrews 11 and the Hall of Faith, when it talks about the past saints who were conquering kingdoms, or being sawn in two, right? Kind of putting both of those in the category of things that faith achieved, and people of whom the world was not worthy. So one looked like success, one looked like defeat. But I believe neither happens without a certain level of —

Sean Well, faith.

Philip Right.

Sean Faith is the start. Faith that is demonstrated in — keep going, yeah.

Philip Right. Faith that works. Faith that gets to work and is effective.

Those who were sawn in two were not those who were lukewarm and hiding out in the corner somewhere. Faith was demonstrated, was visible. And those who were conquering kingdoms also were not lukewarm. So it’s not that we’re waiting for things to happen to us, whether that’s success or persecution. We are out there working, or ought to be — by faith doing those things that actually provoke some sort of a response. Provoking jealousy that leads to persecution, or to more visible fruitfulness here, in that way.

Sean There’s never been a Twitter bio that was “lukewarm kingdom conqueror.”

Philip Yeah, there you go.

Sean Those don’t exist.

Philip That’s right.

And so, one of the things maybe that — and this is also a word that we’ve talked about before — that connects to competence maybe closely, is care. So when somebody cares about the result itself so much that he is willing to grow in competence and get good in order to obtain that result, that’s one sort of care.

And the other sort of care is caring about the actual work, the actual effort itself, apart from even the result that it’s producing. But caring about doing the thing, loving that work into the depth of its details, so that those details themselves become lovely, leading also on to great results.

But it seems like people who are okay with a lack of competence, in some sense, it comes down to their lack of care for both the thing itself and the result that the work can produce.

Sean Yeah. Potentially care is the root. Maybe competence is the trunk. And then out of that comes the fruit. Competence is probably not the root.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean And care is not quite enough. There’s got to be another layer to get to the fruit, probably. So, if that illustration would work.

But yeah, it’s hard to care.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean I think when I survey the wondrous flock — I don’t just mean that by TEC, but thinking about Christians, the people that I’m around — I am both surprised, and also I think that there’s some explanations for it, but there is a decent amount of just straight up lack of interest.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean Low-level interest. And it was C. S. Lewis who talked about God doesn’t find our desire for pleasure too strong, right, but too weak, and so we’re just too easily satisfied.

I sort of talked about this kind of thing at the last ECS information night, related to the word want instead of care — but those are a lot the same, and even the word love is a lot the same. Want, love, care: these are, in this discussion, in a lot of ways synonymous.

But it is hard to care. Though it’s also hard when you don’t care, just in a different way. So it’s kind of choose your hard. Do you want the hard of being lukewarm? Or do you want the hard of being hot for a thing that then you’re doing badly on the way to trying to do it better?

Philip Right.

Sean And both are hard. But we’ve kind of been convinced — and our society definitely. The liberals, in a political conversation, liberals are the “want something for nothing.” Want someone else to give it to you. Want to not have to spend a lot of your own energy, and maybe even dollars. Tax the rich; they’re the ones who can make your life better. You don’t have to work hard.

So, caring is necessary, and Christlike, and what God is doing in us. So there isn’t an option to be godly and not care. We might be able to do that for a while, but ultimately our eternal lives will be ones of awesome cares, the best wants, the most consistent and well-ordered loves.

I remember when ECS, a year ago I think, we put in place a new way of enrollment, and even in order to do the tuition you go through another company — whatever, but you have to answer some questions. And one of the questions is, what would you be willing to sacrifice to get this education? And I was out of town, and we were late on filling out the thing. And so my wife was going through and trying to answer the questions, and she got to that question: what would you be willing to do to give your kids this education?

Well — you know, die. Like, we’d give everything for it. What do you mean? “Well, I would give up some lattes”? In her mind, the option was whatever it takes.

Philip Right.

Sean Because we want that. We care about that.

And I get that we all have a limited number of care dollars. We don’t have an infinite amount. So, caring about this thing means you don’t have care dollars to give and spend on something else. And fine. Not everybody has to care about all the same things at an equal level, other than obviously God, and then their various responsibilities.

But yeah, we’re not going to make Marysville a destination. We’re not going to make Marysville, our place, great, unless we care about it, and care about our people, and care about whatever assignment we’ve been given, care about even educating our kids and bringing them up with those kinds of cares, giving them the right sort of wants.

And maybe, I don’t know, maybe that is too abstract still for some people. What do you mean, I need to care? And maybe even competence is too abstract. So, kind of a thing I think about. I mean, both you and I are happy to live at the — well, we’re happy not to live, but happy to spend a good amount of time at the abstract level. You, again, because of your work responsibilities, can’t actually leave it at the abstract, intangible level, maybe as easily as I could be tempted to do.

So I am trying to figure out how to communicate it better. I’m trying to increase my competence in communicating about intangible things better: the categories that matter, that people would care about those things — even, like we’ve talked about before, care about being consistent. And that takes work, and requires saying that person’s ideas are not as good. Their starting point doesn’t work. And I still like them, but I don’t want that.

So it requires accepting some things and not having as high of a place for other things. But that is the life of care. And really, that is what God is preparing us to do. Because you’re not going to rule ten cities if you can’t distinguish between what is good and what is better.

Philip Right.

Sean It’s not just what is bad and what is good. That’s a kindergarten level, bad and good. We need to have competence to distinguish and classify and order and bring systems to not just what’s better, but even in some cases what is the best, what’s the most honoring, what’s the most productive — those kinds of things. And caring about that, loving that, is not always obvious to lots of people.

Philip Yeah. So, to be able to specify: what is care, what does that look like? It looks like competence.

What does that look like? In a way, where faith without works is dead — our works demonstrate whether we have living faith or not.

Sean You’re saying we’re saved by our works.

Philip Correct, exactly what I’m saying. No, I’m not.

Sean Right.

Philip But would you say that it’s too strong? Is this too strong? Is this in the ballpark?

Sean Don’t hold back.

Philip That’s right. To say something like: care without competence is dead. Like, if you say you care, but you’re not putting in the effort to get good.

Sean Care without competence is dead. Or corrupt.

Philip Yeah, there you go.

Sean Could be, yeah. Depends on where the person is satisfied with “if a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.”

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean Even the idea of being an amateur versus a professional. Well, I wouldn’t say that care without professional competence means that that care is worthless. And even “amateur” is actually supposed to be not incompetent, but loving and not paid for it.

Philip Right.

Sean So even when you get back to the definition — because “amateur” is from the Latin amō —

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean — which is “I love.” So an amateur is someone who does it because they love it, not because they get a paycheck from it. So I guess I was even mixing the amateur-professional kind of thing there.

But there ought to at least be some visible progress. Care without progress toward competence could be dead.

Philip But, yeah, would —

Sean We can disagree?

Philip No, no, I agree that you’re not going to get competence on day one. Like you said. And so you can’t say that you don’t care — you’re working on it.

Sean Yeah.

Philip But in a similar way, maybe faith does not have all these works on day one, but there is progress. You’re getting clean, you’re growing in that way.

But if there is true love for the thing that you’re doing, true love for the result that you’re after, and love for the work it takes to get that result, then I have a hard time imagining how competence cannot come. If you spend your effort and time getting into the details of this thing and really wanting to get good at it —

Like Capon talks about, right, the pastry being flaky. Learning how to do that. It’s not working. You made these Danishes and, again, they’re not flaky. You’re going to try again. You want to get that result, and you’re going to do what it takes to learn.

And it seems like when God says, you reap what you sow — those who in well-doing don’t give up, they will reap what they sow. In Galatians 6 he talks about that. It seems like God has instilled generally, normally, in the normal pattern of things, that when we are pursuing after the thing with intention, with ambition, with effort, he blesses that work into fruitfulness.

Sean Sure.

Philip And so if that fruitfulness is competence itself — if the fruitfulness is getting good at this thing, where you’re not just speeding your way through it in order to get credentials, but you actually care about this subject enough to learn it deep enough to be able then to teach at a college, for example.

Sean Yeah.

Philip You care about growing this business to actually make the product very excellently. You’re putting in that effort to learn what the blockchain is all about and how to navigate through that complexity — or, I’m trying to just use an example of something that seems more complicated. It seems like in the normal course of the way God has designed the world, it results in competence.

Sean Yeah. At the moment, the only qualification — and I think both that the qualification is necessary, and I hate making a qualification, because of humans’ ability to make excuses for why then I don’t have to try to increase my care and competence. Ironically, we’re really good — we’re competent — at making excuses.

But even in the body of Christ, there are particular spiritual gifts that the individual with that gift should steward and become even more competent at the use of. But if they really care about another gift that isn’t theirs, then I wouldn’t necessarily say that their lack of competence, even though they really care about that thing, shows that their care is wrong.

I mean, all the way back to the two basic divisions of spiritual giftedness that Peter gives in 1 Peter chapter 4, I think — their serving gifts and speaking gifts. So I wouldn’t necessarily conclude that a person with a serving gift, who really sees the value of a speaking gift, is false, or that their care is dead, because they stink at speaking.

Philip Right.

Sean Even — the guy who wrote the book Range, I’ve only read Range, by David Epstein. He’s got another book called The Sports Gene, which I have heard about. And generally speaking, people who are professional hitters in Major League Baseball have better than 20/20 vision. So it’s not just that they have good hand-eye coordination; they have exceptional vision that enables them to do something that a lot of the population can’t do. They care about it, but they don’t actually have the same level of competence, because there’s even a physical thing.

Or playing in the NBA. You’re seven foot tall. Well, the guy who’s five two, no matter how much he cares about dunking the basketball, is very likely not going to be as competent, because of God-given limitations.

Philip Right.

Sean So that’s the only qualification I think that I would make: that it depends on what the sphere of care is — again, even back to the definition of competence. Trying to accomplish what thing, successful to pull off what thing. And there can be God-given limitations.

Philip Right.

Sean On particular people. But using that as an excuse to then not develop what you were given to do, or expanding that —

And a lot of the productivity material that’s out there today says find your strengths and then forget about your weaknesses. And I also wouldn’t — I think that that is wrong. Though I wouldn’t necessarily require someone to become full-time weakness-addressing, where they stink at this thing and therefore that should become their obsession.

I am actually not as good — for whatever reason. Some of it is a lack. I’ve decided it’s okay to not care, and I’m depending on other people who care about certain mechanical things.

Philip Right.

Sean I’m not as good at that.

Philip Right.

Sean And I could spend more time and energy on it. But I’ve decided, in some parts, it’s okay.

Philip Right.

Sean That’s not where I’m going to spend my care dollars.

Philip Right. I think care is a spectrum as well.

Sean Sure.

Philip To an extent. And we do what we most want to do. And so even cares — I think there is a way, I totally agree with your qualification, there’s a way where I can care about this thing and value it, even apart from skill, talent, or giftedness. But I value it, and I appreciate that somebody else is putting their attention and focus into this.

Sean Yeah.

Philip While I’m not sitting on the couch not doing anything — I’m doubling down my effort over here. And so, caring about, like, personally, I care about this thing more than this other thing, and I’m very thankful that this other person cares about that thing more than the thing that I’m doing. And so care being on a spectrum, on a level of priority, maybe, as well. So, for sure, apart from even giftedness or talent.

And even a pastor who is to equip the saints for the ministry — well, a lot of that other work, those other saints might be better than that pastor at doing it. They are more competent, and he still ought to care about that. And he’s able to care about that without actually himself being as competent in that work. So, yeah, with qualification. But —

Sean Yeah, I still think — I don’t know that we have too many people obsessed with increasing their competence.

Philip Right.

Sean I don’t know that we have too many people who are trying to care about too many things and therefore aren’t getting competent in any of them. Generally speaking, it’s just really tough to care about a thing.

Philip Right.

Sean Where you’re already at, or what your assignments already are — it’s tough enough to get that, to then pursue competence in that area.

Philip Right.

Sean And trying to get our students, our kids and our students, to care, and then look for the areas in which they should more richly develop those cares and pursue vocation in addition to paycheck — pursue their calling, and be competent, successful, outstanding, excellent in that particular calling. That is still a baseline that we have a ways to go on.

Philip Right. Well, and if somebody is too excited about everything, where he’s not developing competence in anything — I also think that is maybe a range of cares, but his care is shallow everywhere.

It seems like real care is focusing. It focuses your attention onto this thing where, what is the better thing — the other good things fall away, and you’re able to focus and get really good at this. When somebody cares about it, they make those kinds of decisions, those kinds of choices. So, in the priorities even that God gives us, for us to care about our marriages, our children, what kind of husbands we are, what kind of wives, what kind of parents — where we make certain decisions in order to focus down on those areas, to make those a priority, because we care about it.

And so care, it seems like, also focuses our attention. It itself focuses our attention.

Sean Yeah. But believing that it is okay to care about the things of earth as given to us by God; believing that you can and should increase your excellence and skill in what you care about and your vocation; and that that is not only going to be rewarded here, but reward — a part of the personal reward of responsibility in the new heavens and new earth, in the kingdom — this is still what we’re trying to get a lot of Christians to be able to enjoy.

Philip That’s right.

Sean Live into.

Philip Yes. All right. So: if a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly. And if a thing is worth doing, it’s worth getting good at.

Sean Amen.

Philip There you go. Boom.