There are people who make it their job to come up with the best and most creative excuses of why, ’it’s not my job’. They are so creative in fact you think to yourself, ‘This person is brilliant, they could in fact get an excellent job and do it very well’, if they would acknowledge and take ownership of it. Of course, it is not just a job, as in employment that they are avoiding, it is any type of responsibility that comes their way.
In the job that I am employed to do, I call and interview people to determine whether they are eligible for the program that we offer. When they give certain answers, we are required to ask them to provide us with the corroborating verifications. It is at this point so often they start to back track and try to change their answers, because they are being called on to take responsibility and ‘do’ something. From then on everything you say is met with, a contradiction of why they cannot possibly do what you are asking of them. Everything goes well and is peachy when they think they will get something for free and without having to participate in the process. It is heartbreaking for the society we are living in. The buck must stop somewhere, and if there is no one to hand the baton to, or to carry the torch, who will continue when the responsible ones are gone? However, we should not loose heart. Every generation has had their lazy, irresponsible sluggards, and still survived because of those who take up the slack.
The children’s story called ‘The Little Red Hen’ illustrates this well. My condensed version goes like this. The Little Red Hen is a very busy little hen. She wakes up early in the morning, feeds her chicks, sits on the eggs to keep them warm and cleans up the chicken coop diligently all day long. She is very industrious. The other barnyard animals, the goose, the mouse, the cat, and the dog are lazy and want to sleep all day. As she sits down toward the end of the day to rest in the hay, a grain of wheat catches her eye. She decides she will plant it and grow some wheat to make bread and asks the others who will help her. There were no takers. After many days and weeks, the grain grew, and again she asked for help in cutting down the wheat. There were no volunteers. Then she had to thresh the wheat, go to the mill to grind it into flour, then make the flour into bread. With each step even though she states how tired she is, she got no help from the other barn yard animals, though as they watched her work, they acknowledged what a hard worker she was. The one thing they jumped to help her with was the eating of the delicious smelling bread, however, she told them, you did not plant, cut, thresh, grind, or bake, I do not need your help to eat it. And she and her little chicks ate it all up! This is the mentality of those who say, ‘It’s not my job’. They need to learn that with no work there is no reward.
I am the proud mother of four adult daughters. They were not always adults; therefore, a lot of teaching has gone on over the years. One such lesson that was constant in our household was, it is not the age that an adult makes. Maturity is seen in your actions and not in the number that is on your driver’s license. The example I would always give them was you can tell the mature person from the immature one by watching to see who walks over a piece of paper on the floor and who stoops down and picks up the piece of paper and take it to the trash. And, with this I can hear a lot of you saying, ‘but it’s not my job’. Point made.
However, this is not a new thing. Just as we may have the expression, ‘it’s not my job’, they came up with their own idioms in biblical times. The definition of idiom per Webster is, “an expression in the usage of a language that is peculiar to itself either in having a meaning that cannot be derived from the conjoined meanings of its elements (such as up in the air for “undecided”) or in its grammatically atypical use of words (such as give way) or, the language peculiar to a people or to a district, community, or class : DIALECT, the syntactical, grammatical, or structural form peculiar to a language, or a style or form of artistic expression that is characteristic of an individual, a period or movement, or a medium or instrument. Jesus called the Pharisees on this in the book of Mark, chapter 7. The Pharisees were one of several religious sects of Jews who claimed to live by the letter of the law of Moses. However, during the teachings of Jesus we find it full of instances where he turned the tables on them to point out their hypocrisy. This was one of those times. They were fault finders. I’m sure we all know a few of those, we may also know them as busybodies. They were always trying to take the ‘mote’ out of other people’s eyes when they had a huge ‘beam’ in their own, which was also addressed at least five times by Jesus in the New Testament.
Have you heard the expression ‘don’t cry over spilled milk’? Of course, we know the intended meaning is that we should not stress over things that have happened that we have no control over and cannot change. However, many use it to sluff off the fact that the spilled milk in fact was not an accident, but something they did intentionally, but now do not want to take the responsibility for it. Like the 21st century expression, “My Bad”. Those who say this are not often repentant for what they have done wrong, but they have been caught, therefore must acknowledge it, but not necessarily in sincerity. Often it could be followed with a ‘ha, ha’. This is how the expression ‘Corban’ had evolved in its use with the Pharisees.
Mark 7:1-23 tells the story, “Then came together unto him the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, which came from Jerusalem. And when they saw some of his disciples eat bread with defiled, that is to say, with unwashed, hands, they found fault. For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders. And when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat not. And many other things there be, which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups, and pots, brazen vessels, and of tables. Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashed hands? He answered and said unto them, well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, this people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do.” Jesus used scripture to combat them because they supposedly held the scripture in high regard, however, Jesus shows how it was just in word and not in deed and that they really did not respect the word of God. What personal traditions do we preach as ‘doctrine’? We need to examine ourselves and make sure we are not sending people to damnation instead of saving them from it. We must not teach fairy tales, but truth. Jesus said in his prayer time, shown in John 17:17, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” His word is what we should teach, and it will do the work of cleansing that it is intended to do.
Jesus continued, “And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition. For Moses said, honor thy father and thy mother; and, whoso curses father or mother, let him die the death: But ye say, if a man shall say to his father or mother, it is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou might be profited by me; he shall be free. And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother; Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye. And when he had called all the people unto him, he said unto them, hearken unto me every one of you, and understand: There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man. If any man has ears to hear, let him hear. And when he was entered into the house from the people, his disciples asked him concerning the parable. And he saith unto them, are ye so without understanding also? Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without enters into the man, it cannot defile him; Because it enters not into his heart, but into the belly, and goes out into the draught, purging all meats? And he said that which cometh out of the man, that defiles the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within and defile the man.” Every occasion Jesus was alone with his disciples he took the time to teach them a little more in depth.
Let us go back to the eleventh verse. What is ‘Corban’ that Jesus seemingly pulled out of nowhere? All the things that the Pharisees nitpicked about was ceremonial acts that they had come up with, of which most were not given in the law. The law that God gave to Moses was firstly Moral, which denotes the very attributes of God, secondly Ceremonial, which was the requirements of God for the sacrifices that would be used for their forgiveness, very multi-faceted and specific, and thirdly Judicial, which instructed how the governing of the Israelites should be carried out. Jesus was saying that they had added so many things to the ceremonial rites that they expected people to follow, that they neglected the most important part, the moral requirements of God. The example Jesus gave was a command that is mentioned right in the middle of the list of commandments in Exodus 20:12, “Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” Which is reiterated in other passages throughout the Old Testament and taught in the New as well.
There was a group of Jews who had come up with a way to avoid their responsibility to their parents. Corban originates from the Greek word ‘Korbanas’ meaning “temple treasury”. They were acting or stating that their funds had been set aside as a ‘gift to God’ aka ‘temple offering’, so that they would not have to feel responsible for taking care of their elderly. A way of tagging the funds as ‘belonging to God’; Like a loophole in the tax system, and a way of getting out of paying something. However, trying to find loopholes in the moral law of God and openly disregarding it, will never be to your advantage. Corban became an expression that moved on to other areas of their lives as well. If you wanted to shirk responsibility, you would use the catchall phrase, “Corban” aka “It’s not my job”! Jesus did not let them slide but pointed out the Pharisees hypocrisy in front of the crowds. Being irresponsible, hypocritical, self-absorbed, insensitive to others and legalistic was not something Jesus could walk past without mentioning. Regarding the specific subject of honoring your parents, you will note in John 19:26-27, Jesus made provision at the end of his life for his mother, “When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.” That disciple was John. Though my main point in this article is not specifically about taking care of your parents, we are responsible to honor them in this way, in caring for them when they are not able, and we could talk about the various aspects and ramifications of that on another occasion.
We must be like the Little Red Hen, grow up and get whatever the job at hand is, done. Do not be like the other barnyard animals that just lazed around and waited to be fed, participating in the rewards but not the work. We are not entitled to any benefits in life that we do not work for. Isaiah 65:22 states, “They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat: for as the days of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands.” Psalm 128:2 tells us, “For thou shalt eat the labor of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee.” In fact, anything that is within our reach, in our individual world, ‘is our job’. Let us take care of business and reap the benefits of joy, peace, and fulfillment that it brings. Think twice before we say ‘Corban’. Make sure if you do, that the time, money, or efforts you are referring to are indeed dedicated unto the Lord. I think the Lord has a sense of humor, but he does not tolerate ignorance or delinquency. Think twice before you say, “it’s not my job’.
Thanks for your blog, nice to read. Do not stop.