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Considering how the Catholic Bishops want to tell people what to do, I though about who was really in charge of that organization. I then just warped around the Sun and used my universal translator to listen into one performance review that didn’t go too well.
“Greetings, Jesus. Have a seat. Well it’s that time of year again. Performance review time. I’ll go through the review and then you can comment later before you sign it.
“Okay, the good news is that the people seem to like you and they loved the free food you got them at that picnic. I don’t want to know where you got those loaves and fishes, if they fell off a donkey or what, but it was great because it didn’t put a dent in our food budget. Some people called it a miracle, but it’s only a miracle if you’re not in the business of selling loaves and fishes. Our concessions vendors were really unhappy that day. But our real problem was revenue from plate passing was way down.
In the future if you are going to give away free food, remind them that there is no “free lunch” right before you pass the plate. You don’t have to come right out and say “give us money” but timing is everything. Whatever they didn’t spend on lunch has to go somewhere and the best place for it is our bottom line.”
Second, we would like you to work on your presentation skills. The stories are great, but we really want to see more bullet points from the Talmud. Quote more from historical rabbis than from this “anonymous father and his deadbeat run-away son.”
Next we are also concerned about the kind of coverage you are getting in the gospels. We don’t pay attention to the words of minor writers like “Q” who is scribbling your sayings down, and I won’t even mention anything written by a woman. But we do follow the major gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Shlomo. And they are not reporting a consistent message.
Repeat your bullet points in short snappy sentences. And use numbers too, followers love numbers like the 10 commandments. Having just one or two commandments like ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’, and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ is way too broad. You will not get any repeat business for specific interpretations of those two. I spend half of my time defining “thou shalt not kill” to the angry who want war and the other half talking to money lenders defining “thou shalt not steal.” The good news is that the money lenders are great at tithing with a favorable definition.
We are also concerned about your politics. We want you to keep a low profile with your whole, “love your enemies” stuff and healing the sick. We can’t really make much money on loving the enemies stuff, but we like that angry thing you did in the Temple, our target follower loves the anger.
We have a few notes on that incident, again, love the anger, but we don’t like your targets. Money changers and the livestock industry are two of our biggest donors and if you drive them out of the temple you hurt their feelings and especially hurt our donations. One big money changer donor told me he didn’t appreciate being called a thief and you naming poor widows as his victims. If we want his contributions to continue, stop pointing out that as a percentage of wealth the poor widows give more than rich guys like him. When you do that it makes him look cheap in front of other donors. And next time? Focus your anger on the smaller unaffiliated merchants selling doves and independent money changers, okay?
Next, could you stop giving away health care? For example, that leper that you cured now has to find a job and his only skill was as a beggar. He was a vital part of the economy by giving wealthy merchants someone they could give alms to so they could feel better. So if you are going to cure someone be sure to make it a cure that keeps him in the system. Maybe a partial cure where his face stops falling off and doesn’t look terrible but his fingers still keep falling off.
Overall Jesus we were really disappointed with your progress this year. Would it kill you to change your sermons to fit in more with the community? I mean Jesus Christ, remember those good Samaritans aren’t your bosses, we are. Who died and left you God?
We aren’t going to give you any more shekels this year because times are hard, but we know it won’t be a hardship to you because we heard your mother is selling some of your homemade wine on the side. We’ll expect to see a couple of bottles on our table this sabbath, something in a deep red if you don’t mind.
Now write down any comments, sign here and date it.
X____________________ 32 AD
Jesus H. Christ, Rabbi
X ___________________
13 Comments
I wrote because I was inspired by one of my younger sisters.
This time of year lots of people are getting their performance reviews. It’s often a time where you can see the gap between what an organization’s management says they care about and what they actually reward. Mission statements get forgotten in the drive for individual control.
The star players are often acknowledged for their good qualities, but expected to “work on their weaknesses” even if working on that “weakness” does nothing except give the management an opportunity to keep someone under control and not get too big for their britches. Big picture mission statements sometimes get forgotten when an opportunity to exert control presents itself.
Lots of big companies have people who lose sight of what they are about. I think when you look at financial services it’s not only important to look at what they say they are about, but to look at who they reward for what kind of actions. You reward someone greater for selling A than B, even though B is a better product you might get more people selling A, even when A is actually bad for the overall organization.
wow, love it spocko. tweeted and recommended
Gonna do Allah next week?
Spocko…..on the case!
It isn’t Allah who is trying to put American women in the burqa this week. Everyone in their time.
Great insights, my friend … Highly recc’d !
Who among us has never encountered this?
In many jobs, it’s the norm.
WELL ‘splained, but old, news, hoss.
;-)
Ex-cel-lent! Well written, snappy (oops)- page turner all the way through. With a biiig payoff at the end. (Fooled ya, everybody who thought the boss was gonna be the invisible one in the sky, huh?)
And performance reveiws…don’t get me started. Just as you say, great review, but…no raises in teh budget or somebody else is the fairhaired child so SOME kinda weakness must be found to justify not promoting/no raise/minuscule raise, etc., etc.
I sometimes think my ex was driven crazy by the arbitrariness of performance reviews in several jobs. He fought for two years against one that should’ve been so easy to prove wrong: supe, who never spent ANY time even on the same shift, let alone the actual working floor, stated baldly that he could not be promoted because he “did not know X, Y or Z program/software.”
In fact…you guessed it…he knew all three and had been USING TWO of them for the past year ON THAT VERY JOB.
Two years to get past that review. “Says right here in print that you don’t know X, Y and Z…must be true. ”
Oops, I got started. Sorry. Made me crazy, too, and helpless feeling.
old news to some of us, larue; to many, such as the Mitt Romneys of the world, it’s utterly unknown.
And to the Rick Santorums, the performance review known as a gigantic electoral loss, just means the rest of the world is wrong and he’s right.
Jesus’s reaction . . .
“Sign this? Over my dead body.”
Peterr’s reaction . . .
Love it! Thanks, spocko.
Thanks Peterr! I will admit that you are one of my “target followers”. (You, RevBev and BarbinNebraska) I’m so glad you loved it.
As I was verifying the underlying data I was pleased to find that some of the writers reminded me of the bit about the widow give the largest percent of her money and Jesus being upset at the money changers on behalf of the poor widows.
I think we can see what Jesus might have said about banks vs. people in the foreclosure crisis. But of course I didn’t have a video camera taping that event and his exact words so I don’t want to speculate…
This post was also informed by one of my Favorite books, The Gospel According to Jesus: A New Translation and Guide to His Essential Teachings for Believers and Unbelievers by Stephen P Mitchell. I highly recommend it to people who are tired of “Jebus” or “supply side Jesus” or “old testament Jesus” being used instead of Jesus. I have years of scholarly info to back me up, but that book got to my heart, not just my head.
Oddly enough, spocko, everything you mention is what I took most to heart from the teachings of the mainstream protestant church I grew up in (Lutheran). There was no prosperity gospel at my church, and although I’ll bet most of the congregation was politically conservative, it wouldn’t have been today’s conservatism.
of course, we were a “mission church”, subsidized to a degree by the Synod or somewhere higher up (I was a kid, don’t hold me to the budget stuff.)
Spocko, this is brilliant. Jesus was a Progressive and just didn’t get the whole money thing. Thanks for great writing.