"What's
that you said?"
"Why are
you mistreating me?" This question came from the donkey
to its owner Balaam as told in the Bible (Numbers 22-24).
This story, showing God's marvelous sense of humor, tells of
Balaam making money at the business of predicting the future
and influencing people. He was willing to acknowledge that
Yahweh (the Lord) was indeed a powerful God. But he did not
believe in the Lord as the only true God. His heart was
preoccupied by the profit he could gain in Moab, an
expanding economy. His story exposes the deception of
maintaining an outward face of spirituality over a corrupt
inward life. This mixture of motives - profit, immorality
and power - combined with the appearance of spirituality
eventually led to his death.
So how can we
mistreat our donkey, misuse our position, influence, assets,
career, and business? The donkey saw something on the road,
invisible to Balaam, an angel warning him that his strategy
was very wrong. The donkey stopped and Balaam thrashed the
donkey, three times! Later, the angel of the Lord told
Balaam, "The donkey saw me and turned aside from me
these three times!" (Numbers 22:33). Sometimes, God
allows things to happen in our business as a warning to us.
It is like the business is saying to us, "Stop! What is
the Lord trying to tell me?" How can your business
speak to you? Are you prepared to listen? I remember
commenting after the last committee meeting that I have much
in common with Balaam. I have to bless my enemies and take
advice from a donkey!
I think these
three warnings straight from the donkey's mouth had to do
with three major areas of the life of a business person:
money, sex and power. Thomas à Kempis wrote, "It is
vanity to seek riches that shall perish and to put one's
hope in them. It is vanity also to aspire to honors and to
climb to high degree. It is vanity to follow the lust of the
flesh." Following this, the monastic movement took
three major vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, which
was a successful attempt to bring these three pitfalls along
our path within the context of one culture.
Richard
Foster in his great book, "Money, Sex and Power"
describes these three 'powers' which, when properly used,
have enormous ability to bring goodness to human life, but
also warns that we are dealing with themes which demons
often use to their advantage. "The demon in money is
greed. Nothing can destroy like the passion to possess. The
demon in sex is lust. Lust captivates rather than
emancipates, devours rather than nourishes. The demon in
power is pride. True power has as its aim to set people
free, pride is determined to dominate. True power enhances
relationships, pride destroys them." We shall address
each in turn over the next weeks.
"They
have wandered off the right road and followed the way of
Balaam son of Beor, who loved to earn money by doing wrong.
But Balaam was stopped from his mad course when his donkey
rebuked him with a human voice" (2 Peter 2:15, 16).
What is your donkey telling you? Is there anything in your
job in which you can hear that "still, small
voice" prompting you to stop and consider your ways?
Does God want to intervene before you are too far down the
road? Next week - the way God might speak to you through
your company, job, etc. in terms of finances.
Peter Briscoe
Peter J.
Briscoe, currently serving as European Regional Director for
CBMC International and Europartners. He lives in Leiden, The
Netherlands.
