#662. Solving our junk.

If I ever become a high paid executive, I already know the first two things I am going to do:

1. Purchase nicer belts.

2. Say the phrase, “I’ve got an open door policy.”

The first one is obvious. Everyone knows the power belt is the new power tie. Nothing says, “I’m all about commerce and synergizing our optimized customer touch points” like a gleamtacular belt. Right now, because I’m just a lowly copywriter, I only own one belt. It’s reversible. One side is brown fake leather and the other side is black.

The second part of my master plan is murky. There are a handful of phrases every executive I’ve ever met says at least once. One is “I’ve got an open door policy.” Executives are always talking about open doors, but to tell you the truth, I can’t imagine ever juking around a personal assistant, plopping myself down in the CEO’s office and saying, “Hey, I saw that your door was open. How things going on your end? This new timesheet system is killing me.”

I just don’t see that happening, but “I’ve got an open door policy” is still a fun phrase and it’s kind of the opposite of one my old boss used to say. When people would bring him problems, he would say, “Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions to problems.” It’s the corporate version of when you’d ask your 3rd grade teacher how to spell a word and she’d tell you to look it up in the dictionary instead. (Remember those things? They were made of paper and heavy? Wow. Good times, good times.) …

I think the goal of telling people to come with solutions instead of problems is to create a culture where people fix their own problems. Where they sit at their desks, solve a situation and then come to the boss for approval of said solution. The hope is that you’ll create an empowered work force that is constantly fixing problems without needing the direct input of the boss. I’m cool with that, but that idea, that mentality, gets a little weird when we try to attach it to God.

Maybe you don’t do that. Maybe you’ve never viewed God through the lens of a boss, or your dad, or a college professor or a million other filters we sometimes run God through. But I have and I’ve definitely imagined Him as some sort of cosmic boss.

I’ve definitely thought to myself, much like an employer with a “bring me only solutions” mandate, I better come to God prepared with a plan on how to get out of the mess I’m in. I’ve made my bed, I better lie in it. I got into this, I’ve got to be the one to get out of it. Maybe if I show a lot of effort in trying to fix this situation, that will make Him faster to forgive me? The only problem with that idea is that God doesn’t work that way.

God doesn’t ask for our fixes. He is the fix.

God doesn’t want our solutions. He is the solution.

God doesn’t need our plans. He is the plan.

My favorite example of this idea is in the Prodigal Son story. One of the things I love, that we talked about before, is the sentence the prodigal son is never allowed to say when he returns to the father after wasting his inheritance on wild living. (If you want to take a breath after that run on sentence, feel free.)

Before he came home, the son did a little brainstorming in the pig pen he called home. Here is what Luke 15:18-19 shows the son thinking out loud:

“I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. ‘I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’”

Great plan. He wasn’t returning home with just a problem, he was returning home with a solution to a problem. “Make me like one of your hired men.” I blew the whole son/inheritance thing, that’s broken. What if we fixed it by me being like a hired man?

That was his plan. And it was solid. But when he returns and the father runs to him, embracing him the second he appears on the horizon, what happens? He’s not allowed to say, “Make me like one of your hired men.” He gets the rest out. The repentance, the confession, that spills out of him like marbles down stairs but “make me like one of your hired men” doesn’t.

I think one of the reasons is that the father didn’t need the solution. A well put together plan wasn’t the price of admission to his arms. Maybe, despite what I think sometimes, God cares more about souls than He does solutions.

I lose the truth of this idea when I fall. I think I have to fix things or string together at least three months of holy living before I come to God. I’ve got to come to him with a solution, but that’s not true. That’s not true.

God doesn’t want your solution.

He just wants you.