ThePismire - Part 4

Nike+ Sportwatch

In Tech on 7 September 2011 with

Dude, should I? I won’t be restricted by just Nike shoes anymore since it uses GPS, and the BEST thing about it is that it has a backlight. Night running FTW. So pricey though…hook it up Nike.

Nike+ Sportwatch

I just enrolled in an ASQ course to become a CQE (Certified Quality Engineer). Yesterday’s class was the first, and the instructor took some time to go over some philosophies of quality by some of the founding fathers of modern day quality systems. One guy by the name of Dr. Joseph M. Juran created the quality statement:

“Adopt a revolutionary rate of improvement in quality, making quality improvements by the thousands, year after year”.

And what the instructor pointed out was that the statement that Dr. Juran is making here is being revolutionary v. evolutionary. I had to let that sink in for a bit. Well, what does it mean to be evolutionary, or to go deeper, to live an evolutionary life. Most anyone would agree that they strive to be better. And for the most part, if you do what you are asked, the natural course is to get better, or evolve. But what makes Dr. Juran’s statement different is that it’s asking for something more radical. A revolutionary change for the better, which calls on someone to not only do what is expected, but to go above and beyond. A revolutionary change versus an evolutionary is exponentially greater, with greater yields.

Now applying this to my walk with God, we always say that Jesus was a revolutionary. Am I not asked to live like he did? Yes, I can be a good person in life. Yes, it’s getting easier to pray in public. Yes, I don’t try to hide that I’m a Christian, but this is all “evolutionary”. What I need to start asking myself is what I can do to live that revolutionary life. And this is where Jesus’ teachings get exponentially more difficult to swallow. Love your neighbor…check. Love strangers…not bad, check. Love those who you absolutely despise right now…uhhhh. An evolutionary love will not help in this case because this kind of love is rigid in it’s course. You can work at it, read books, be patient, and when your relationship with that person changes (whether it was your doing or theirs) you can now love that person. A natural, evolutionary course. But a revolutionary love calls for you to love that person no matter what. When everyone’s together and a bashing session on that person begins, a revolutionary love requires you to stop that conversation, and even defend him/her. EVEN when your natural feelings about that person still exists. This love forces you to go beyond what you “feel” and just do as Jesus. And why do we this? Simply because of what JC did for us.

Take Jesus out of the equation and you create limits. For example, a really really really good person without Jesus will perform acts of kindness upon a person that is annoying. The first attempt receives no attention. Since this person is really really good, they decide to continue with it, and reach out again to that person. Again, no response. This might go on for a few more times, but eventually the really good person will stop trying with the justification of “I’ve tried my best, but if it’s going nowhere, then I’m just wasting my time”. They leave that person, with their good morals still intact.

What does Jesus want us to do? Don’t stop. We never stop because Jesus never gave up on us. It’s only because of him we keep going because to us, these “acts of kindness” are not little awards that we can hang on our refrigerators, but instead it’s our way to shine our light in darkness. So that when they finally scratch their heads and ask why we are doing this, we can say that we’re only paying it forward. Our kindness, and our love is not even a fraction of what Jesus gave to us. This is why we don’t stop. And since darkness is just the absence of light, we should never turn it off.

Be revolutionary, not evolutionary.