Paying The Cost To Be The Boss

Many years ago B.B. King recorded a song that would become a blues classic with its recurring refrain, “As long as I’m paying the bills, I’m paying the cost to be the boss.” Perhaps more accurately than any other song, “Paying the Cost” expresses a widely held sentiment in our society that by “paying the bills” one earns the right to be the boss.

It’s not difficult to comprehend the logic behind such a declaration, nor to be persuaded by it, for in many areas of our lives this is a very tangible reality. Moreover, many of us have experienced times when no clear decision-making structure was in place and an entire organization suffered because of a power struggle. Given the necessity of strong, decisive leadership and the ease of organizing along the lines of ability to “pay the bills,” many of us have grown quite comfortable with this approach to life.

Sometimes outcomes resulting from this approach to leadership are ideal. Unfortunately, however, we don’t have to look far to recognize the difficulties of such a philosophy. All too easily this organizational principle can become a fortress behind which abusive behavior is protected. A working spouse can oppress a stay-at-home spouse because he or she doesn’t work hard to pay the bills. A parent can manipulate children into all kinds of unhealthy or even inappropriate behavior by pointing to his or her bill-paying ability. A boss can coerce employees into compromising actions because as boss he or she is ultimately responsible for the success or failure of the company, not the lowly employee. A member of an organization can even try to force that organization’s leadership to submit to his or her agenda by threatening to withhold funds necessary for the organization’s financial stability.

Sadly these abuses are all too common among people who claim to follow Jesus. May God have mercy on us and forgive us for all the times we’ve tried to seize power. May we look to Christ to lead us into lives of service. And may the Holy Spirit teach us and shape us along the way.

Nobody's Business?

One of the common ways people pass time is to play what I call the “Desert Island Game.” The idea is to pose a question to a group about what they couldn’t live without were they to find themselves stranded on a desert island. I must admit I’m not a huge fan of the game; I’d prefer not to have to make such choices. But if I were forced to choose just one type of music I could listen to while stranded on a desert island, it would probably be the blues. There’s something about the honesty of the lyrics and the dynamics of the music that surpasses most other music.

What fascinates me is the schizophrenic attitude at the heart of blues music. On the one hand, blues is, at its core, a means of opening oneself up, of revealing one’s inner turmoil to anyone who will hear. Often the songs give voice to cries of deep hurt or to shouts of protest. As such, they serve to invite others into those stories, and to take action of some kind as a result, whether reaching out to the narrator to comfort or rescue, or to join in the narrator’s cries. On the other hand, however, there’s a deeply ingrained notion of privacy inherent in many blues standards. Perhaps no song represents this better than “Ain’t Nobody’s Business,” which has been recorded by numerous artists, including B.B. King, Willie Nelson, Jonny Lang, and Susan Tedeschi. The song's chorus, which repeatedly declares, “Ain’t nobody’s business what I do,” serves to build walls between the singer and the audience. The incoherence of these two sentiments is quite clear: you can’t invite people into your mess and then tell them to stay out.

While we may not all enjoy listening to the blues, the incoherence of these two sentiments reflects with incredible accuracy the incoherence in many of our own lives. We want to pour out our cries of hurt and shouts of protest to God, but we don’t want God getting involved in our business. We want to pour out our cries of hurt and shouts of protest to our brothers and sisters in our community of faith, but we don’t want them getting involved in our business. Whether it’s Jesus telling the woman caught in adultery to leave sin behind her, or Paul encouraging the loyal yokefellow in Philippi to intervene in the dispute between Euodia and Syntyche, or James instructing his audience to confess their sins to each other and pray for each other, the witness of Scripture is clear: our lives are not to be closed off from God and from others, but open that God through the Spirit and through others can work to transform us to be like Christ. May we never allow our culture’s obsession with privacy to keep us from Christ-like openness to God and to each other.

I wonder: what concrete steps can we take to be more open to God and to each other?