I Am A Number And So Is Everyone I Serve

You called him the blue coat.

Not to his face. Afterward, in the back, when you were telling somebody which customer you meant. The blue coat came in about the thing from last week.

And then about four seconds later something arrived in you and it was not comfortable.

Because you know exactly what it is like to be a category. You are twenty-two seventeen. You are page four. You are in the bottom half of a chart compiled by somebody who has never stood in your building.

And there you were in your own back room turning a man into a coat.

You have not stopped thinking about it since Thursday.

He has been coming in for about three years. Maybe longer. He always says something about the weather and he always waits rather than interrupting when you are with somebody else.

You do not know his name. You have never known his name. Three years.

That is what got you. Not the coat. The three years.

There is one sentence from Jesus about this and it is so short that it is easy to walk past.

Do ye also to them likewise

Jesus gives an instruction that is usually quoted as a general principle and is actually much more specific than that.

And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. (Luke 6:31, King James Version)

As ye would that men should do to you. He starts with what a person actually wants for themselves.

Which means the instruction is not asking anybody to invent a standard. It says: take the thing you already know you want, and hand that same thing over.

You have known exactly what you want in this the whole time, and the Holy Spirit is the one who used four seconds on a Thursday to show you that you had it. Luke 6:31 builds the whole instruction out of what a person already knows, and He did not have to teach you anything new to do it.

Now notice what this does with your own situation.

Four years on the receiving end of a thin system has taught one thing precisely: what it feels like to be a code. That knowledge is unpleasant, and it is also equipment.

Most people do not have it. Most people who reduce somebody to a coat have no idea what it is like, because nobody has ever done it to them.

You have been handed something useful by the very thing that has been wearing you down, and Scripture makes the wanting into the instruction rather than into a complaint. The Spirit of God is the one who turns that around, and it is written in Luke 6 how directly it turns.

And there is something in the word likewise that matters.

Likewise means in the same manner. Not in a better manner, not with a program. The same. Whatever it is you wish somebody would do for you, do that.

You wish somebody would use your name. That is it. That is the whole of what you want from that system, when you get down to it.

You have a very small and very specific thing to hand over, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps it that small. The written word makes it the same thing rather than something grander, and Luke 6:31 is why it does not need to be a plan.

Catching yourself is not the same as being caught

Let me deal with the four seconds, because they have been getting treated as evidence.

It got caught. That is the whole story of Thursday. A word came out, and something in you objected inside four seconds, and it has been on your mind every day since.

That is not a man who has become the system. That is a man in whom the system got a word out and was immediately noticed.

You are not becoming what has been done to you, and it is written that a person is to hand over what they already want for themselves. The Spirit of God is the one who raised the objection at four seconds, and He raised it because He has been at work in there.

And there is one more thing worth being clear about.

The blue coat was not cruelty. Nobody in the world would call it cruelty. It is shorthand, and shorthand is how a busy person gets through a Thursday, and every trade on earth uses it.

The problem is not the shorthand. The problem is that in three years the shorthand has never once been replaced by anything.

You have a gap rather than a fault, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can tell those apart. Scripture puts the instruction on what gets handed over rather than on what has been said in a back room, and He is not accusing you of anything on Thursday.

Learn one name and use it

So here is the thing to do, and it is not general, and it is not a resolution about how you treat people.

Learn his name. The man in the blue coat.

Ask him. Not as an event. The next time he is in, when he says the thing about the weather, say that his name has never come up in three years and you would like to know it.

Then use it. Every time. Out loud, in front of him, from now on.

You are handing over the exact thing you want handed to you, and Luke 6:31 says do ye also to them likewise. The Spirit of God is the one who works in something that small, and He does not need it to be a policy.

The reason it has to be one man rather than a resolution is that resolutions about treating people better cannot be kept, because they have no edges. One name has edges: either it is known by Friday or it is not.

You have something with edges rather than an intention, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes one name change the texture of a counter. The written word makes the instruction concrete rather than a general attitude, and Luke 6:31 is where the shape of it comes from.

Then go on running the building exactly as you run it, and page four says exactly what it said.