Let me ask you a question: if you were commissioned to design a statue that would only be seen from the front, would you even bother to design the back? I probably wouldn't--it's inefficient, a waste of time (and money) which could be spent more profitably on other things. These sculptors surely knew this--they weren't stupid. So why did they do it?

The answer comes from looking at the medieval conception of the world, namely, that God is always watching. These sculptors spent the time to finish the statue on all sides because they knew that even if no human being would ever see the backs, God still would. And they wanted to please God in all things. This seems to be a fairly common conception in medieval thought, one which, to our loss, we have thrown aside.

Let's take an example that might be more in line with our daily lives. Imagine that you were a scribe at a monastery, and that your task was to copy the gospels, day in and day out. How would you approach this task? Would you try to hurry and get as much done as possible, or would you take your time, in order to ensure that each copy you make is as accurate and readable as possible? Wouldn't you take your time with each letter, so that words like "and" and "the" were just as lovingly treated as words like "Christ" and "love"? It may not seem like such a big deal, but even the smallest mistakes can lead to major problems interpreting the texts!

We live in a world in which efficiency is of the utmost importance. There is never enough time, and often not enough money, to do things as well as we would like. When we can cut corners on unimportant things, we are told to do so. Perfection is not the goal--effectiveness is. And so we use shortcuts whenever we can; we abbreviate words, we let our spell-checkers catch our mistakes, we use stamps to affix our signatures, etc. All of these are common, and really quite harmless, ways of doing things.

But I want us to look at them again. How much of this comes because we simply do not trust that there is enough time to get the job done? Or because we find the task tedious and want to get through it as quickly as possible? Or because we don’t think the task is really that important? We talked last week about how laundry would be different if we were folding Christ's clothes: wouldn't we be much more careful about how we do things? What if we were sending out letters for Christ? Would we create a form letter and then stamp our names on the bottom? Or would we individualize each one and sign it by hand?

This goes for so many things we do in life. For example, I had a friend on staff at my undergrad who didn't use abbreviations on letters: she made no claim to Christianity, yet she felt it was a sign of proper respect to address every one as Mr. or Ms., and to spell out "street", "avenue", etc. I have always felt shamed by her willingness to make even minor correspondence carry an air of formality to it.

This week, I want us to watch how we perform the tasks we have before us, and to keep this thought in mind: Even if no one else sees what we do, God does. When you address an envelope, do it for God's glory: craft each letter of the alphabet carefully. When you take a phone call, wish the person well, for God's sake: greet them warmly and ask how they are, and before you hang up, close out the conversation with a kind word. Look around and see what shortcuts you can refuse to take. Do this both because you want to please God with your thoroughness and attention to detail and because in so doing, you are rejecting the prevailing attitude of the world, which has made an idol out of efficiency.

In a way, what you will be doing is a defiant act of foolishness (see my article by the same name), but it shows the world that you do not buy in to its way of doing things. And you just might help a person who needs it!