Work & Vocation
My manager is not good at the job and I struggle to respect them. How am I supposed to submit to someone like that?
“Then this Daniel was preferred above the presidents and princes, because an excellent spirit was in him; and the king thought to set him over the whole realm. Then the presidents and princes sought to find occasion against Daniel concerning the kingdom; but they could find none occasion nor fault; forasmuch as he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him.”
Daniel served in an administration that was not his own, under a king whose empire had conquered his people, alongside officials who resented him. What the text records is the quality of his work: an excellent spirit, and no error or fault that his rivals could find when they went looking for one. His standing came from how he worked, not from the competence of anyone above him.
“Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men:”
Paul writes to households in Ephesus that included servants working for masters they had never chosen and could not leave. He redirects their service upward, describing it as done for Christ rather than for the person supervising them. He then turns and addresses the masters about their own conduct, which is the half most often left out. The obligation in this passage was never one-directional.
A path forward
Do your own work to a standard you would be glad to defend, whatever theirs looks like. Your integrity is not conditional on their competence.
Raise one specific problem through the proper channel, with a suggested fix attached, rather than complaining sideways to colleagues. Taking a genuine concern to a skip-level manager or to HR is a legitimate route, not disloyalty.
Pray for your manager rather than about them. It is a small change of preposition that steadily changes how you sit in the room with them.
Closing verse
“Do all things without murmurings and disputings: That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world;”
- Philippians 2:14-15
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