In Praise of Competency

I recently had the opportunity to speak about competence.  This is a word that is much discussed in the business world, including health companies, major leagues sports and the like.  Obviously, no major league team desires a teammate who is incompetent or only barely competent.  If you are a baseball player who cannot hit a curve ball, you have no future in the majors.  Certainly, no employer is looking for incompetent workers.  

Behind the word, competence, is the verb to “compete.”  I love making this kind of point to students, because they don’t always associate a noun with its verb form.  And my comment usually is “you cannot get a noun if you don’t do the verb.”  That means competing is what finally brings competence.  Perhaps I might even say that there is a step before competing.  That step includes preparation.  Often the preparation period is lengthy.  If we continue with the baseball metaphor, we first have to learn to catch a ball and to throw it.  If you have ever played with a five-year old or even a three-year old, you know that the ball may fly off in any direction.  Their form is awful.  They literally may throw the ball backwards over their own heads!

Little leaguers often learn to hit by placing the ball on a stand---so that the ball does not move.  They are not ready for a 100-mph fastball or a major-league curve ball yet.  Half the time, learners cannot even hit a ball that is not moving.  Preparation brings knowledge, experience, failing, succeeding and normally some improvement.  Their competency is developing.  They become little leaguers, not major leaguers.  By doing the verb, the begin to develop the noun.  Competing yields competency.  

While all this makes sense to me, I also realize there are some folks who are wary of competing or simply are against it.  My own Quaker group has a portion of our folks who think competition is unhealthy or flat out wrong.  Often, I have seen references that suggest it is either competition or cooperation.  While that choice seems clear, I think sometimes it is a false choice.  They are not always either/or.  Sometimes values are laid on these two.  Cooperation is seen as nice and competition is seen as cutthroat.  Competition makes winners and losers.   Some of my Quaker folks don’t ever want any losers.  In one sense neither do I.  These folks think if we could get rid of competition, then we could all be nicer and there would no longer be losers.  That may be true, or it may be naive.

I do think if we assuming competition is not good, and people should hope never to compete is unrealistic.  For example, in most cases people think that some things are more attractive than other things.  Some artwork is more pleasing.  Some music is great and other music is simply ok.  Of course, these are comparisons.  Comparisons are at the heart of competing---even if it competes with myself to get better today than I was yesterday.

I want to turn a corner now and say I think there is even a role for competence in the area of spirituality.  If we take Jesus as our role model, I argue he was spiritually very competent.  He knew about prayer and could pray with effectiveness.  Prayer was so important to him; he made a point of teaching those disciples (and us) how to do it.  We call it the Lord’s Prayer.  I believe he also took special pains to teach those early followers what competent discipleship looks like.  We can read the so-called Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) to get the details.  If someone wants your coat, give him everything.  If someone makes you walk a mile, go two miles.  He tells those disciples to pay, give alms---help the poor and sick---and too fast.  

Jesus wants us to become wise, like he was.  He wanted us to learn how to heal and to become healers.  I am always amazed when I hear Christians say they don’t believe in healing.  I am sure they have some kind of stereotype fundamentalist evangelist telling us to touch our tv screens and send a check!  What I know is there is so much hurting, wounding going on in our world, we desperately need healers.  And not all healers have gone to medical school.  I know compassion can heal.  Listening and caring are healing approaches.  I also know Christians are not the only ones interested in this.

If we can develop some spiritual competence, then we are able to compete against the hurting, destructive forces which seem rampant in our world.  For example, gun violence seems to rage in our cities.  Will passing gun laws take care of this?  It would help, but I also think there is a role for love, compassion and the like.  Spiritually competent people are needed to becoming transforming agents in their communities.  We cannot google a fix and Amazon does not deliver solutions.  It is up to us.

If we don’t want to compete in these spiritual arenas, then we probably will lose.  We don’t need to be losers and we should not want to be losers.  Jesus told us he was coming to bring life and that abundantly.  We need spiritual communities to are preparing to compete and compete at a high level.  “Bring it on,” says the athlete who is ready for action.  I dearly want to be part of a spiritually competent community that joins in to say, “Bring it on.”  Or maybe we are saying, “Here we come!”

I am ready to praise this kind of competence.