Outing the Offloaders

Have you ever found yourself doing an unusually large percentage of the work while others seemed to have little or nothing to do?

How do we get ourselves in situations like that?

They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. - Matthew 23:4

There are definitely people who are good at offloading their work to others and some may even be very good at taking the credit for getting it done.

When the work to be done is really important, not just to us but to others we care about, we may just do it and not complain.  Or perhaps we feel the time it takes to get the work done is less than the time wasted trying to get others to help.

But I think these off-loaders are professional and they have perfected the job to the point where someone needs to call them out.  They need to be challenged when they do this, not because we want to do less, but because they need to do what they claim to do, for fairness sake.

The problem with outing them is that they are usually whiners.  They can and will be annoying and they will slip into one of the standard responses or characters they are so good at portraying.

You have to admit it.  They are good at what they do, and they are usually well respected, despite the fact that everyone knows they rarely lift a finger to do anything.

Another rouse they perfect is to screw things up when they do get their hands dirty.  They have learned that a failure to deliver on their part becomes work on your part, especially if letting the whole thing fail is not an option, and only you seem to care about that.

So, outing them can backfire, as Jesus came to realize.  He advised his followers to respect them, but don't imitate them.  His approach to outing them was to out do them.

He said that our Father in Heaven knows what we do, but is that enough?

I know for me, it falls short some times.  I just want to stand up and point at the lazy culprit and say, "When was the last time you actually did something, rather than just boast about it?"

But that would only make me the bad guy.  I know.  I've been there, done that.

No, I have discovered that there is no gain in outing these offloaders.  It only comes back to haunt me if I do.  And the only outcome is the project or mission is impacted in a bad way.

So, I have learned to take Jesus' advice and offer it up to God.  Let him deal with them, since he loves them more than I do.

More to come...


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