It was the Summer of 2003, I had quit my job and was living in the mountains of Colorado in a tent. I really believe God likes to camp -- I truly believe He led me out there, to a place where He and I could just "hang-out", where I would be away from many of the distractions of big-city living in Dallas that were entangling my life. It was a fantastic summer -- I learned more in four months than I had in 30 years of going to church -- there will be other blogs on that later, perhaps. I had a good time, made some good friends, and saw some fantastic scenery -- but one of the greatest things I got out of the summer was a new direction for my life, job-wise.
I realized I would probably eventually be heading back to Dallas (it gets pretty cold camping in the Colorado mountains during the winter), and would need to find a "job" again. I didn't want to sell paint any more; although I was in a good spot when I left, I was kind of burned out, and figured I needed to preserve what few remaining brain cells I had left for other endeavors. Even though I was in a situation where, financially, I didn't need to work for a while, I figured I ought to be employed -- at age 30, just not working made me look lazy, and telling people I was retired would come off as prideful/arrogant. My little brother had been working for a valet company in Dallas when I left while he was in seminary and had tried to talk me in to working part-time with him -- a bit "beneath" me at the time, perhaps, but it was still an attractive offer to me. It's contract valet -- you call in each week, and can choose whenever/wherever you want to work -- thus allowing great freedom with the job. You get to run around a lot (good exercise), drive cool cars, meet famous people, and make pretty good money. The company started employees at $8.00/hour plus tips, which usually ends up somewhere in the $15-$20 an hour range, sometimes much more, depending on the event. I certainly wasn't making that much per hour in retail management. Tips were predominantly not reported by the employees (and definitely not by the company), a situation made possible by the fact that the base pay was high (up to $13.50), so unlike a waiter or other valet companies, the IRS would probably never have a problem with it, especially since it was part-time work for most people there. I was really attracted to this aspect of the job, because in my Republican, Ron Paul-esque mindset, I was not a big fan of paying taxes to a corrupt government to be used for corrupt purposes. But every time I had entertained the idea of valeting before, I felt something was preventing me.
All my life, by God's grace, and in His mercy, I feel like He has mightily protected me from the most egregious of sins, as society would label them. I haven't slept around, used alcohol or drugs, or committed crimes or other such heinous acts that society, and (sadly) Christians tend to point fingers at and label as "bad." This isn't to pat myself on the back or make myself look as a holier-than-thou, God knows (yes, He does) that I'm among the chief of sinners, living much of my life full of pride and selfishness, having lustful and covetous thoughts, dishonoring my parents, placing other gods before Him, and absolutely murdering people with my tongue. In God's mercy He continues to forgive me and mold me. His Spirit lives in me and continues to convict me to the point of confession, a relationship made possible by the payment of His son's death for my sins and me accepting Him as my savior. So I'm not claiming any goodness of or on my own --I'm simply saying that somehow, despite opportunities to indulge in the worst of debauchery as society and our modern day church would have it, I've always been protected from such evil. I was never quite sure why, I certainly had it in me to do such things -- I was just somehow always prevented from indulging.
That summer, more than ever before, I came face-to-face with the idea that I was God's ambassador - His image bearer -- an ambassador of Christ, THE King, Himself. We represent Him to a watching world, a watching church, to show the world what He looks like -- less the message of the gospel, His eternal autobiography to reveal himself to all creation, be tarnished or discredited. I tremble as I ponder the responsibility of this. I think one of the most revealing passages in the whole Bible about this is the one in which David commits adultery with Bathsheba and has her husband killed. Nathan comes to David, then king of Israel, and "tricks" him into condemning himself for what he has done. Nathan then announces David's punishment (that the child would die and the sword would not depart from his house). Adultery and murder would seem pretty significant to us, even in our modern society of tolerance, but when announcing David's punishment, it's interesting that Nathan doesn't even include these as the causes of God's judgment. He says "...because you've given the enemies of the Lord a reason to blaspheme." Here was David, the earthly king of God's chosen nation, the head-honcho of the nation whose job was to represent Him -- His image -- to the rest of a watching world, and David had chosen to show them that God is an adulterer and a murderer. The gravity of this in God's eyes was far more serious than killing some guy or sleeping with his wife. His image to a watching world -- represented more than anyone else at the time by the earthly king of the people that the world saw as His nation -- and therefore the message of His story about Himself, had been tarnished. David, who is the only person we know who was described by God as "a man after my own heart" understood the context and gravity of what he'd done. In his oft-studied confession in Psalm 51 he writes "against You and You only have I sinned." I had always been curious about this, because it certainly would seem that he sinned and committed evil against Bathsheba and her husband Uriah. But in the context of having dishonored the image of God, David felt like this was almost nothing. It would be like a thief stealing $1,000,000,000.10. The news would just report that a billion dollars had been stolen -- the ten cents would seem pretty much irrelevant to all involved parties, even though it was stolen as well. David had "stolen" from God's image, and God wanted it back, to show it before a watching world. So He used David's whole sin/conviction/repentance process to give us one of the most beautiful prayers of repentance in scripture, to bring glory to His name once again by showing the world His divine grace and seemingly unending mercies towards His creatures that would rebel against Him. Thank You, Lord.
This is what God laid on my heart that summer, in relation to my "re-employment". He did indeed want me to go back and be a valet - a service-industry job where I'd learn to serve others, where I would learn to view and treat other people as higher than myself, where I would cater to their needs in the simple role of parking their cars. No longer would I feel humanistic pride by flashing a business card and telling them what I did "for a living". I would get to meet, work with, and become good friends with people from all over the world with various religious backgrounds. Almost every religion, even every "Christian" denomination is represented in our company. It was in this role, that for 7 years, God wanted to shape me, teach me, and mold me into the leader -- the servant that He could use greatly in His kingdom. He wanted (and still wants) to change me into a person that He can trust to bear his image before men. I came back from Colorado, walked into my apartment, and took a phone call. The operations manager of the valet company my brother was working for was calling for him; I told him my brother wasn't home. He then asked me if I wanted to come be a valet.
So here's my confession. When God led me to this "servant's role", part of what He wanted me to do was to report all my tips, to the other valets (obviously, since we split tips -- well...at least most of us do), to the company office (even though they don't) and of course, to the IRS. While most other valets are honest with each other, many don't accurate report event info to the company office, and almost none report tips to the IRS. Like I said earlier, it's usually a part time job for most. The company certainly doesn't pass along the info on its W-2s, and the base-pay rate is high enough to keep everything looking on the up-and-up. I've actually only met two other valets (out of about 2000 in a 7-year span) that told me they kept track of all their tip money and reported it as additional revenue to the IRS each year. We were the "weirdos", but I still felt that this was something God had deliberately instructed to do, especially when I signed the "I certify all the above information is correct" on my 1040 each year. I always had. Until this year. How ironic this is about to get.
I've taken this year off so far, to try to do some writing about things God has laid on my heart, mostly just to clarify/hash out things God has laid on my heart about my life and life in general, to try to get a better perspective on what my life role may be in the context of God's eternal plan, while living on this temporal earth. I wanted to step back and get an view of my own life from an observer's perspective, which is one of the reasons I believe I was led to start putting things on paper. I felt this would help me categorize random thing that had been flowing around in my head over the past several years. I wanted to remove some time-consuming activities and concerns that were distracting me so I told the valet office I'd be out for a while, cashed out of the stock market, and bought a bus pass. My roommates both sold me on using "Turbo-tax" to do my taxes for the first time -- I agreed mainly just because I didn't want to do all the messy paperwork associated with 1040 -- I had bigger and better things to focus on. I didn't work a whole lot last year for the valet company, lost a good bit of money in the stock market by getting completely out (more on that later, maybe), and therefore was due to get back pretty much all (if not more) of the federal income tax that the company had withheld from my paychecks. I accurately entered all the info the program asked for, from the "amount in box A of W-2", to the "tips not reported to the employer" (I put 0, since I indeed had reported all my tips to the company, even though I knew they wouldn't pass it along) and the interest income. I left the "income from capital gains/stocks" section blank, even though I knew the IRS would receive 1099s, justifying it with the thought that since I'd taken losses, I'd actually had no income. I finished the easy session by confidently signing (via e-file) that everything was correct and honest, since, technically, on paper, it was. In the back of my mind I acknowledged that God had always led me to report all tip income to the IRS as a witness of His character to all my other valets and whoever else may be watching me, but I went ahead with the justification that I wasn't cheating/lying/stealing on my taxes, since if the IRS or anyone ever audited me for the year, I'd come out clean; the stock losses I took far outweighed the extra tips I didn't report, and I was probably actually owed more money than I got back using turbo-tax, since the reality was I'd actually over-reported my income because of this. Bring on the IRS I thought; the joke's on them if they actually audit me.
Many might argue that not being completely transparently honest on a turbo-tax form is not near as serious as adultery and murder, but as an image bearer of the King Himself, it is quite the same. People know me as a Christian - someone who is an ambassador of the message of the glory of God on this earth. I am robbing God of this glory by not bearing His image accurately before men and a watching world. Whether a thief steals $1,000,000,000.10 or only $1,000,000,000.05, the crime will still be reported as someone stealing a billion dollars; the extra pennies will seem irrelevant. Forgive me, Lord for I have sinned against You. Restore me to Yourself anew. Use me for Your purposes, that I would know You more. Do this regardless of the cost, but only in Your love and mercy. In Christ's name, Amen.
I'm still trying to figure out what all this means for me and for my life. I have felt that God has protected me from myself, from many sins I was tempted to do and even attempted to do, to bear witness of Him in some sort of public sphere before a watching church, a watching nation, and a watching world, or even a watching universe. I have yet to figure out how this will look. I've dabbled in politics but am convinced God desires to change the world through His church, not through political power or legislation. This perhaps comes across as boastful - like I think I'm somebody special, or have superb abilities to teach, speak, or write. I assure you this is not true. I'm fairly quiet and anti-social by nature; I prefer "alone" time much more than a big crowd. It's just that at this point, I can't figure out why God's hand of protection against "visible" or "researchable" sins in my life has been greater than I can properly explain; greater than that of many of my family and friends who certainly have lived more Christ-like lives than me, whose lives bear much more evidence of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. In terms of human evaluation in a public sphere, I could stand before men trying to dig up dirt on me and say "Do your worst!". I'm sure they will. Maybe, just maybe, God will allow me to read this confession to someone, so that His name, His glory, and the ever-unfolding story of His divine grace will be known to even more men. So help me God.
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