I have to admit it.
I suffer from a particularly strange form of covetousness about pens, writing tools, you know - sharp pencils are a source of fascination for me, and the mere thought of a fat ball point pen makes me shiver with delirious glee. Why, if I see someone has left a pen on a bench, or a seat in the park, maybe lying on the ground after it's dropped from their bag, I rarely will say, 'Excuse me, but I think you dropped this.' The chivalrous thing to do would be to pick up the pen, hold it like the holy grail in front of them, and await their over-the-top gratitude for returning it.
More often than not, I don't do that. I wait with restless, malfeasant expectation, hoping that they overlook the lost pen, so I can collect it, like Gollum and his Precious, and put it with the other hundred pens that are strewn inside my desk drawer along with paper clips, rubber bands, and anything else that wasn't nailed down.
Is this weird? I don't know, but I don't think it's rare. In fact, the BBC approved an article entitled:
The Psychology of Stealing Office Supplies.
According to the study, 100% of office workers - every last one of them - have 'stolen' something from the office. Whether the 'thrill' of lifting a pack of neon Post-It notes, or the more nefarious photocopying ten photos of a missing cat on the office Xerox, everybody does it - everybody has done it.
But why? Why do we take stuff from the office?
According to The Psychology of Stealing Office Supplies, it comes down to what I'll call the I'll-Show-You reasoning.
When people accept a role in a company or business, they generally align themselves with assumptions that the company will keep their promises about employment. For example, some companies will say, 'We will hire you to work 9-5, Monday to Friday, and no weekends unless reasonably related to your role.'
Employees read: Eight hours a day, five days per week unless I need a personal day, a sick day, a dog carer's day, a doctor's appointment day, or any other number of necessary 'days' to keep their personal life finely tuned. And, for heaven's sake, no weekend duties. According to an employee, there is no weekend reasonably related to the role, and any ask would be completely 'un'-reasonable.
Now, what generally happens, is that companies may need an employee, during the busiest times of year, to fill in on a weekend, or aid a colleague. Certainly, this is above the 38.6 hour work week, and if it happens more than once, the employee may feel somewhat put out that the employer has gone back on his/her word. But the employee does not want to lose the job. No way; it's a good job and pays well for 38.6 hours, but working on a weekend is miffing. Instead of confronting the manager about the outrage, the employee opens the drawer at work and thinks:
'I'm entitled to this highlighter because you made me work a weekend. Ha! Take that! I'll show you.'
The more I think about this, the more I wonder about its universality with regards to humankind's inability to be sinless. Paul writes to the Romans about their righteousness - both Jew and Gentile - and that 'All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.' This sinning often takes the same shape as our justification as the Psychology of Stealing Office Supplies. In general, we are under the general assumption that God is very much like a benevolent genie who will, during the course of a day, week or lifetime, bring about overwhelming happiness whenever we desire it.
That's got to be in the Bible somewhere, right? My life is meant to be happy, therefore, the omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent God, will use his power, his knowledge and his presence to bend to my will. That's the contract I signed up for.
I'm sure of it.
But somewhere along the line, in the fine print (or more likely the parts we don't like to pay attention to), the scriptures point out something quite frightening, 'Not only (do we boast in the hope of the glory of God), but we also glory in our sufferings.'
There it is. Suffering is part of life. It's part of the contract.
But I don't like it. And so, instead of working through this with God, we shake our fists silently, with outrage, and outrageously say, 'Okay, okay, God, you who are all-powerful and all-knowing, I'll show you. I'm going to sin and see if you're going to do anything about it. I'm going to... to... to... take your name in vain! Yes, that's what I'm going to do. Or, I'm not going to go to church for a couple of weeks. (Not that church-avoidance is a sin, but you can see what I'm getting at). Or, I'm going to lie a little bit on my income tax, or covet my neighbor's shovel. I'll show you!'
And then, if you're like me, when I sin, I say, 'You haven't held up your end of the bargain. You owe me, so I took it.'
Of course, this is the sophomoric, kindergartenish, childish response to an egotistical worldview.
But what's the alternative?
We recognize that the fine print, the work-on-weekends, the suffering has a point. 'We also glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.'
The theft of glory from both God and suffering leaves us with shame, but the recognition of God's faithfulness in suffering, or perceived altered-promises, leads us to find hope. And hope is a very rare spiritual resource in our frequently hopeless world.
At the end of this missive, I want you all to know that I've found the owner of the Uni P/N Fine Line water and Fade proof pigment ink pen (2.0, in case you needed that detail).
She was quite happy.
I like making people happy, even better than filling my drawer with stolen pens.
