Aims and Targets

We are told that it is important that we have aims and objectives in our lives in order to motivate us to higher and better things.  One of the favourite questions to a child is 'what do you want to be when you grow up?'  It has been said that John Lennon, when asked that question by a teacher, replied that he wanted to be happy.  The teacher, allegedly commented that he hadn't understood the question and John Lennon, in his inimitable way suggested that he had in fact understood the question perfectly but the teacher had not understood his reply. 


Just about every group, company, industry, committee or service will happily lay out their aims and objectives to us the customer, client, receiver, largely to try and impress.  It is fine to say what we are hoping to achieve and make clear the aims of our business or group.  But then the matter goes another step further and the aims become targets.  We begin to put numbers on our aims.  It is then that the hopes become obligations and the stress kicks in until the targets become an obsession.  We have seen this happen across the board in industry and public services.  Sometimes the target figures become all important and the only thing that matters, often to the detriment of the actual service given.  Some even fiddle the figures in order to give the impression of having achieved what they set out to do.   It's as though nothing else matters.  And if as a worker you don't reach your targets then, woe betide, you can be hauled in front of the higher management and told in no uncertain terms that your work is not good enough and that if your targets are not reached within a certain length of time then your employment could be in jeopardy.  That seems to me to be a way of stressing people out even more to the point of making them ill rather than a way to motivate them. 

The sad thing is that I have witnessed that even Christian groups use these methods of having a  5 year plan and saying that within 5 years just what they hope to have achieved.  I say it's sad because that is not the way that God works.  We don't have to pass some test or learn a certain number of verses of the Bible by heart.  He doesn't expect us to say that we have brought so many people to our group or we have carried out so many 'good deeds' this week.  He doesn't give us a check list that we tick off every day the things that we have accomplished in His name.  No wonder some Christians go around looking as though they have the weight of the world on their shoulders.  That's not the way He works.  It's not about numbers or how many activities we are part of.  There is no striving or competing one against the other or one denomination against another.  He just loves us and tells us to rest in Him.  'My yoke is easy' He says.  We are told simply to follow Him and do as He asks us and if we don't manage to fulfil what we have hoped He won't get rid of us.  Just the opposite - He gives us a big hug and reminds us that He loves us unconditionally for who we are and not for what we've achieved.

When I was younger, I had my aims firmly in my mind.  I was going to change the world!  That didn't happen!  But I know that God's love for me is as real today as it was then.  Those expectations were mine, not God's.