There must be a standard. What’s yours?

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A factory manager noticed production was being hampered because of employees returning late from their lunch hour. When the whistle blew, few were at their machines. He posted a sign by the suggestion box offering a cash award for the best answer to this question: “What should we do to ensure that every man will be inside the factory when the whistle blows?” Many suggestions were submitted, and the one that was selected solved the problem. But the manager, a man with a sense of humor, liked this one best, though he could not use it: “Let the last man in blow the whistle.”

We like the idea of the last man in blowing the whistle because it really eliminates any standard. Wander back late if you want, the last man will then set the standard by blowing the whistle, regardless of how late everyone is or the negative impact on production. This approach keeps things comfortable!

But things go awry without a standard. Someone did some research and came up with what we would get “if 99 percent were good enough”:

    • No phone service for 15 minutes each day.
    • 1.7 million pieces of first class mail lost each day.
    • 35,000 newborn babies dropped by doctors or nurses each year.
    • 200,000 people getting the wrong drug prescriptions each year.
    • Unsafe drinking water three days a year.
    • Three misspelled words on the average page of type.
    • 2 million people would die from food poisoning each year.

Just a little off standard can cause significant trouble, so imagine the chaos that comes from no standard at all! Or a really poor one. An unidentified writer told this story about using the wrong measuring stick:

    A self-righteous man once boasted to a Christian friend of his, “You know, John, I’m not such a bad fellow. There are many worse than I!”

    His friend replied, “Ivor, you are measuring yourself by the wrong standard. You measure yourself by the harlots and drunkards you see on Skid Row and you feel quite satisfied by comparison. But go and measure yourself alongside Jesus Christ and see how you make out.”

    No person’s life cuts much of a figure when placed alongside the perfect life of Christ. The life of the Lord Jesus shows us how crooked and defiled our own lives really are.

For the Christian, there is a single standard with which to measure ourselves — Jesus Christ — and the Apostle Paul writes that measuring up to Him as our standard is the mission of every disciple of Jesus:

“This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ,” Ephesians 4:13.

How do you measure your life — what standard are you using?

Scotty