On Where You're Looking
2024-02-01 Invite Champions Weekly
Champions in faith and life do not spend precious energy worrying about what other people are thinking and doing.
Sergei Zabolotnov was in third place with less than 20 feet to go in the 1988 Olympic Men’s 200m backstroke. For some reason, he got curious about the man next to him. In the middle of his elite, finely tuned stroke, Sergei looked to the right at the swimmer in fourth place, Paul Kingsman. Then on the next stroke, he did it again.
Zabolotnov had held a short lead on Kingsman. But because of those two quick decisions, Kingsman touched the wall four one hundredths of a second before Zabolotnov and took the bronze medal.
Sergei did not place.
Kingsman later recalled that Zabolotnov “was more focused on looking at me than finishing the race.”1
Looking to your left and right, wondering what others are thinking and doing, is a great way to become distracted from the mission at hand. And to lose.
As leaders with faith in Christ, We have two options - to look up to what God has before us, or to look side to side at what others are thinking and doing. As Sergei learned the hard way, looking side to side is a great way to lose sight of the prize.
The entire mission depends on where we as leaders look: up ahead, or side to side.
Think again about the scene on Mount Sinai.
Moses has just come down from the mountain. He is hot with anger. Up on the mountain he’d been warned by God about what was going on behind his back. Moses is ready for what he is about to encounter.
He grabs the golden calf and throws it in the fire. After making the people drink the gold powder, he immediately goes to the one responsible: his big brother Aaron.
Notice that Moses does not engage the instigators, the extremists and rabble rousers, but the one in charge. It is Aaron who bears responsibility for the calf, the leader who had blessed and brokered its creation. Aaron is the one who did not quash the subversive voices in his midst.
It is a critical moment: though Aaron does not know it, God wants to destroy Aaron and every Hebrew leader and person involved in the decision to make the golden calf. But Moses had pleaded with God not to kill them. (Moses 32:11) God relents—for how long we do not know. What Moses would do next was potentially a make or break situation.
At the moment Moses gets in Aaron’s face, Moses is the only one preventing Aaron’s death.
Moses asks his big brother a question that can be heard in the modern language of leadership: “What did these people do to you, that you led them into such great sin?” (Ex 32:11)
In other words, this is not the people’s fault, as misled as they are. This is your fault. By giving them quarter, you gave them authority over your leadership.
Moses is saying to Aaron, you are their leader, and it is your job to take them where they need to go, even if they do not like what you have to say to them. Instead of mounting up with courage, acting on what you know the Lord wants, you have abdicated. You sought the approval of people, not of God. Seeing only the angry mob in front of him, Aaron abandoned his convictions and acted according to what the fickle crowd demanded.
(Hint: when you seek the approval of people, not God, you end up with neither. The people are fickle; God is not.)
Faced with the truth, Aaron’s attitude toward Moses becomes obsequious and deferential. For the first time, he calls his little brother “my lord” (adon), which is a reference to another person who is superior or has authority over you.
“Do not be angry, my Lord,” Aaron answered. “You know how prone these people are to evil.”
— Exodus 32:22
Aaron was a tragic character in many ways. Lacking courage, he tried to make the problem go away by blaming the very people he had failed. He knew that he had lost his spiritual authority by what he had done, so he sought relief in his little brother’s fortitude.
The takeaway: The root of the problem wasn’t that Aaron made the calf. It was that instead of looking up ahead on the mountain, he looked side to side at what others were saying and doing… and perhaps was accustomed to looking side to side, wondering what other people thought of him.
Be careful about looking side to side. Never let what other people are saying and doing lead you to act against God’s desires for your mission, and for your life.
Billy Oppenheimer, “SIX at 6: The Backwards Law, Game of Thrones, Adele, The 1988 Olympics, Novak Djokovic, and The Subtle Art”, January 28, 2024. https://billyoppenheimer.com/january-28-2024/.