Coping with Crises

Coping with Crises
EXODUS 20: 22- 22: 14

When I worked as a pastor, the Inland Revenue treated me as self-employed rather than as an employee. I am not sure why this was, and I didn’t feel self-employed. I had a boss (my rector) who made it clear that he was my boss, and I had employers (the church) who made it clear that they were my employers. Some time later I was a boss, because I was the principal of a seminary (in U.S. terms, a cross between being president and provost), though of course I was employed by the seminary and was responsible to the board of trustees. I enjoyed being the boss for a while but eventually needed to get out of the responsibilities it brings and get back to being just an ordinary professor; which is what brought me to California. In the novel East of Eden, John Steinbeck describes a Chinese man (a university graduate) who tells why he was content to be a servant. He has a master who looks after him, and while he has to work, his master has to work and worry...