I trust that whatever season of life you are in, as a young person learning new skills or pursuing a special relationship, or as a seasoned employee who is in the position to give back to others, you are pursuing the tasks that God has called you to do with perseverance. You may not see how it is all going to come together, but if you can trust God, you will gradually grow in skills, knowledge, and Christlikeness.

Back in March, I had an interesting discussion with our unit chaplain. He had given a lot of thought to a scene in a classic movie that had some implications for integrating our Christian faith in our work and relationships. His main point is that we don’t always see the results of our hard work. If the end result of what we are pursuing is worth the effort, we need to press on by faith, regardless of the feedback we receive.

Let me briefly summarize this scene and then discuss it from a biblical perspective. I think it will be a valuable discussion.

Wax On, Wax Off

Mr. Miyagi, the old man with a mysterious past and some mad karate skills agrees to train Daniel. In this scene, Daniel is complaining that all he has been doing over the entire weekend is helping his coach with various chores like waxing the car, painting the fence, and painting the deck. His muscles are sore. He is exhausted. What is worse is that he is discouraged. He has not seen any connection between what he was asked to do and learning the basics of this martial art. He wants to quit.

With some persuasion, Mr. Miyagi gets Daniel to stay. He shows him how each of the tasks he asked Daniel to do would enable him to execute a basic defensive karate move. It is hard to remember how cool it was when I saw this scene for the very first time. I was just as amazed as our main character was to see it come together.

What Mr. Miyagi was trying to put across is that learning new skills takes time. There are a variety of ways to learn the muscle memory needed to be able to do these defensive moves without thinking. Waxing cars (circular motions from the inside out) and painting the fence and deck (using vertical and horizontal motions) were the tools the master teacher used for our karate kid to learn the skills that would help him later on.

Feedback Loops

In our deep theological discussion of this particular scene, the chaplain referred to “feedback loops.” Daniel wanted to quit was because he got no feedback during the tasks he was doing. He did not see the results he expected.

The chaplain talked about small loops, where we receive feedback on our efforts early and often. Much of the time we see large loops, where feedback is late in coming, is infrequent, or never arrives at all. When we see a little progress towards meeting our goals, feedback spurs us on. If no feedback is received, we get discouraged.

Positive feedback which motivates us to keep on doing what we are doing comes in many forms.

Read More