In my work I have to adhere to what we all know as professionalism. Being professional is an unwritten standard of working behaviour. Like the English constitution, there is no documented standard definition of what this entails, as far as I am aware. We all get exhorted to be professional. We have a tacit understanding of what it probably means. Be mature. Don’t get too personal in working with colleagues. Be respectful. Work carefully according to knowledge of your profession. In some professions it is formalised by some recognised standard, such as the bar exams in Law and exams leading to ordination in Divinity. My profession is hardly a profession, software development. Nobody seems to define it with enforced discipline and standards. Yet we behave according to the unwritten expectations. In wider life including but not limited to working life I have to adhere to an even greater standard, one put in place by God and founded in the blood of His One Son Jesus Christ, the Lord. That is binding on me. My professionalism gives colleagues, employers and clients or customers assurance about how I am likely to behave in my work. Some might be even more assured to know the covenant to which I must adhere. If my colleagues use work procedures to sabotage my work or persecute me, I am under covenant to love them still and do to them what I would have them do to me, not to imitate what they themselves do to me. This might assure my manager if he knew that I am bound to this covenant. It is like the legal factors in operation when we walk down the street. If we wait at traffic lights (robots as some countries call them) we know that once the lights change we can, if the law so provides, walk out across the road assured the cars will not set off and hit us. We even risk our lives with such assurance. That is the power of traffic law. The covenant is greater if we live in the covenant of Christ. In our lives it should be powerful enough to ensure others can be safe with us, although living a life of love does not negate the possibility of God’s angel protecting our lives at the detriment of those who harm us or threaten to do so. The Lord’s angel encamps around us as we live in godly fear. But it should be recognisable in our lives that our covenantal adherence is at least as dependable as professionals’ professionalism can be. Now we might be outside this covenant with no awareness of duty to God. Even then there is a covenant. The covenant of ancient times covers concepts such as avoidance of violence, desisting from needless killing, even animals are punishable if they kill humans. Some, notably in Judaism, call it the Noahide law or Noahide covenant because of the belief that it was put in place by God after the Flood, applicable to all humans and even animals to some extent. The fullness of these covenants is largely unwritten, written on human psyche, perhaps animal psyche too (many predators are oddly reticent about attacking humans). We expect others to behave civilly towards us in life and work. God sets in place covenants which empower these assurances. Jesus Christ paid for such a covenant with his blood and is alive again from the dead to administer it and eventually judge us all.
