Jesus, You’re Fired

Pete:     Now it’s my fault all this has happened.

Rose:    This is my fault.

Pete:     No, love. I’m your dad. It’s my job for it to be my fault.

Doctor Who S1 E8, ‘Father’s Day’, (2005)

Thanks to Ajmint on Wikipedia for this picture of Lord Sugar’s face.

If you’ve been making any effort to follow this year’s series of The Apprentice, it should come as no great news that the two candidates in the final were Joseph Valente – whom I was pleased to see doing so well if only because he grew up in the same city as me, and I tend to feel favourably towards anything that might increase Peterborough’s profile¹ – and Vana Koutsomitis, on whom I am going to focus in what follows.

Leaving aside Vana’s ultimate business plan for a dating app designed to match people according to their actions in scientifically-devised games and brainteasers, cast your minds, if you will, back to the buying task in Week Three.² There was, if you remember, a great and cringingly amusing palaver over the purchase of an expensive boat; the brief specified the size of dinghy required, but not its quality, and, while one team sourced their offering in a toy shop for ten pounds, the other spent two hundred and fifty on an impressively seaworthy-looking vessel. This same latter team also bought the wrong cheese – a quarter when the brief specified a whole. Unsurprisingly, they ended up losing the task.

Since both the boat and the cheese were actually bought by other members of her team, Project Manager Vana would surely have made things easiest for herself by offloading the blame in the direction of her subordinates Elle and Natalie, which is why it struck me that she didn’t. Instead, regarding the boat: “I take a hundred per cent responsibility.” Then, again, concerning the cheese: “That’s my fault, Lord Sugar.”

“That’s your fault,” echoed Lord Sugar.

“Yes,” confirmed Vana.

“Right, so the boat is your fault for telling her to buy it,” summarised Lord Sugar, “and you’ve got – the cheese is your fault.”

Later, discussing whom to fire with his aides, Lord Sugar mused, “Vana, everything I asked her – ‘Ah, yeah, that’s my fault, and oh yeah, that’s my fault also’ – well, it’s a complete and utter shambles as far as I’m concerned.” And although Vana of course survived the final boardroom that week, she was given a piece of advice before she returned to the house: “Vana, I think you’ve got to make sure that you look after number one in future, and stop telling me how you take the responsibility, if you’re going to survive any longer here.”

Considering that admissions of responsibility are usually so rare in the boardroom, having to be painfully extracted from candidates desperate to excuse themselves of all culpability, it was a refreshing change – and beyond that, something about the taking of blame clicked for me.

As soon as Vana declared that she took responsibility for the boat and for the cheese, any other apportioning of blame on those subjects became irrelevant. Elle may have actually bought the ludicrously expensive boat, and Natalie may have actually bought the incorrectly-sized cheese, but that was no longer the point. They were automatically bypassed as potential culprits for the failure of the task. There was no more blame left to be dealt out, because Vana had voluntarily taken it all upon herself. Elle and Natalie were completely absolved.

 

I wonder how ludicrously expensive these boats were.

Be sure to note, also, that it was indeed voluntary. I feel sure that, had she wished, Vana could have made a good case that she was not ultimately to blame for the mistakes that cost her team the task; indeed, Lord Sugar suggested as much when he advised her not to be so quick to declare herself at fault. It was Vana’s own decision – to her colleagues’ benefit and her own detriment – to compel Lord Sugar to treat her as culpable, regardless of whether he would otherwise have considered her so. For him to have blamed her for the failure of the task would consequently have been entirely fair and justified. There is here a slight spoiling of the analogy I have in mind, since he chose to fire Jenny rather than Vana, but the point was still made by his warning: continuing to take responsibility for every mistake made in her team would have been a sure-fire route to ending up fired.

At this point I probably ought to introduce the aforementioned analogy, though I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve already twigged.³

I always had trouble squaring the fact that God is perfectly fair and just with the doctrine of substitutionary atonement – that is, the idea that Jesus paid for and so erased (atoned for, one might say, hence ‘atonement’) the wrongdoing of others by dying in their place as a substitute (hence ‘substitutionary’).⁴ It just doesn’t seem fair for someone who never did anything wrong to be punished instead of a bunch of people who do wrong endlessly (hint: I mean us). If God really is just, why would he be satisfied for the axe to fall on the innocent while the guilty are left untouched? And the answer is, because Jesus voluntarily took all the blame, so that there was none left to be apportioned elsewhere. He made the choice to set himself up as culpable for everything wrong with the world and so caused his Father to treat him as such. I take a hundred per cent responsibility. That’s my fault, Lord God.

Picture the scene in the boardroom. You sit opposite God, who has the authority not just to kick you out of a reality TV show and a chance to win a few quid, but to decide the ultimate and everlasting destiny of your entire being. The task with which you were charged was simple enough – love God, and love other people⁵ – but you have failed it dismally. Time and time again you have put yourself and your own concerns first, in direct contradiction of the brief. Your actions have abused and corrupted the resources you were given to work with, and they have fallen apart. Knowing yourself to be without excuse, you await the final verdict. Someone has to be fired today, and you don’t fancy your chances.⁶

But that’s not the whole story. Jesus – who would have every right to be sitting in judgement opposite you right now, on his Father’s right-hand side (which I suppose, in this analogy, makes him the equivalent of Baroness Karren Brady) – is on your side of the table. He came with you on this task. He joined Team Humanity. He was assigned jobs and faced pressures and had abuse shouted at him by colleagues, just like everybody else. What’s more, he really got stuck in, he worked hard, he looked out for the other team members, he made all the right decisions, and you can’t think of any aspect of his performance that you’d fault. When it comes to loving God and loving other people, Jesus is clearly some kind of pro. So, when God asks whom he should blame for the failure of the task, you’re fully expecting Jesus to point the finger in your direction; he’d have every right to. Yet he doesn’t. Instead, he declares that he takes a hundred per cent responsibility.

It’s permissible; he’s a member of your team, after all. And suddenly it becomes irrelevant who made what wrong decision, because there’s no blame left to be apportioned; Jesus has voluntarily taken it all. You can no longer be held responsible for any mistakes. You are absolved.

And then come the words no-one was expecting to hear. More shocking than any event in Apprentice history – triple firing, immunity, pre-final-boardroom firing, candidate resignation, the lot – they leave you wide-eyed and gasping: “Jesus, you’re fired.” They are undeniably just; Jesus willingly claimed responsibility for everything that went wrong, and so it was right for his Father to treat him as responsible. But beyond that, what just happened wasn’t only fair, but also utterly, magnificently, astonishingly merciful: there was no reason why Jesus shouldn’t have blamed you for everything, yet he chose not to blame you for anything. And, as he leaves the boardroom, you can’t shake the feeling that Father and Son together planned this all some time ago.

Helpful as I find the boardroom metaphor, it does rather minimise and sanitise everything. What we’re really talking about here is nothing as bland and replaceable and earthbound as money, as fame, as the short-lived successes of this lifetime. What Jesus did in our place – what he chose to do in our place – was go through hell. And the reward we get in consequence is of infinitely more value than a quarter of a million pounds; we get a new life, an unseverable personal relationship with our Creator, and the promise of eternity with him in a new creation free of the flaws and problems that mar the current one.⁷ It’s mind-boggling. I can feel my mind start to boggle when my train of thought even passes near the idea, and I’m well aware I stand not the smallest chance of actually comprehending it in its whole glorious enormity. That’s why I bother with these daft analogies: none works perfectly, but they can help make tiny corners of God’s splendour a little more graspable.

It was our mistakes that caused the failure, but Jesus loves us with a love so pure and relentless that he willingly joined Team Humanity and took the blame, and consequent punishment, himself. And that, if you ask me, makes him a Project Manager worth having – by which I mean that I am proud to call him my Lord. Alan Sugar can keep his investment; I have treasure in heaven.

Footnotes

¹ Peterborough’s other alumni of note, as mentioned in this charming ode by Howard Read (as in Big Howard and Little Howard, as in CBBC’s Little Howard’s Big Question, if that means anything to you), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX_fN4gyff4, include Peter Boizot (co-founder of Pizza Express) and Aston Merrygold from JLS. You’ll gather it’s not an especially crowded hall of fame.

² Unfortunately, it’s no longer on iPlayer, but you can always re-watch the episode preview if you’d like a reminder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud-rq5rqz78&list=PL5A4nPQbUF8AAAKvzjcEvncns1okut-xE&index=24.

³ I’m not the first person to draw a spiritual analogy with The Apprentice, nor to suggest the concept of Jesus getting fired, but Justin Brierley was, I think, approaching the issue from rather a different angle when he wrote this article: https://www.premierchristianity.com/Blog/Five-reasons-Lord-Sugar-would-fire-Jesus. It’s well worth a read.

⁴ As expressed in passages like Isaiah 53 (especially verse 5) and 1 Peter 2:22-25. Look them up in context; I dare you. Here’s the Isaiah to get you started: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=isaiah+53&version=ESVUK.

⁵ Often called ‘The Great Commandment’, this, according to Jesus, is the most important commandment, on which everything else depends, as recorded in Matthew 22:34-40 and Mark 12:28-31. And if you fancy checking that I’m not just making up any old reference, or taking the verses wildly out of context, here’s the Matthew chapter to start you off: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+22&version=ESVUK.

⁶ “It’s the boardroom part of the episode, / a blue and grey overload; / everyone’s in business mode, / thinking, “Oh no, who’s going to go home today?” as Brett Domino so eloquently describes it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skdrDNb8Wto. Do also check out the Alan Sugar song and the Nick and Karren song; there’s a whole range of other hilarious musical parodies to be found on the same channel as well.

⁷ Try 1 Peter 1:3-5, for instance: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Peter+1&version=ESVUK.