Hi-Q Christians

“Total Quality” has swept worldwide manufacturing and management. Gone are the years when consumers tolerated unsafe cars, appliances that won’t work, or service departments that can’t repair what is broken. We expect the quality to be thorough when we buy a new automobile―not just an engine that starts, but trim that fits, a radio that works, paint that is smooth, and tires capable of surviving potholes.

Quality control managers pursue a “zero defect” standard even though it is impossible. To expect less is to tolerate heart pacemakers that work ninety percent of the time. Ninety percent just isn’t good enough when it’s your heart.

This quest for total quality has raised standards worldwide. In many industries service is vastly improved. Telephones almost always connect. Major surgery is far less risky. Millions of air miles are traveled with seldom a crash. Most new cars have a life‑expectancy far greater than one hundred thousand miles.

Quality may be new to business but not to Christianity. Since Christians are patterned after Jesus Christ, “total quality” takes on a supernatural standard. We are to be just like Jesus. The quality is not limited to Sundays or to the sacred. It totally includes both sacred and secular all seven days of every week. Every part of us is to be thoroughly Christian―relationships, attitudes, prayer, behavior.

True, many immediately insist that the quality of Christ is an impossible “zero defect” standard. Yet, dare we settle in advance for anything less?

Leith Anderson (From the Foreword)