{{2012_07_31_t1.jpg}} {{2012_07_31_t2.jpg}} {{2012_07_31_t3.jpg}} [[http://www.jesusnetwork.eu/de/doku.php/jn_de_2012_07_31|Deutsche Version]] [[Start|| Wiki Start]] [[topics_collection_iv|| Topics Collection iv ]] ======Standards and Criteria ...====== Tuesday, July 31, 2012. When you want to carry out a revision, you should know what is the standard you want to reach. When you try to sort yourself, it is necessary to have some criteria to judge things, habits, achievements. {{2012_07_31.jpg }} **Different Criteria ...** Working in the academic world, there are particular criteria today. It is about novelty. It is about creativity. It is about acknowledgement. There has been a long discussion about adequate criteria to judge academic work. It is much more difficult than one could think. Assume we accept that we want to acknowledge "the best" achievements. Which are the best achievements? How do you measure it? Who knows? One might think that the best achievements are those who are cited most. That is a typical measuring instrument. It might work if you compare someone working in a homogeneous group with other group members, which work on exactly the same topics. But in general, it fails as a standard. If you do not work on a popular area, you have no chance of many citations - but might do very good and important things, the crowd is just busy with something else at the moment and it might stay like this for years, until the attention shifts ... I have been working in three different areas over the past years - in the world of university based research, in the world of companies and services and in the world of government institutions. In the three worlds there are quite different criteria used - which are not easily comparable. Three different systems, three worlds, three different types of people who have grown into their system usually without ever changing their environment. {{ 2012_07_31_2.jpg}} **God's Categories ...** What are God's categories? What principles is he using to judge things, to motivate us and to guide us? Yesterday I have been reading the passage where Jesus talks to his disciples about judgement. It is written in Matthew 25: 34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ God's criteria are solidarity with those in need. His criteria are mercy. He is looking for our active participation in solidarity. The examples which we are given are activities which come out of a merciful heart. You might ask: how do we bring the different criteria together? Is it necessary to just ignore some of them? In what world are we living and how are we sorting the principles? How are we building one homogeneous set of principles which are guided by the most important of them? And how do we put them into action? We need to stay with this topic for some further days ... (Roland Potthast) [[http://www.jesusnetwork.eu/en/doku.php/topics_collection_iv|... more texts]]