Divergent and the Job Search!

Divergent recently came out on DVD and I have watched it several times already. I loved it! But I generally love Sci-fi/fantasy movies, so I expected I would like it. What I didn’t expect were some of things I took away from the movie. Since I just finished the training on my new job I figured now is a good time to share some of my thoughts.

To give you a rough overview, Divergent is the story of a post-apocalyptic society divided into groups or factions. The division of society was to ensure governmental control, and is based on a test given to each person. The test places a person in a situation that causes fear and then evaluates that person’s response to the situation.  How each person responds to the different scenarios presented suggests his or her natural strengths. This, in turn suggests the faction a person should join. The factions are:

·      Dauntless – They are known for their courage and bravery and are relied upon to guard and protect.

·      Abnegation – They are selfless and guard against vanity, greed and envy.

·      Candor – They always tell the truth.

·      Amity – They live in peace and avoid aggression.

·      Erudite – They constantly pursue knowledge.

 In the Divergent story’s society, the kids are raised in their parents’ chosen faction until it is time for them to be tested (testing happens in their late teen years). After that, they either stay with the faction they grew up in or choose a different faction. If they choose a new faction, there is an initiation and training process that they go through. If they don’t make it through initiation, they are factionless. That means they do the worst jobs in society and don’t have enough food or clothing. Sound familiar?

I have been searching for a job. In the process of searching for a job, I have submitted more than a hundred résumés and job applications for many different kinds of jobs and I would guess that at least one application in ten has required me to participate in a personality or job assessment. What would I do if a customer left their credit card at the front desk? How would I handle being interrupted while working on a project? What if a co-worker needed help? And on and on… So decisions are made about me and assessments are made about my personality before I’ve met or talked to anyone. Why? Because before they, the human resource departments of these various companies, bring me in for an interview, they want to find out if I am part of the Customer Service faction, or the Hospitality faction, or the Sales faction, or the Administrative faction… You get the idea.

There is another group in the Divergent story’s society. They are called Divergent. They do not fit in any of the factions. They are unpredictable and non-conformist. The government tries to suppress them by killing them because they cannot be manipulated. The protagonists of the movie fall under this category. They successfully take on the some of the corrupt governmental leaders in order to protect innocent factions.

So how does Divergent relate to my job search? I have discovered that I do not really fit in any of the prescribed job factions, which makes me Divergent. I have pieces of all of the jobs I have applied to, but don’t exactly fit in any category  - my strengths do not fit with societal norms. I could be upset about this.

Why am I not upset?

Because being upset about it would mean being upset about who I am. I like being different. I like that my strengths are different. Instead of being upset about not fitting in, I choose to embrace how God made me. If I were upset with my strengths, it would be like telling God He made a mistake in making me the way I am. I’m not upset because I aspire—like Tris, and Katniss, and Eowyn, and other strong women of fiction; and like Mother Teresa, Margaret Thatcher, and Rosa Parks and other real life women—to be a catalyst, a force for change in my world.

And lets face it—you can’t change world when you are happy being like everyone else. 

Wrestling with God = Transformation!

The conclusion of wrestling with God...

For each of these statements, I have not gone very in-depth. There are so many aspects to God and His power and His work in the lives of people that I cannot begin to cover all of them, and many others have already done this much better than I ever could. However, these specific things were enough to make me realize that I had no reason to be mad at God. As I stopped being angry with God yet continued honestly expressing my feelings to Him, instead of railing at God I began to talk to Him more as a friend who just needed to vent.

I have mentioned that I learned many things about God through this process. Aside from what I have already talked about above, there are a couple other things I have learned about God through my wrestling with Him:

1.     There is no safer person in the world to talk to than God. In all I expressed to Him, holding nothing back, He never betrayed me by talking about it with someone else.

2.     God is the only person who not only hears what I say, but also hears the cry of my heart. In so many situations, people I trusted did not stop to consider that my heart’s intent was good, but my actions were the flawed actions of an imperfect human being. God never misses my heart.

3.     God delivers. It may not be as soon as we want it or in the way we want it to happen, but GOD DOES RESCUE HIS CHILDREN!

4.     God wants us to make good choices! What I mean is that He and “the great cloud of witnesses” are cheering us on, rooting for our victory! Until I wrestled things out with God I never realized how much God wants me to WIN!

5.     I am one of God’s favorites! I learned how much God loves me. I learned that God does not view me only as one of His children collectively, but just as each child is uniquely special to their parents, I am uniquely, personally special to God.

I have to assume that just as I have wrestled with God a lot up until now, my wrestling with God will continue in different ways and in various situations through the rest of my life. As long as I remain teachable and open to God, I believe my wrestling with God is a good thing. Not everyone wrestles with God, and if you don’t, you should not feel guilty. But for those of us who question and challenge, who push the boundaries, and refuse to accept what has always been accepted: you shouldn’t feel guilty either. Wresting with God is part of the process, it can be life-changing, and transformational. Isn’t that the goal of everything—transformation?

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