In the world, millions of people fill jobs for which they are ill-suited. They are everywhere, both in government and private enterprise. While they seem not to be held accountable for poor performance, God holds us to a much higher standard. In a spiritual sense, we cannot rise to our level of incompetence.

Incompetence is a central theme in the Peter Principle, a concept in business management developed by Laurence J. Peter. The Peter Principle states that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their level of incompetence. This means that a person good at their job will be promoted to a higher position requiring a new set of skills. If the person promoted does not have those new skills, they will be incompetent at their new position and not be promoted again. However, they will not return to the former job in which they excelled, but for the rest of their career, they will plateau at the job for which they are not qualified. If they are good at their new job, they will be promoted repeatedly until they eventually reach a level in which they are incompetent. Laurence Peter's research concluded that this outcome is inevitable, given enough time and assuming enough positions in the hierarchy to promote competent employees. For instance, a competent mechanic may make an incompetent foreman. Or, a competent school teacher may make a competent assistant principal but then go on to become an incompetent principal, not to be considered for promotion to assistant superintendent. In each case, the higher position required skills not needed at the level immediately below. Seldom will an individual admit that they were better in a lower position and ask to be demoted. Human pride is too strong.