Archive for June, 2012

Evangelicals have a long tradition of activism. Unfortunately, we haven’t always exactly been honorable in our activism lately and at critical moments, we’ve done too little to speak out against injustice. As a result, at least in the United States, Christianity has developed a strange split-identity. On the one hand, we are making a difference with our actions, but on the other, we are ashamed to be called “Christian”.

A few years ago, a co-worker found out I was Christian. Whenever he came to talk about a Bible study or prayer or spiritual things, he would want to close my door and/or talk in a whisper. I guess it had something to do with a fear of persecution. He must not have heard or remembered what Paul said to Timothy: “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.“

I really think we can learn a thing or two from the LGBT concept of coming out, which has successfully transformed homosexuality from a crippling social stigma into being a respected community within Western culture within the last hundred years. Coming out changes perceptions because the people who do it:

1. boldly lay claim to their identity, and
2. tell their own stories honestly.

All too often, Christians do exactly the opposite—especially in the workplace when we rub shoulders with people of other religious convictions. We want to be faithful to our identity as Christians but we don’t know how.

One approach that doesn’t work goes something like this:

• Hang a Thomas Kinkade print in your cubicle hoping that the “positive image” will help co-workers find religion.
• Begin each day with a silent prayer asking that our work will be pleasing to God, but not praying for specifics.
• Wear a “Lord’s Gym” T-shirt under your work apparel so that you will always have Jesus close to your heart.
• Drop vague references to Christian rock lyrics in conversation.
• Place Chick Tracts on co-worker’s desks after they’ve gone home for the night.

This way, we can feel like we are claiming our identity in Christ without actually risking being held to it. It’s like a coded language that Christians will understand and agree with, but won’t be clear to others at work. It amounts to a refusal to take on an association with Jesus in the public sphere.

Equally unhelpful:

• Hang a print of Michelangelo’s Last Judgement in your cubicle.
• Begin each meeting with an invitation to join in prayer.
• Wear a “Lord’s Gym” T-shirt as your work apparel.
• Be sure to say “Lord willing” and “God bless you!” often in conversations.
• Put the “Four Spiritual Laws” on your business cards.

Unless you happen to do these things naturally (and I have met few guys with that personality), these over-the-top displays of Christianity are hypocritical. They tell a story, but not our story. Here’s what the early Church took to be it’s story:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.—1^st Peter 2:9-10 (ESV)

The author as Señor Pecado (literally Mr. Sin) in mime.

I became known as a Christian at my office when I started dating my soon-to-be fiancée. She had always been interested in international missions and I preferred to stay at home reading, playing computer games, and making ill-advised suggestions for Perl 6. But we were getting serious about our relationship and she was planning to spend two months in Mexico City as a short-term missionary, so I figured I better find out if I could be involved in it myself.

Meanwhile, I was changing projects at work and told my new boss that I was thinking of taking two months of unpaid leave. If truth were told, I sort of hoped he would say that he couldn’t spare me for that long and I would have to (i.e., get to) stay home. But he was glad to let me go since work was slow at the time. So I started making preparations: practicing my high school Spanish at a Hispanic church service, applying to the missionary program, and raising/saving money.

At long last, the program accepted me (I was secretly disappointed), I got my airline ticket, packed my bag, and arrived in Mexico City. At that point I finally discovered the biggest hurdle to my new calling: mime ministry. Somehow I failed to notice that our team would be asked to put on face paint and do pantomime. Miraculously, I survived. More than that, I fell in love with the city and the people who welcomed me there. God made me a new person—a person who enjoys missionary work. (I have never gone back to miming, however.)

The author translating between English and Spanish in Bolivia.

When I returned, everyone knew that I was a Christian. A few months later, 9/11 happened. A Muslim co-worker put two and two together and invited me into a dialogue seeking reconciliation between our religions. We didn’t solve the problem of world peace, but we did have some very enjoyable lunch conversations. I continued to worship in Spanish (to this day).

My girlfriend and I got engaged and married and took even more short-term trips to Latin America. Each time, I simply told people where we were going and when someone asked what we were doing, I told them. One person found out that I was going to Bolivia and told me, very sincerely and sorrowfully, that Machu Picchu is in Peru! That gave me an opportunity to explain that my purpose wasn’t tourism, so I hadn’t made a mistake. I’ve even sent support letters to people I know will be interested in what our team is up to.

So far, the only “persecution” I experienced was being told to remove a Bible verse from my email signature, since it was “unprofessional”. Otherwise, people either ignore my faith to treat me like anyone else, or engage with me as a Christian. People regularly ask me to pray for family members with illness and ask me about what Christians believe. I put up a couple of printouts of 3:16 passages that I think are kinda awesome and I keep a Bible at my desk. A few years ago, I joined the Gideons and wear their pin on my badge holder. I don’t hide my story anymore, nor do I force it on unsuspecting passers-by.

When you come right down to it, Christians who give the church a bad name and Christians who are embarrassed by the church have missed the main point of the gospel. Whatever God is doing, whether we understand it or not, is good news. We need to share our joy in His work. And if we don’t have joy in it, we ought to reflect on why not and pray for God’s spirit. But that’s a topic for next month.

According to everyone who knew him, former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay was a good guy. He was a devoted husband and father, a faithful member of First United Methodist Church in Houston, a skilled mediator of conflict, a generous person who donated millions of dollars every year to nonprofit organizations. He spoke words of praise to a member of the cleaning crew at the courthouse where Lay was on trial, and he once paid the bill of the woman in front of him in a checkout line when she realized she had left her money in the car.

Ken Lay was also an astute businessman. Named CEO of Houston Natural Gas in 1984, he guided the company through nearly two decades of growth, during which time the company merged with InterNorth to become Enron Corporation. Lay understood that the key to Enron’s growth was recognizing that its true product was not gas but energy. He believed in Enron’s goals, and in the innovative ways the company strove to reach them. He held most of his $400 million fortune in Enron stock, and when the company collapsed into bankruptcy, Ken Lay lost more money than any other shareholder.

Lay insisted to the end that he was not a criminal. He insisted that he did not participate in the corporate embezzlement and market manipulations of Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow and company President Jeffrey Skilling, and that their financial crimes took place without his knowledge. But the court proceedings only partially validated his claims. Unlike Skilling and Fastow, Ken Lay was not charged with insider trading. However, he was indicted—and convicted—of conspiring to cover up the crimes.

And this was not the first time Lay was confronted with this type of situation. In the late 1980s, when faced with evidence that executives in Enron’s oil-trading division were embezzling, Lay chose to remove them from any financial responsibilities but not to fire them. We can’t know now what his reasoning was for this move, but Enron’s subsequent history shows the message received by some employees was that criminal activity would be treated with leniency, as long as it increased the quarterly profits.

We could speculate all day over how innocent or guilty Ken Lay actually was, but that wouldn’t be beneficial to anyone. What can benefit us is to look at the collapse of Enron in the light of the Christian faith that Lay professed, and see if there are lessons we can apply to our own lives.

As a CEO, Ken Lay was responsible for maintaining the company’s profitability for its shareholders every quarter and providing an environment where Enron employees could contribute to that profitability. Indeed, the “bottom line”—the colloquial term for net profit, due to its location on an income statement—has emerged in our culture as a metaphor for whatever is most important in a given situation.

But for a Christian, the bottom line isn’t the most important thing. The United Methodist Church—Ken Lay’s denomination and mine—speaks about corporate responsibility in the Book of Discipline, ¶163 (i):

Corporations are responsible not only to their stockholders, but also to other stakeholders: their workers, suppliers, vendors, customers, the communities in which they do business, and for the earth, which supports them.

Taken at face value, this suggests that a CEO must find a way to balance commitment to the bottom line with responsibility to the workforce and to the wider community. But is that all there is to being a Christian in corporate leadership?

The Bible itself has few teachings relating solely to work, but when it does speak about workplace relations, the bulk of responsibility falls on the employer. Deuteronomy 24:14, for example, says:

You shall not withhold the wages of poor and needy laborers, whether other Israelites or aliens who reside in your land in one of your towns.

We can hear echoes of this command in James 5:4.

Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.

The Bible doesn’t say much else about the workplace, though it does include variations on this theme. So on the surface it doesn’t look like Scripture can provide much insight into situations like the one Ken Lay found himself in at Enron.

But if we take a closer look, we see that giving workers their fair pay is just the tip of the iceberg. Isaiah 58:3 speaks of those who, seeking to please God, spend a day fasting but do not take care of the people in their employ.

“Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers.

Putting work relationships in the context of a fast gives us a new perspective on fasting and work. Continuing in Isaiah 58, we see:

Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

Normally we think of fasting as abstaining from food for a specified time. According to Isaiah, however, God is more interested in how we treat other people. It’s not about depriving ourselves, but about being more in touch with the needs of the people around us—and then moving beyond simple awareness to making a real difference.

If God does not approve of a fast that causes an employer to oppress his or her workers, God surely does not approve of a focus on the quarterly bottom line that overlooks malfeasance and ultimately leads to bankruptcy, leaving those workers without jobs or pensions. The best way to keep people out of poverty is to provide them the opportunity to earn a living. Christians in positions of corporate leadership have a chance to provide this opportunity; they therefore have a responsibility, not to seek balance between the quarterly goals and the company’s long-term sustainability, but to put the needs of the workers first—even if it causes the shareholders short-term pain.

Putting people ahead of profits solves Ken Lay’s dilemma, by preventing the situation from arising in the first place.

This blog concerns Christianity in the workplace and mine is the Catholic stance on the subject. Right now, 40 some odd Catholic institutions are suing the US government over a contraception mandate that the Catholic Bishops believe   will cause Catholic institutions to violate their individual consciences, collectively. So, it would be tempting to write about how paying out of your own pocket to facilitate your neighbor’s purchase of abortion inducing medication might violate a Catholic’s conscience. But, I’d rather leave that up to the moral theologians to debate so nuanced an affront to religious freedom. I’d rather talk about things a Catholic (or at least me), doesn’t do, but in so not-doing should take with them to the confessional and leave there.

My Tuesday may not seem monumental and it may not seem particularly smart, but it’s the truth and buried in there are the undone misdeeds known as “sins of omission”.  They weren’t there when I was fresh out of college; they were habituated into my schedule by a lack of discipline and an unwillingness to see that there were problems.

The reins of discipline were slackened on me, so that without the restraint of due severity, I might play at whatsoever I fancied, even to the point of dissoluteness. And in all this there was that mist which shut out from my sight the brightness of the truth, o my God, and my iniquity bulged out, as it were, with fatness. [ St. Augustine, Confessions, Book 2 ]

St. Augustine considered his break with the discipline of his youth to be the beginnings of his licentiousness (he even alluded to the burrito fat drippings). When discipline doesn’t guide actions, then actions lack the promise that training and experience provides. When I program on cruise control, I write a lot of bugs and spend a lot more time doing nothing. But, when I plan and act in a focused manner, I save time and save the company money. But I may be saving more than that; I may be saving my soul.

But You, my Lord, were prepared for me to misuse Your grace for almost twenty years and to accept the injury so that I might become better. It seems, o God as if I had promised to break all the promises I made You, though this was not my intention at the time. When I look back on these actions of mine I do not know what my intentions were, But what they clearly reveal, O my Spouse, is the difference between You and myself. [ St. Theresa of Avila, The Life of St Theresa of Avila by Herself ]

If you’re reading this, then it’s not too late!

Wonder-Coder, God-Hacker, Bug-Fixer-Forever, Prince of Programmers

What if Jesus were a programmer?

• Would He forget to check in His code?
• Would He check His personal email as often as His work email?
• Would He send back a bug fix, saying it was not reproducible without fully understanding the problem?
• Would He volunteer to go get burritos?

You should see Jesus in your coworker, just as you should see Him in the least of those among you and by syllogism 1.a of the transitive property of scripture, you should also recognize that your coworker should see Jesus in yourself . But, seeing Christ in your neighbor, or coworker, is hard to do. Almost as hard as seeing Him in the Holy Eucharist. It’s not a trick, but if one makes a conscious effort to do so, on a regular basis, one will be all the more happier for it.

The other thing one must do to attain Christ like code completeness is, after one stops punishing others with one’s odious presence, one’s conscience must be formed.

A conscience which remains silent is a sick conscience. A man unable to recognize his guilt and who continues to suffer from it is not a liberated man, but a spiritual cripple. [Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) as quoted in You Can Become a Saint]

It’s getting to know the natural moral law which moves one in the direction of a well formed conscience. The natural law is a mode of philosophy geared toward taking what things are, and saying what things should do.

The Natural Law would probably state that a computer program needs to work. After all, such applications are supposed to work, not generate random access violations at address such and such.

To put a program in line with the Natural Law, a well formed conscience would fix all bugs first and check in all code that pertains to changes and only code that works reasonably well

The Natural Law would take into consideration the nature of work and the duties outlined therein.

It follows that work email, not personal email, is to be checked during work hours. Linux.SE not Lego.SE is to be consulted during work hours to fix the scripts on the web server.

The Natural Law would consider: what is the responsibility of a programmer when faced with a bug report?

The programmer’s responsibility is to find the bug, not give up, not make inferences into the IQ of the writer of the bug, and not make assumptions about his or her motivation for writing the bug report, other than that it was written for the good of the program.

The Natural Law is certainly not at odds with aspects of the Categorical Imperative

Kant would most likely say that whosoever never picks up burritos is a hoser, if not a tragic hoser

But it’s not just our responsibility to follow the Natural Law; it’s our duty. Dereliction of that duty is illegal and will send our souls to the slammer. We also must follow the Church’s law because

The Catholic Church is by the will of Christ, the teacher of truth. It is her duty to proclaim and teach with authority the truth which is Christ and, at the same time, to declare and confirm by her authority the principles of the moral order which springs from human nature itself [Vatican II Declaration on Religious Liberty]

and beyond that we’ve got to follow human laws, and etiquette and all that, but for the Christian worker, it is most important that we form and follow our consciences to bring about the Kingdom in our daily dealings.

If, for whatever reason, at your job it becomes impossible for you to follow your conscience, then it is time to speak up or leave. However, if the government is the one who is causing your crisis of conscience then it is time to take to the streets and join us in the Fortnight For Freedom!

Next up on Eschewmenical is Bruce Alderman’s Methodist take on the subject of conscience in the workplace. Stay tuned!

Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12:3 that none can say “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Spirit. The point is not that our mouths cannot form these syllables unless there is some kind of divine intervention – but rather that this confession is a radical statement of our priorities. You see, in the Roman Empire, one could be made to regularly confess “Caesar is Lord,” and to fail to do so would death. Even our Lord, Jesus Christ, did not provoke Caesar. Rather, he said, “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and render unto the Lord that which is the Lord’s.” The problem, of course, is that ultimately, “no man can serve two masters,” and if Jesus is Lord, Caesar cannot be.

As I have worked my way up the chain of command as a lowly software developer to the point where I am now the lead of our Network Operations Center, I am daily reminded of this dichotomy. To say “Jesus is Lord” is to model servant leadership. It is to care for the weak and lowly. It is to be meek – having the power to demand your own way, but not exercising that preogative. It is, in short, to put the welfare of others before myself, for as it has been said elsewhere, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.” (Sorry, sometimes Star Trek has good theology – and you gotta give it its due!) That attitude will carry a company far – but lets face it. It will get your career moving – right out the door.

In private industry, the workplace is a cut-throat kind of place. Gone are the days when you spend your entire life working hard for one employer, who in turn will take care of you until you die. Nowadays the closest you’ll ever get to a golden watch is a radioactive time clock. In a dog-eat-dog world, the dogs are more than happy to let you call yourself a Christian (preferably not at the office, and definitely not when HR is watching!) as long as it is nothing more than a meaningless commentary on your hobbies. The other dogs may enjoy brewing beer, going to baseball games, or painting minatures. If you like to spend your Sunday mornings dressed up in uncomfortable clothes listening to some dork drone on endlessly about irrelevant matters – well, hey, different strokes for different folks. That’s the only religion that everyone agrees to!

But, when you want to start acting like a Christian is business, that’s another matter entirely. We all talk about ethics, and only a very few are actually willing to break them – but remember, if Jesus is Lord, ethics aren’t rules and boundary lines; instead, they are guiding principles. They animate what we do. In the blog What’s Best Next, Matt Perman (formerly associated with John Piper’s Desiring God Ministries) loves to show how truly Christ-Centered management practice is radically different beast, promoting the lowly and bringing out the best in people. In contrast, the workplace is far too often a battlefield where the only thing brought out is bile. If you need proof of that, you need only peruse our sister site, workplace.stackexchange.com, where you can see “par for the course” in management.  When Jesus isn’t Lord, you see:

• People entitled to legal benefits are threatened with being let go if they are exercised
• Colleagues who are actively asked to cover up mistakes
• Families being shortchanged of time with their parents
• Agreements becoming null and void because of changes in leadership

On and on, it seems the regular experience of many folks is that the workplace is an exercise in the state of nature – a place that is as the phrase goes, “nasty, brutish, and short.”

Even in government, where you really can have a job for life, I’ve run into this same pattern – that Christianity is a fine hobby for the weekends, but not something you do in the office. As part of working in the intelligence arena in the U.S. government, citizens who desire a security clearance are afforded the wonderful privilege of sitting for a polygraph. You are seated in a chair, interviewed, and then the same questions will be asked as they put a blood pressure cuff around your arm and basically turn off the circulation for 10 – 20 minutes each session. It is an uncomfortable exercise in intimidation as you are forced to convince a machine that no, in fact, you haven’t done drugs (I really haven’t), don’t like to expose your private parts to little children (really, they ask that!), and generally are so patriotic that George Washington makes up corny stories and songs about you. It was in this environment that I was asked, “Do you have any concerns about this polygraph?” when I sat for the first time. I answered, “Yes. I am afraid you will ask me – ‘Is my highest loyalty to my God or to my country.’ because the truth is, my highest loyalty is to my God. When I say ‘Jesus is Lord,’ I mean it.” The polygrapher thought for a second and then answered, “Well, I don’t think there is any conflict between the two.” As I really wanted the job, I didn’t correct him – but really, if my government asked me to lie, cheat, steal – there is. There is always a conflict when you have two masters.

You see, Christianity is not a hobby that you do on weekends. “Done right,” it permeates everything we do. It means even as we attempt to move up the corporate ladder, it constrains our behavior – reminding us that we are “ambassadors for Christ.” I’ve seen the power plays that people have done to get where they are. Many of them would get me made a “persona non grata” if exposed to the daylight of public scrutiny. As a former government employee, the line between “patriotism” and godliness is not always as clear as my naive polygrapher would liked it to have been. As one who knows that he is “an alien and a stranger” and is seeking “a city whose builder and founder is God,” I know that while I can and should contribute to and love my country – ultimately, I am less vested in any given kingdom of this earth than in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Ultimately, in the workplace, that is our dilemma: we are passing through. This planet has strange customs. We are expected to “look out for number one,” and yet encouraged to poison that selfsame person at a bar (really – check the science for yourself – alcohol is a mild poison that attacks the body) in order to find a mate and draw closer to your colleagues at work. We are expected to fight even though most of us desire harmony. Competition must always be “fair” (at least in public), but we also know that “Winning’s not everything – it’s the only thing.”

This is not to say it is impossible to be an ethical businessman. Christians can and have found ways to work within the system and be successful. Some hide and compartmentalize their faith, and many of the best have found ways to succeed as Christians. The Franklin-Templeton group, for example, has been highly successful at investing, and also invests in “religous advancement” through its annual Franklin-Templeton Prize. Much has been made of Chik-Fil-A’s refusal to compromise on Sabbath work (leaving aside the question of whether that’s Saturday or Sunday). And, even some (non-US!) governments have realized that they needed training in the ethics that comes from religion. But the fact that these are the “exceptional,” “top-of-mind” examples shows how out of the norm it is.  Seriously – when you think of “corporations,” which comes to mind first – Enron or Templeton?

As Christians, then, we have a fundamental question to answer. Is Christianity a hobby – something we’ll secretly practice on the weekends, or is Jesus the Lord of our Mondays as well as of our Sundays? Don’t be fooled; it isn’t an easy question. Being an overt Christian is not the “boost to your career” it may have been in our parents and grandparents’ generation, when the church was much like the local Kiwanis club. One way or another – Jesus is Lord or Jesus is a Hobby.

As a former Baptist, we were always big on “bringing all things in submission to Christ.”  It’s a serious question. Admittedly, as an Episcopalian now, I see less of that talk – and sometimes it scares me. In the older prayer books, the concept was decidedly present, but it my sense is that as the church has moderated and modernized, I wonder how many of us do see our faith as our hobby.

In the workplace, the rubber hits the road. My faith is either something I do from time to time, or it is something I am.  If Jesus is Lord, he is the Lord of my work and of my Sundays. If not, he’s just a hobby.

Welcome once again to a new month on Eschewmenical, the blog of Christianity Stackexchange. The purpose of this blog is to choose an issue and highlight different doctrinal perspectives on that issue. This month’s issue is “Christian Conscience in the workplace.” This is an incredibly – and intentionally – broad subject. Because of this we are not even making an attempt to cover every aspect. Authors have been asked to share some thoughts and basically just choose their own adventure on this topic this month. However, it is a subject we are likely to revisit in a narrower capacity both in Q&A on the site and also through more focused treatment on this blog. The workplace also happens to be the theme of one of the newest stack exchange betas. Now on to introduce the topic:

So you’ve grown up a Christian, or maybe you found Christ in college, or maybe even only recently came to know him. Regardless of when or how you met Christ, if you’re an adult, you are likely to be working. Being a Christian and working raises an excellent series of questions:

• Should I act differently at work because I’m a Christian? If so, how?
• Am I less of a Christian because I am working a regular job instead of being a pastor/missionary/church employee?
• How do I/should I try to minister to people at work?
• Should I work on Sunday?
• As a woman am I allowed to work outside the home?

These are just a few of the questions that are likely on our minds as we enter – or continue – in the workplace as Christians, and (no guarantees here) some of them may get tackled in this series. Others might make excellent posts on the site (if they aren’t there already).

Let’s set our schedule and introduce our authors (note: this schedule is subject to change due to post availability):

• 6/4 Affable Geek (Episcopal- Jesus is Lord, and Other Hobbies)
• 6/11 Peter (Catholic—Sins of omission and sins of commission)
• 6/18 Bruce (United Methodist—justice and dignity in the workplace)
• 6/25 Jon (Evangelical)

Remember this is Eschewmenical; you don’t have to agree with the authors. In fact you are encouraged to disagree with them (we are eschewing ecumenicism here). Please feel free to post your disagreements or angry rants in the comments or join the authors in our blog chat room.