By Craig Pollock
[Excerpt from the Communique,
Community UMC of Half Moon Bay, June 2006]

July 24, 2006

A few months ago I was giving a presentation to a woman for a fire alarm system. At some point she went on a diatribe about Christians. How she didn't believe. How she felt it was all a rather silly waste of a Sunday morning. Although I was shocked, I didn't say anything. I've found it a rare occasion in my life that someone attacks the Christian faith, the faith in which I guide my life, in such a blatant and unprovoked way. It's not as though we knew each other or were even in a discussion about it. I was caught off guard and unprepared. Besides, some inner justification was already at work -- when you work for yourself and depend on selling to survive, you hesitate to kill a sale by getting into a religious argument.

This event really put me to the test (which I failed), but it brought up a larger question for me and I think for all of us. How do we keep our Christian faith strong in the workplace?

If you proselytize at the office, are you stepping over the line, invading people's privacy, mixing church and state? If you don't, are you saving your "professional" reputation at the expense of your soul? Perhaps there is a middle ground -- a way to teach, to show what a Christian is all about without being unnecessarily defensive or holier than thou.

Many subjects are off limits [in the workplace], or at least supposed to be: innuendo, jokes in poor taste, politics, religion. And yet I would hazard a guess that most of us have heard profanity, dirty jokes, and racist jokes told or emailed with impunity. But try to say grace at a business lunch, or chastise someone for taking the Lord's name in vain, and you will find yourself the object of derision, possible professional repercussions, and a victim of the PC police. When did everything else become acceptable freedom of speech but Christianity become politically incorrect?

We really are called to witness to our faith, and to speak up against the threats to it. That accomplishes two things: we fulfill our calling to bring our faith to others, and we remain in the world but not of it because we are drawing a line of behavior that we won't cross, and are asking others to do the same. That's easier said than done, as my anecdote would suggest. But that's how I know I have progessed on my journey. A few years ago, I wouldn't even have known the opportunity I missed. Now at least I know. And I hope that next time I'll be more up to the task.