When talking to a fellow who bemoaned how bad his employer was (not Biola), I asked if he was going to let the boss know or going to resign . . . but it appeared he had no such intention. It wasn’t that he was looking and had to keep his job in the short term. He was content to keep doing something and supporting a thing he loathed merely for money.
This man risks losing his soul and gaining a cubicle.
We should always follow the Logos where it leads. If the argument leads to a position, one hopes for the courage to do the hard thing, be honest, and love our ideals more than gold.
There is an admirable courage in men who follow arguments into ideas that threaten their jobs. One can disagree with the position taken, but when they are open about what they believe and risk their living they are not cowards.
These true lovers of wisdom may have embraced folly for the moment, but if they persist I have confidence that God will come to their aid. All of us should carefully listen to their testimony and to their arguments, because they have given up much to believe.
It is a brave man who has earned his bread in Republican politics, but decides his conscience means he must leave and become a Democrat with fewer prospects.
It is a brave woman who is a famous secularist and then must proclaim that she has decided God exists and lose her cachet.
Of course, sometimes the “switch” can lead to further or enhanced prospects and then the situation is more clouded, but I have known brave men and women who have changed their minds, been public about it (though not venomous), and sacrificed much their health, their career, and their wealth.
God bless them and may I, in this one sense, be like them.
What nobody should tolerate, however, is the wicked weasel, the moral coward, who changes his or her mind, but tells nobody and keeps collecting checks from people’s whose views he no longer shares. Even worse is when, finally, after much patience he is let go for his new views and then plays the martyr.
Peter was not a martyr because Nero refused to give him bread and circuses.
Imagine the pastor in a conservative church who thinks Evangelicalism is “crap,” but bites his tongue around the congregation, because he might lose his job. Picture a leader at a Baptist church who thinks young earth creationism is stupid, but does not tell his young earth senior pastor. Imagine the Christian college professor who opposes a big part of the mission of his school and loathes the opinions of most of the parents of his students, but only shares his disdain with his select minions and keeps collecting a check.
These people lack courage in their convictions.
There is nothing wrong with open dissent that cares risk. Open dialog is to be commended, but can we have an end to people who loath Evangelicals while taking their money?
Can we have an end to pastors who feel superior and smarter than the people whose checks pay for their condescension?
If you think the creed at your Evangelical college is hog wash, fight to change it and accept the consequences.
If you think certain Evangelicals are a bunch of sad SOBs, let the SOBs know it and don’t take their money.
If you mock your pastor-boss to your friends, let him know how you feel and stop working for him.
If you feel superior to the subculture you serve, tell them your point of view and see if they still want to pay you.
Many people will be shocked to discover that their community is more broadminded than they believe. I have known men and women who felt uncomfortable when they discovered that an open expression of their “edgy” views was not getting them fired. “What if,” they seem to fear, “I am actually the sort of person who can work at a Christian ministry?”
This is not an issue for only one group. Nobody should take a person’s money while secretly smearing their name. You don’t eat bread with the enemy, act the friend, and stab your host in the back.
Even the Homeric pagans knew that much . . . and Christians should as well.
Can anyone defend the cowards who demand payment from those they despise?
November 17th, 2009 | 7:48 pm | #1
I’m reminded of Cornelius, the Roman Centurion, who loved God and still served Caesar.
I wonder how he fits into this view of things.
November 17th, 2009 | 7:57 pm | #2
This seems good, if Cornelius was openly a Christian. If Caesar will put up with you, good for you and good for Caesar.
November 17th, 2009 | 8:02 pm | #3
I agree wholeheartedly with this post, and I have both been in a position where I stood up for what I believed when I disagreed with my pastor (and I had a meeting with him to discuss why I did so), as well as in a position where I have supported a Christian ministry whose work I believe in for the most part, but whose work also has left me disappointed. In the first instance I was scared to address my pastor, but I refused to be drawn into gossip at church, and I believed my pastor would be fair-minded if I spoke with him. After I talked with him, I felt good about my decision to speak up, and I truly believe that he does not think less of me for challenging him in that situation. In the second situation where I supported a Christian ministry, I feel good about being able to help them, but I also am upset I was not able to stand up and say what it is about them that I take issue with.
November 17th, 2009 | 8:03 pm | #4
I also did not mention (because I thought it obvious) that spies are an exception to this rule. The nature of spying is why the foe can shoot spies and not treat them as prisoners of war!
The only other exception that I can think of is a Schindler case where the foe is so awful and the good to be done great enough to merit keeping at one’s task. However, I doubt Christian colleges or churches fit that case!
November 17th, 2009 | 10:18 pm | #5
I also go back to my example of Paul before Festus. Somehow he was able to tell the truth and not renounce all the benefits of Roman citizenship even thought they were essentially about to put him to death.
I think that there is a fool-hardy heroism and idealism — and I speak as one who exhibits it perhaps too often. I certainly come from a camp that frequently cuts off its nose despite its face while shaving each day.
November 17th, 2009 | 10:56 pm | #6
Yes, but for every fool-hardy idealist I have ever heard of I know ten more cowardly weasels.
I fear an outbreak of fool hardy gentlemen resigning for too little as much as I fear an outbreak of Cromwellian prudery in Las Vegas.
November 18th, 2009 | 5:59 am | #7
That’s pretty stern talk for a guy who thinks that indulgences and Purgatory are not what the Vatican teaches they are.
Let me suggest something: most people simply hate conflict, and don’t know how to engage in it constructively, and don’t know how to begin with an exit strategy in mind, so they would rather just not bring stuff up. And they are usually stunned when someone else can and does, and it turns out for the better. They all want a boss who can do this, but they themselves don’t want to take the risk and the personal stake in doing this.
That doesn’t make them cowards: it makes them unskilled at conflict. I think there’s a better way to get them from where they are right now to where they ought to be inter-personally than to call them “cowards”.
And in saying that, there are certainly some people who are insidiously-deceptive and harmful to the good of others. I think those people need to go in all cases.
November 18th, 2009 | 9:39 am | #8
The other free-radical in this discussion (setting aside for the moment the name-smearing bit, that’s wrong no matter what, pay or no pay) but taking pay for a job you hate, for a boss you hate, still feeds the kids.
Not many have the option to take only a job they love for a boss they love. There are still bills to pay.
So maybe some of those cowards only need a lesson in behaving well and loving their enemy, rather than leaving their livelihood and starving their kids.
And for each one in that situation, there’s a whole lot more who aren’t, but don’t realize it.
Teach them, don’t call them cowards.
November 18th, 2009 | 11:41 am | #9
Frank Turk: “Let me suggest something: most people simply hate conflict, and don’t know how to engage in it constructively, and don’t know how to begin with an exit strategy in mind, so they would rather just not bring stuff up. …
That doesn’t make them cowards: it makes them unskilled at conflict”
My personal, painful experience is that this is absolutely true. We are starting a Peacemaker ministry at our church to help people settle conflicts in a way that glorifies God by using Biblical principles. Many people avoid conflict because it can be uncomfortable, but also because it forces one to be accountable and to consider one’s own role in the conflict.
November 18th, 2009 | 12:51 pm | #10
Commentators here are so very, very nice. But I do think JMR is pretty much on target, and there is certainly no contradiction between being a coward and being unskilled at resolving conflict.
The key is to be able to be skilled, i.e. wise, in telling particular individuals that they are being cowardly, not to pretend it doesn’t exist. That’s what all the biblical exhortations to be courageous are for.
And the flip side, of course, is to be humble enough to be open to the possibility of being a coward yourself and receiving such criticism. Therapeutic culture has created brittle, defensive Christians, a tendency I have no problem in admitting I’ve had to struggle with (since this is a semi-anonymous post, that doesn’t say much).
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