Take Your God to Work Day

"I don't believe in atheists."
It's one of my favorite quotes, mostly because it's my own and somewhat because it contains both an element of truth and a wee bit of zing. The zing is the fact that those who gather facts quite often mistake their data for wisdom, and then throw them in the faces of others to appease the empty longing they feel in a soul they don't strictly believe in. Such facts of the physical world that want so badly to stand on their own and declare that the physical is the only world fall flat on their faces when confronted with the true fact that for all our advancement there is still no scientist or engineer alive who can make a simple flower from scratch. Intelligent design, which does not disagree with most scientific thought, not only provides a rational explanation of who we are and where we came from (and most importantly what we're doing here), but it also gives us something we all desperately need: something bigger than ourselves that we can believe in.
Here's where atheists get into serious trouble. The do have a god. That god looks back at them from the mirror every day, yet this reflective surface fails to convey even the simple truth of the core of their own belief. There really are no such things as atheists, and for all their knowledge atheists are and by their nature must be the last ones to admit that, least of all to themselves. I may just coin a new term here: selfists.
But one thing selfists have that a true follower of Christ lacks is a place in this world. They actually feel they are a part of it and it is a part of them. I know because I remember and because I've been told point blank that this is so by true believers in non-belief. I am tempted not to waste my time, but that would be a violation of my own core principles for no human being, made in the image of God and whom God finds utterly delightful, is ever a waste of time. Frustrating maybe, even irritating, but not a waste of time even if their destiny remains pitiably devoid of the transcendence back to our Creator we all long for.
So let's take our respective and mutually exclusive "gods" to work today and see what happens.
You're a middle manager of a mid-sized company. Directly under your supervision are one dozen souls who report directly to your authority. Directly above you is upper management, the movers and shakers of the mid-sized company including the owner and, since we must have a "bad guy", a general safety manager.
(Please note that this is entirely fictitious and hypothetical and is not reflective of any actual experiences, any actual company or any actual people....although this safety manager fellow IS a big stupid jerk who should be slapped with a fish.)
We two middle managerial candidates to consider on today's Take Your God to Work Day, a Christian and an atheist, or selfist. The Christian of course is bringing Jesus and the selfist can bring none other than himself. For purposes of clarity and convenience both candidates will be depicted as male, partly for ease in the use of personal pronouns but mostly because girls are pretty and I don't want them getting roughed up in my analysis which will be, at times, rather severe...and also because I fear their anger more than a rampaging Godzilla on PCP.
The Christian considers his dozen employees to be souls.
The atheist considers them to be human resources, which is sad state to be thought of as someone's lump of coal or gallon of gas.
The Christian considers his people to be actually His people, chosen and wonderful and delighted in, made in the image of the living God.
The atheist considers them to be made to work; expendable, expandable and utterly undependable.
If his principles are aright and the Christian is not in love with and conformity to the world and its notions of right and wrong, then he is concerned with their joy, their contentment, their well-being. Surely he expects them to work and to work well. If they don't he sometimes has to make difficult decisions but his first loyalty is to these priceless, precious children of God and not to an amorphous corporation forged out of thin air under the laws of the state, an artificial being possessing legal status as a person, in every sense of the word. While the Christian knows that people always come first and that they matter far more than profits or deadlines, the atheist has bought into the widespread lie that the corporation is a real entity and somehow more than the sum of its parts. I refer to this as the Terminator philosophy, because any corporation is an entity made (or made up) by man yet doesn't really exist as anything more than a concept. All the while it can own property, be sued (good luck with that!) and possesses many of the rights and priviliges of a natural human being...even the power to destroy lives, which is why it's a Terminator to me. If corporation X fires someone on questionable grounds and that human being then commits suicide, the corporation has no conscience or ethical questions to wrestle with. Perhaps even the board members won't care.
The Christian, by contrast, sees it as his responsibility to stand between this tyranny and totalitarianism disguised cleverly as capitalism and deems his to protect his people from all that he can, including and sometimes especially upper management. He knows when his men and women have personal problems, and he cares. He does look after the interests of the corporation because other human beings are dependent upon this artificial person for this substance, but he won't put the company's interests ahead of the well-being of his people. He answers to God, not to the board members or even the dreaded safety manager who has told him time and again that his loyalties are misaligned. Personally I think this safety manager fellow is (hypothetically, of course) just jealous because no one likes him and the middle manager's people love working for their supervisor, but that's just a theory that happens to fit the facts.
The contrast is extensive and could go on interminably, but the saddest aspect is two-fold: 1.) nearly all the business world thinks the Christian wrong and the atheist right, even though they would probably admit they'd rather work for the Christian, and 2.) an arguably few Christians possess the moral courage and unwavering faith in God to tell their safety managers the truth about their loyalty and priorities. They have succumbed to the business model. They have become of the world and in the world. In effect, they have left Jesus at home on Take Your God to Work Day. This is both sad and troubling because in a way it makes the atheist more honest about his principles, even though they may be spiritually bankrupt.
The atheist has a few more things going for him. There are those that will argue his bottom line of a higher profit margin, though when viewed in the long term I would be tempted to dispute this considering that employee turnover for the Christian may be drastically lower than for the atheist. That's neither here nor there. The best part of being an atheist simply must be not having to deal with the Wild Man.
I'm going to be very honest here. God makes me crazy. Totally unpredictable, reckless to the point of irresponsibility (from our limited vantage point) and an absolute crusader/irritant/show-off of the Highest Order. He allows us, His special children, to be put in these horrific situations, work our tails off, try our hardest as we know He wants us to, then what does He do? He leaps in at the last minute when all else has failed and our resources are exhausted and we're at our wit's end and saves the day. Total showboat...and utterly magnificent. I love Him and His way..but He does make me certifiably bat-snot. But to be fair, only He can pull it off though many a mortal (including myself) has tried, and He pulls it off well. But beneath all the stars of heaven....what a busy-body! But don't take my word for it. Anyone who has walked with Him knows that you can't shut Him out of your life. Like the impossible in-law you can bolt the door, turn off the porch light, hide under the covers and pretend you're not home when all of a sudden, in the midst of a crisis or worse when things are apparently going just fine...."TA-DA! It's Me, The Living God here to stir things up! Aren't you glad?" In the words of C.S. Lewis, "God is a transcendental interferer." True, Lord. I love you, but it's true...and I thank You that it is true because I shudder to think what this world would be like without your nosing about. Untold disasters have been averted, untold lives changed and transformed, all because of You.
The atheist doesn't have to deal with this, and when things go awry in his world he throws out words like "karma" and "destiny" and "natural forces" and then tucks himself in for a long night's sleep amidst books and papers that enthusiastically back his untenable position.
I wonder sometimes if, in the dead of night, the atheist is haunted by these words, words that elude him upon awakening, words that would convict him of the pointlessness of his self-deception and denial.
"It's time we awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick." - Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline: the path to spiritual growth.
We need to take Jesus to work with us. Roughly 1/3 of our lives should never be spent outside of the company of Christ. And He's a gentleman, our Lord, and not one to intrude when we blatantly reject His companionship, and to buy into the business model of how to govern our affairs in industry and employment (ie. sans Christ) is to do exactly that. If taking Christ for a ride in your car during rush hour - knowing that the Savior of Mankind is sitting in the seat next to you, watching you, loving you - results in a dramatic reduction in explosions of anger at other drivers, untoward bursts of profanity and lessened use of one's "driving finger", then what sort of powerful results would we see in our lives to have Christ with us each day, every day as we go about the business of our careers?
Lastly, not only do you need Christ at work to keep your moral compass true, but the people you work with need Him there as well. No atheist can be trusted to run into a burning building, he wouldn't risk his own god. But a Christian boss or co-worker is someone you can have next to you, knowing that in their heart is the observation that there is no greater love than someone who would lay down their lives for their friends.
Bring Jesus to work with you. Walk away from shame and towards true love. He wants to come and wants you to trust Him.