I have had a long and laborious struggle trying to work out in the world while at the same time making space for the existence of a few tiny Christian values I hold dear.
That “long and laborious struggle” is part melodrama and part humor simply to set the scene. In truth it’s been a really good thing, a great blessing, and I’m writing this just to encourage others and to say it is so worth it to remain true to yourself. The Bible reminds us, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
Work should never be soul sucking. That’s what I call it when a boundary is crossed, when a company thinks it not only owns your labor, it also owns your soul. Since many of us need to support a family or pay the rent, it’s easy to fall prey to this.
Artaxes’ Brainbench has an interesting post up about ESG that is worth a read. Here where I live employers crossing boundaries and demanding one comply with, “crazy, radical, woke stuff” is simply a way of life. It is really abusive and wrong.
Hubby and I were eventually able to start a business which gave us a little bit more freedom. I am so done with the corporate world and the entire medical establishment too, having hardly gotten my foot in the door in the first place. The kids are all grown, the hubby is retired, and so I am in a season of life that makes it possible for me to say such things.
Also, it’s been a really messy journey. I have been through some stuff! It often comes at you in creeping instrumentalism, so sometimes it’s hard to see at the time. Doubly true if you are somewhat compliant and just want to, “go along to get along.” I was once asked to stop wearing a tiny cross under my sweater because it allegedly offended people and I had signed a non discrimination in religion agreement that forbid, forcing my religion on others. Apparently people complained. I did not rise up like a great warrior for Christ, I complied on account of the fact that I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings or traumatize them farther. Obviously they had been hurt by Christianity and so I didn’t want to contribute to their suffering. Soon however, it became evident that my mere existence as a Christian was offensive, and trying not to exist so as to not offend someone else is…...downright soul sucking.
Then there was the time I cheerfully walked right under the Pride flag, past the transgendered rights posters day after day, but finally had to draw the line at being forced to sign an oath, an oath mind you, swearing to uphold the transagenda. This was several years ago and I was like, what in the heck is the transagenda?? I’m like a babe in woods sometimes, I didn’t recognize that for what it was, but I felt convicted about not swearing any oaths. A bit funny, I couldn’t recite verses from the Bible if you paid me, but every word of Matthew 5:34 was suddenly in my head and clear as a bell. Comical, but looking all confused and saying, “Uhm, God says I can’t sign oaths” only angered them more. Who knew?
It’s one thing to expect employees to treat everyone with respect or courtesy or something. That’s perfectly reasonable. I am all for non discrimination policies. It’s an entirely different matter to feel as if you now have the right to dictate people’s mandatory support and full affirmation of things like the Ukrainian flag, BLM, the transagenda, Pride month, or whatever other politically correct ideologies come down the pike.
I also complied with the stupid masking mandates at work and sat behind plexiglass screen for two years, but by the time we got to, “it’s not your body anymore and the vaccine is mandatory,” I was done. Nope, I’m not playing, “weekly testing” either.
Keep in mind that most of these jobs I’ve had were part time and with lousy benefits. Lord help me if I ever had had good benefits. I’d probably still be there, allowing my soul to be sucked dry bit by bit. I would be parched, deeper in debt, and likely full of self loathing.
“You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store”
-Tennessee Ernie Ford-
See, there's this thing called biology... 
Proverbs 30:7-9
New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition
7 Two things I ask of you;
do not deny them to me before I die:
8 Remove far from me falsehood and lying;
give me neither poverty nor riches;
feed me with the food that I need,
9 lest I be full and deny you
and say, “Who is the Lord?”
or I be poor and steal
and profane the name of my God.
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Amen, Tom! 🙂
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one of my favorites, Tom
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Not gonna do it . Nope . I will not comply .
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Good for you! I have a sign that just says, “nope.” It’s become my favorite word.
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This is the sort of Fascism that gangsters like the WEF and Open Society Foundation have been promoting. Back during the Clinton Co-Presidency, Al Gore (who’s on the WEF Board of Trustees these days) initiated the idea of ‘Public-Private Partnerships.’ Basically, it was a trade-off: Democrats gave up their support for labor unions, family farms, and blue-collar businesses in exchange for Corporate Monopolies who would enforce their unconstitutional agendas and could hide behind their legal status as a ‘private company.’ This has all been solidified since by Corporate Lobbying, the ‘Revolving Door’, and Regulatory Capture.
A lot of Conservatives got sold on the idea, thinking that it would empower the Free Market. What we ended up with is worse than what we had: at least once we could vote in politicians who could change things—now we have a government that’s simply the enforcement arm of Financial and Commercial Cartels.
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All true! Back in the day I really objected to the invasion of privacy that was going on, things like background checks, credit scores, and drug testing for unskilled jobs. It eventually progressed to tobacco testing for nurses, hospital workers, and some city employees. So now some employers can dictate whether or not you can smoke on your own time. It’s easy to justify all these things, but what they’ve done is paved the way for employers to now mandate your healthcare choices for you, such as the recent vaccine.
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Witty and so apropos! You’re kinda “preaching to the choir”, but sadly these days the choir seems more compliant to the system than to the ways of the LORD. Good to know you’ve broken free from the tyrannical yoke of the woke.
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Thank you, MJT! It’s always nice to hear from you. 🙂
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Thanks for the link.
Wow, you are waaay further down the road than we are here. Really shocking.
I have no illusions. We will sooner or later get there too if we cannot stop ESG. If we get there I will have to make a decision. I hate it but I will do it.
Sometimes one has to make compromises but I have set for myself clear red lines and I have clearly communicated to my superiors and colleagues what these red lines are. That was even before the pandemic.
I’ve made in several meetings clear that there is no way I would get the vax. No way. If I would lose my job or go to jail then so be it. Luckily it never came to that because of the ever growing resistance and the many demonstrations in which I also participated. The goverment did not introduce the universal vax mandate it was discussing.
I fully understand what you are saying. I have lived it.
Having lived some not so good times I once found the job that you can only dream of. Imagine that you have a really well paid job. As you have said yourself, the temptation would be great. Now, imagine that you have a well paid job that you really love and enjoy doing because that’s what you have been doing as a hobby since you were fifteen.
It was competitive, exciting, challenging, demanding, on the cutting edge of technology, intellectually stimulating and rewarding. The colleagues were great and relations with the bosses couldn’t have been better. I still have fond memories of my philosophical and technological conversations with a genius, a brilliant guy who traded his academic career for a career in business. He was a linguistic artist who used words like Michelangelo used marble.
Sounds too good to be true? There’s always a catch. In this case the catch were the investors the company was negotiating with. I felt a little bit uncomfortable because these were some men in Dubai. After all this was the time when the war on terror was still raging and it was usually men like these who were funding radical Islam all over the world. Anyway, I shrugged it off.
Then, one fine day I was told that one of these investors was, brace yourself, Usama Bin Laden. No it wasn’t THE Usama Bin Laden. It was another member of the Bin Laden family with the same first name. So what, I shrugeed it off but my conscience kept plaguing me. I knew that I would have to make a decision at one point but it wasn’t easy. Finally, someone else decided for me. Negotiations went nowhere and the company went insolvent.
Perhaps half a year later my former boss called me, asking if I want to work for the company again. They wanted to restart it. I was still without a job and I could surely use the money but this time I decided. I declined. I went through some really tough times but I never regreted it.
In retrospect this was a good training, preparing me for these kinds of tough decisions. I still love my job (same job, different company) but I have the confidence that I will quit it if I have to.
I’m not willing to lose my soul.
Btw. I love the song “Sixteen tons”
Thank you also for your great post.
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Thank you for writing that post and for bringing this issue to people’s attention.
Locally we cloak that kind of thing in our language and will call businesses, “sustainable, community oriented, inclusive,” which literally means you will get the permits, the funding, and the favorable treatment by local government. The rest of you deemed not politically correct will feel as if you are walking through wet cement until you finally pack up and leave. Some people who have a lot of money and a team of lawyers have been able to punch through this barrier, but for the most part it’s the local government who decides who is going to succeed and who isn’t. It’s really horrible for the economy, because ultimately people need basic goods and services not an, “ethically sourced, politically correct, sustainable” storefront that seems to produce nothing.
So this really is a bit like ESG on a micro scale and it is really destructive.
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Retire? I’m 68 and working till they throw me out. During the OSHA-gonna-mandate-the-vax-for-Biden thing, I sent the VP of my division an email telling him he was going to have to walk me to the door if the company went down that road. It was freeing to draw that line in the sand.
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I’m self-employed so it didn’t come to that for me; but I did get some blowback from the people, companies, and institutions that I deal with. One of the few things in my life that I’ll always be proud of though, is that during the entire two years of State Mandates, I never wore the Mask of Shame even once.
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Reblogged this on clydeherrin.
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Thank you, Clyde. Much appreciated. 🙂
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I left the workforce long before all of this woke stuff really became so hmmm obnoxious I will say. My man has worked for several companies that are completely woke, but thank God he now works for a Christian based company that is one of the best companies I have ever seen personally. Of course they have to do the government mandated stuff, but they do as little as they can get by with.
When he went through kidney failure he was terrified he was going to lose his job, but the boss that had created his position for him assured him that was not going to happen. He works from home and though he works a modified schedule because he has dialysis 3 times a weeks. Other than that his duties have not really changed much. If he had still been working for the same company he was working at when we met they would have gotten rid of him as soon as they legally could have.
I worked in phone sales and customer service before I became disabled and I can tell you for a fact in many cases the customer is very seldom right let alone always right. I use to make reservations for Harrah’s Casinos and the sense of entitlement from people that spend $100 dollars is mind boggling and the amount of names I was called when I had to say ummm no sorry you are not a high roller was also mind boggling. The one and only truly rich person i ever made a reservation for was a very polite man that did not ask for anything really special (and I would not have been allowed to tell him no on most anything he asked for) and was kind to me as he knew I was nervous. He even left a compliment with my supervisor for me. Everyone of those jobs though made me dislike people even more. I hate companies that say the customer is always right because no, no they are not.
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Good for you IB for sticking with your values and parting ways with the stupid people managing your position. I struggle with this at times but usually with bureaucratic issues, as my company for now doesn’t seem to get involved in today’s political nonsense, although they did follow the ridiculous CDC “guidelines” all throughout Covid. The only reason I didn’t quite then is because I work remotely and could avoid most of the theater.
This thing about forcing people to submit and agree to whatever the latest “thing” really has a strong background in Communism. Once you get a person to publicly agree to things which go against their principles (and basic common sense really), you can nudge them to agree to more and more radical things. I believe that was the true intent of face masks, as it softened people up to accepting “vaccines” that had so little trials behind them and 0 long term safety data. Truly stunning.
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