Glocal Christianity

Is it Christian to sack someone?

I was reading some reflections about the web economy, via Alan Hirsch, and it brought me back to a question that has been bugging me for ages. Is it Christian to sack someone?

But first, here are the comments that triggered those thoughts:

3. Hierarchies are natural, not prescribed.
In any Web forum there are some individuals who command more respect and attention than others—and have more influence as a consequence. Critically, though, these individuals haven’t been appointed by some superior authority. Instead, their clout reflects the freely given approbation of their peers. On the Web, authority trickles up, not down.

4. Leaders serve rather than preside.
On the Web, every leader is a servant leader; no one has the power to command or sanction. Credible arguments, demonstrated expertise and selfless behavior are the only levers for getting things done through other people. Forget this online, and your followers will soon abandon you.

5. Tasks are chosen, not assigned.
The Web is an opt-in economy. Whether contributing to a blog, working on an open source project, or sharing advice in a forum, people choose to work on the things that interest them. Everyone is an independent contractor, and everyone scratches their own itch.

6. Groups are self-defining and -organizing.
On the Web, you get to choose your compatriots. In any online community, you have the freedom to link up with some individuals and ignore the rest, to share deeply with some folks and not at all with others. Just as no one can assign you a boring task, no can force you to work with dim-witted colleagues.

You see, we talk about servant leadership as an alternative to domineering leadership, about empowerment as an alternative to tyranny, but every day in business we engage in relationships where the power to hire and fire others looms large.

We preach grace. I am wondering if gift economics could ever world in real life. Why the sacred / secular divide?

How Christian is my business?

For years now Hillsong have been running a Christian Business Directory for Christians in western Sydney, and apart from the missiological issues this inevitably raises, I have also long wondered, what does it mean to call a business “Christian”?

In response to a question about psychology, I recently stated the following:

The wariness with psychology is due to the fact that many models, while useful, are grounded in unchristian assumptions that can catch the unwary. For example, given Freud associated religion with psychosis it is reasonable to expect that the psychodynamic model based on his teachings will present Christians with some challenges. I think uncritical rejection is just as problematic as uncritical acceptance, so I don't advocate running away from the problem, but I won’t say integration is easy.

But I could say the same thing about business models. Many business models are equally grounded in unchristian assumptions. Is having a Christian as a CEO enough to call a business Christian? I think not. Nevertheless, many of us Christians are employed by businesses so it is not a problem we can run away from.

Here is something to chew on. For most corporations, maximizing share value for shareholders is their highest virtue. In fact, under corporations law it is illegal for us to aim for anything else. Even the most enlightened corporations can only justify a triple bottom line when there are win / win solutions. When only win / lose solutions are available, economics inevitably wins.

Yet the good news suggests to us that the bottom line is never the bottom line. God is. So there will inevitably be some situations where God’s ways brings us into conflict with corporations law, where business ethics calls us to treat Christian ethics as an “externality”, where we have a choice to make.

I think this is where we need to recognize that corporations are amongst what the New Testament refers to as the “powers and principalities” and that whatever we might say about private corporations, public corporations at least (governed by shareholder concerns as they are) can never be viewed as completely “Christian”.

So what is a Christian employed by a public corporation to do? In this I suggest we look to exiles like Daniel for inspiration. Even when Daniel was placed in charge of the court astrologers of Babylon, even when he was made the equivalent of their CEO, reporting only to the board, his situation was hardly transformed into a Godly one. Yet in all his work he never compromised himself. So it is doable, it is just not easy.

With this in mind I would suggest that, for most of us, it is probably more useful to move on from talking about Christian businesses to talking about how to be a Christian in an unchristian business, how to work as a Christian when unchristian business models are the order of the day. The first step, as I have suggested with my psychology comments, is to look at core business assumptions.

Life Decisions

Well the news of the day is I handed in my resignation earlier today after accepting an alternate job offer. In the process of making this decision yesterday I also committed to doing a subject at one of the local theological collages next year with a view to seeing where God leads me after that. Lots of angst behind both of these decisions so thanks to those people who’ve been praying for me behind the scenes.

God in the Noise

Slowly but surely I am starting to see God in the noise.

As a contemplative sort of guy I prefer to approach God in silence, in meditative solitude. I love the transfiguration story where the disciples of Jesus see his glory on a wild mountaintop. In my more wildly romantic moments I identify with the desert fathers and celtic monks and Christian sanyasins of the Indian missions. I love to chill in my places of solitude and listen for God's subtle voice.

But as a parent of a three year old and a one year old, with a busy career, that's sometimes a bit of a luxury. So, I've also been working on hearing God in the noise, in intertwining of  our life stories with the stories of the ancients, in seeing the image of God written in the faces of screaming babies and demanding stressed company workers.

Today it was my son, Daniel's, third birthday. Lot's of little ones running around everywhere. Noise, crys and smiles. And now, as the house has resumed some semblance of calm (yes, you guessed it, I'm the only one still awake) I thought I'd jot down a few stray thoughts.

Towards a Working Christology

If part of the task of the emerging church is to deconstruct sacred-secular dichotomies in contemporary Christian theology, then surely an important starting point is our understanding of Christ.

We often hear clerics referring to Jesus as our great high priest, but do we acknowledge such statements too glibly? He wasn’t ordained – he was a layman wasn’t he? He was an enemy of the incumbent high priest and the temple authorities wasn’t he? In its original context, calling Jesus a priest in the order of Melchizedek was a way of deconstructing traditional understandings of priesthood. Maybe instead of listening to clerics interpret Jesus through their understanding of priesthood we should be critically re-interpreting priesthood through our understanding of Jesus the Galilean peasant? It’s my feeling that priests in the order of Melchizedek do not limit their spheres of operation to temples; that they do not respect the sacred-secular and priest-laity divides.

How many times have you heard ministers and missionaries saying they gave up their jobs to work “full-time” for God? I find such testimonies so disempowering as a worker. I want to be empowered to imitate Christ right where I am. Is clericalism truly the highest way of modelling Christ? I wonder if Jesus would have said that? 

So, as an experiment, let’s think about Christ in the context of everyday work. Jesus didn’t shirk working. He characterised himself as a servant, as a slave, the lowliest of workers. He saw washing feet as a mode of spiritual teaching, and liked to give a hand with cooking and fishing. He was known as a carpenter in his early career and as an alternative healer and social critic in his later career. He mixed with businessmen, government officials, fishermen, animal husbandry workers, street workers, and all sorts of workers in their workplace. When religious authorities castigated him for working on a Sabbath, he characterised God as a worker. He visited temples only to upend them.

But am I missing the point? Shouldn’t a truly Christian Christology be focussed on the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ? Well it’s my belief that Christ was and is a person: fully alive, fully human. He lived and breathed and struggled and celebrated like us all. If Christ is truly the core of Christianity, then it follows that Christianity cannot be reduced to an abstract principle or proposition or eightfold path without loosing something essential. The life story of Jesus reached its climax in his crucifixion and subsequent resurrection; however any climax implies a broader narrative. His life in Galilee was not incidental to his Passover execution in Jerusalem. The sacrificial death of Jesus needs to be viewed in the wider context of his sacrificial way of life. It was the climax to a full life, not a trans-historical event. So a holistic Christology, by implication, must be grounded in Christ’s whole life. And that includes his working life.

So what is the message of the resurrection from such a perspective? It’s this: the resurrection of Jesus relativises everything, even work. The ultimate threats of temporal powers – of layoffs and homelessness, of imprisonment or even execution – have been shown to be empty. The promises of temporal powers – of wealth and status and power – have been shown up as ephemeral, as ways of selling ourselves short. And if the resurrection puts everything, including our work, into a new perspective, then we are called to work in light of this perspective.

A Holiday from Unemployment

Well, back from Floriade in Canberra. A day early. Note for the future: don't take young kids away and stay in a single room again till they are MUCH older.

Job scene is hotting up. I'm on a casual work assignment for the next week and now have the dilemma of trying to figure out how I can fit in an interview for another job in the CBD in the same week. Yay for work worries!