Culture Wars and the Workplace 1

 Culture Wars and the Workforce

I have been a business owner for most of my life.  For the past twenty years of my professional life it has been my policy that a business is not ideological, religious, or politically biased.  Rather, the individuals in the firm are ideological, religious, and politically opinionated.  The purpose of the business is to sell a product or service (or plural) with as much philosophical neutrality as possible to reach the broadest audience possible and resist the urge to segment the market along with personal bias.  The purpose of my (and most) business is not to politically manipulate, persuade, or even to evangelize the people with the gospel of Christ.   My purpose is to do right by the consumer, be they vacationers or backyard dreamers in my case.  So, I specifically set out to build Timberroot to be politically neutral and utterly silent in the culture wars.  I wanted a workplace that was free for Christians to flourish as well as non-Christians - a place of safety to commandeer an LGBT+ catch phrase (though used falsely).  As large corporations were falling over themselves to be more Homosexual than the next one (as if human identity has been utterly reduced to sexual preference), I wanted to stick out as a place for freedom.  A small family firm, personally no doubt owned by Christians passionate about the truth and hope of the Gospel of Christ, but as a firm, we simply strive to serve our customers honestly and consistently with a remarkably valued product.  This became more pronounced and essential during the “pandemic” or whatever you might call the Covid terror.   Some firms were requiring vaccinations - a rather generous or dubious term for what they might have put in that shot - and sacking workers that would not gleefully get the jab.  I was not going to ask whether you were vaccinated or not nor give my opinion on whether you should or not.  Likewise, when Timberroot hired a gay staff member, I was clear to this jolly and lovable chap that while I personally had a different worldview, he was free and going to remain free and safe to see to his own convictions without interference from me or any superior.  

I was naïve.  As I discovered, there are a few problems with this notion.  1) For some curious though prescient reason, the idea of freedom of speech and freedom of religion has become associated with political conservatives and libertarians.  Note how the woke and left lust for the downfall of Elon Musk, that free-willing, brash, and abrasive uber-achiever.  2) The woke affiliated are not willing to coexist with conservatives or pious Christians in particular - here note the absolute ideological monogamy of many liberal college campuses where conservatives receive death threats and administrations disallow the liberal exchange of ideas.   I’ll bring it back home in a moment, but for now, I’ll opine about why wokeism (and the offended “conservative” reaction) is fighting for the death of political liberalism - freedom of religion, speech, action and ideas.  

I unshakably believe that truth will always out.  I also believe in pesky vermin called facts.  Those facts are derived from this other difficult thing called reality.  Reality isn’t what we will it to be, it is what is.  Truth is derived from reality.  The two are attached.  I believe that an examination of reality is likely to reveal truth, and no matter how offensive you or I might find those truths to be, our offense will not change it.  And whilst we can all agree that all religions have been commandeered in the most bastardized way to control people according to the will of the power thirsty, it is utterly counter-Christian to use the gospel to wield wordly or political power.  That is NOT to say that Christians should not hold political office.  It is to say that political office, now defined as a position of power, could only be defined as a position of service in the most Christian way.  Anyone with an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ understands that the Gospel of Christ was not created as an instrument of worldly power, matter of fact, Jesus was very deliberate about disassociating himself with a political agenda or political prominence.  All this to say, those with unredeemed hearts corrupted by a lust for power have always been too happy to manipulate the “faithful” for their personal gain, but that is a very unchristian idea.  As a believer, I don’t believe any amount of human rebellion can undo the supremacy of the Creator, nor sully the unrecoverable shine of the truth of the gospel.  I don’t need to “fight” to protect the banner of truth I live under, for the one that built the banner if stronger than you and me all all of us combined.  It does not need me to verify it.  It is with or without my consent.  

However, wokeism has adopted a religious zeal and a formal creed.  It is as intolerant as the non-Christian Christian folk that orchestrated the inquisition.  The curious thing is that wokeism selectively rejects the existence of facts.  It rejects the derivation of fact from reality.  Reality to Wokeism is based upon human will.  Human will is not subject to reason, because reason has to ground itself in this objectionable thing called reality.  Human will is subject to feeling.  Mr. Trump feels like he is the biggest deal since Abe Lincoln, so he must have had the largest inauguration attendance of all time.  The real numbers do not matter.  He feels it must be, he says it is, therefore to him (an anti-woker himself ironically) it simply is.  Fact is what you say.  You say what you feel.  Fact is not what is.  The same holds true for the ferocious gender fluid agenda in front of Wokeism.  Wokeism and progressivism are twin siblings.  Progressivism is the idea that reality adapts to our preferences, thus facts might exist, but we author them, we are not subjected to them.  There is a curious disconnect here though.  Cause the same crowd that rejects biological absolutes is the crowd that stuck signs in their yards saying “we support Science” during the pandemic.  Ultimately, progressivism is utterly subjective.  It is changing and evolving according to the emotional will of the mob most active in the movement at the time.  It is not concrete, nor verifiable.  So, it makes sense that a woke warrior would fight tooth, hair, and eyeball to passionately defend their rather temporary version of truth because it indeed depends upon the passion of their will to exist.  It does not have the luxury of reality to support it.  By its very nature it demands of its faithful an almost paranoid defense.  This defense finds the idea of moral absolutes intolerable because it indeed represents a mortal danger to the idea.  Moral absolutes is something utterly bound up in God’s revelation, both in creation and through his telling of history and incarnation as recorded in scripture.  I understand there are “Christian” progressive churches, but they are nothing more than warm and fuzzy supper clubs that rally around what they see as lovely parables told in blood and sacrafice (something they are inclined to overlook).  

Back to the local from the universal.  What does all this mean for our little family firm, run by Christ loving Christians determined to give the same freedom to its staff that God has afforded us, proverbially speaking?  It means that in the war of the woke, cultural neutrality with personal obedience to God is an intolerable and threatening imposition whether or not anything is every imposed.  The God-fearing business owner might never tell a staff member unsolicited how he out to think or how he ought to live or how he ought to vote, but the woke warrior knows that inside of them rests the death of all “progressive” ideology - the submission to absolutes and acceptance of facts.  It is not enough for this person that the employer says nothing, or the company does not take a position in regards to sexual behavior.  The very idea of silence is threatening, thus scene as oppressive and intolerant when in fact it is anything but.  The active woke soldier cannot see that their militantism cannot provide for freedom because it always has to fight to define fact, or, right and wrong if we play in the idea of absolutes.  To conservative friends, you look in bewilderment as corporations now try to outflank each other in progressive credentials, but underneath it, there is a ferocious body of staff that finds silence suffocating because their religion requires passionate (and hollow) validation.  It exists in words not reality.  It exists in flags with many colors and patterns not in the annals of creation or evolution depending on your point of view.  The woke will demand their employer speak for all the staff on any given issue because not to speak is a religious assault.  And, employers are all to eager in their cowardice to comply.  

I know.  I recently had a woke staff member and we all provided this person all the safety and silence they needed to go about their ideological day productively, but this safety and silence were inherently “intolerant” - not because I or we spoke against - for we did not - rather because we did not speak at all on the thorny issues and allowed them to live and think as they see fit.  The company could not present many options, some blue, some black, some yellow, or closer to home, some Christian, some gay, some rather rowdy options to choose from - we could only present options that were in support of the woke agenda.  The woke warrior cannot provide freedom in the workplace for the pious God-fearing folk.  The woke warrior must expel the mortal enemy and if that warrior cannot succeed, then he or she will leave hurling the accusation of intolerance, when the only thing we failed to do was to fly the gay pride flag or brandish BLM on our website.  Indeed, liberalism is under assault, most energetically by the progressive crowd, but increasingly by the offended conservative crowd as well.