How to Be an Effective Christian at Your Secular Job

Well, this is a great email, and it's a really great question, and I appreciate it, because it's a question that I had to answer for myself as a traditional conservative

Christian working as a public high school teacher for years in a liberal school district. I worked at several schools in the district, all with very liberal departments, department heads, and principals.

These were people who were not Christian and very much open to the politically correct ways of thinking in today's culture.

So what I had to do was figure out a way to maintain my Christian convictions, and even go further than that, to talk about God and Christianity in a manner that did not cross any boundaries as a state employee.

And the way that I did that was I went back to the Gospels, and I studied the teaching methodology of Jesus, and I started bringing it into my classroom.

I brought my training as a teacher to bear on the Gospels, and I watched very closely how

Jesus interacted with others in a hostile environment. Have you noticed, for example, how very often

Jesus would do something subversive? He would do something considered out of bounds according to the established leadership, but he did it in a manner where he maintained a particular stance.

He was innocent as a dove and as wise as a serpent. I mean, that's literally how he told his disciples to comport themselves when spreading the

Gospel. In Matthew 10, verse 16, Jesus said, quote, Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

And so what that looked like for me practically was I treated my time every day in the public sector as if I were crossing into communist

Russia smuggling in Bibles. Now, don't get me wrong, I wasn't literally smuggling in Bibles, and I wasn't—I was not violating my role as a state employee.

I was not preaching to the students in the classroom. What I'm trying to get at is I never woke up not one single day thinking, just another day at the job, just another day at work, ho -hum, here

I go. I always strived to be intentional and understand what was really going on around me.

There were a couple of principles that I lived by that served me well. I gained favor with not only my students, but my bosses and my colleagues, who, as I said, were not friendly to Christians.

I mean, in my last year alone as a teacher, I received some of the highest marks you could get on my performance evaluation, and I was nominated for the

Heart of Education Award, which is a top honor for teachers in Clark County. My wife got nominated as well, twice, for Heart of Education because I'm married to a very awesome lady.

But I'm just saying, there were principles that I lived by, and here they are. Know God, know who you are in Christ, be intentional as well as subversive, and ask the right questions.

Okay, so that's four things. So let me just break them down. Let me start with know God and know who you are in Christ.

If you're going to be influential and winsome to folks in a secular culture, you have to know

God. Your knowledge of Him has to be clear. You have to know who He is, and you have to know what

He desires for you, because out of that comes knowledge of who you are.

Now let me say the same thing upside down. If you don't know God very well, you're not in the

Word constantly, you're not immersing yourself in scripture, you're not memorizing it, you're not meditating on it daily, then you don't know who you are, because your identity as a

Christian is wrapped up in Christ. Your purpose, which is commensurate with your identity, is found in God, so you have to be rooted in the basics.

Know God, know who He is, and know what He desires for you. Now where do you get all of that?

Well, you get that from the Word. You've got to study the Bible. You do a study of the basic characteristics and attributes of God.

You have to know the gospel front and back. You have to know how the world opposes the gospel.

You need to know the nature of the enemy's warfare against God and His people, and by the way, just to that last point, 2

Corinthians 10 .5 is very helpful. Romans, the book of Romans, does a really good job of laying all this out, because here's what happens to you if you go to work in a secular environment and you don't know

God very well. You will not be able to clearly distinguish yourself from those around you.

The lines will blur. You'll look at a lot of secular people at your workplace or wherever you're at, and you'll go, you know, they're not all that different from me, because you won't know how you're all that different from the culture to begin with.

Or maybe if you have a little bit of knowledge, you'll sense that something is wrong, but you won't be able to articulate how exactly it is.

And if you don't know how you're different, how God has set you apart in holiness from the secular culture, where you are now living out

His story for the world, not your own story for yourself, then you'll often miss opportunities to respond well to the ways that culture is dominating your environment.

You'll miss those opportunities because you won't be able to identify them all that much. So you have to know

God, and you have to know who you are in Christ, but you also have to be intentional as well as subversive.

Now, what do I mean by that? So you said in the email your job wants you to go to a five -hour training course on creating

LGBTQ plus inclusive libraries. Okay, here's my response. You should definitely go to these classes, but go with the attitude that you are seeking to understand the culture.

You have to have a game plan going in, okay? This is not another boring day at the job, because if you treat it like that, and then along the way you hear something that directly runs up against your

Christian convictions, which you most certainly will in a class like this, you're going to ultimately react without a game plan, okay?

And that's very bad. You're going to emote verbally, which, by the way, is the same thing

I would do, and it's the same thing most of us would do if we are not prepared ahead of time.

You have to be prepared. You have to have a game plan going in. That's why I say you need to be intentional.

You've got to think this through first. Ask yourself this question. As the presumably only

Christian in the group, or one of a very few, if you interrupt the session to proclaim your disagreement with what's being taught, do you think people are going to change their minds?

That's a question you have to ask yourself. What do you think is going to happen if you raise your voice, you raise your hand, you raise your voice, and you say, y 'all are just saying unbiblical, wicked things, and you need to get on your knees right now and pray with me for your very souls.

You think that's going to be effective? I think what we need to do is we need to start acting more like Daniel, all right?

Now, Daniel was surrounded by not only a secular pagan culture, but a hostile one, okay?

There's a lot of parallels here. The Babylonians disrespected Daniel and his god.

So, if you notice, the first thing that happened to Daniel was his captors changed his name from Daniel to Belteshazzar.

You know what Belteshazzar means? It means, lady, protect the king. It's not only a way of erasing

God from Daniel's name. By the way, Daniel, L meaning God, it's a complete change of gender as well.

I mean, this was disrespectful, is what it was. And not only that, Daniel and his friends were put into a re -education camp where they had to learn the

Babylonian way of life and conform to their culture, to their literature, and to their religion.

It's right there in Daniel chapter 1 and 2, which also means that Daniel had to forget Yahweh and the

Jewish religion. That was the intent of the Babylonian captors. Now, that's not what Daniel did, okay?

But he went through the re -education. He went through the training. And then on the other side of that re -education,

Daniel chapter 1 at the end says, Daniel and his friends were 10 times better than any other magician or conjurer in Babylon.

As a matter of fact, Daniel was made the chief of magicians, the chief of the conjurers and the diviners.

That's Daniel chapter 5. So, what does this mean for us today? Well, it means go to the five -hour class on LGBTQ plus instruction, okay?

But you have to go in with a game plan. You have to be intentional. You have to know who you are. You have to know

God. Ask yourself, what was Daniel's goal as he was being subjected to pagan re -education?

It appears that his goal was to submit to pagan authorities while at the same time maintaining his beliefs, maintaining purity with regard to worship and to glorify

God in his speech and in his actions. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that is actually possible even today.

And the long -term effect of Daniel's decision in that regard, well, one of the effects is that Nebuchadnezzar finally bowed down and recognized

Yahweh as the true God. Nebuchadnezzar, the ruler of Babylon. Why?

Because Daniel put himself in a position to stay close to a secular pagan culture, submitting to their desires for him while at the same time maintaining his

Jewish convictions. Can we do that today? Can we Christians be like Daniel? Can we stay close to a secular culture?

Can we submit to the secular culture all so that we can bring it down from the inside?

So once again, know God, know who you are in Christ, be intentional and subversive, and ask the right questions.

And you will find that you have favor with those who are believers in Christ as well as opportunities to ask the right questions that challenge what they believe.