The Separation of Religion and Work

By way of history, my employer has not been aggressively anti-religion, in any sense. There is, to be sure, an un-written rule, that religion should not be discussed during work hours. That is best, I whole-heartedly agree. My employer is not paying employees to have religious, philosophical or politiccal discussions. Leave those discussions for lunch or anytime outside of work.

Monday, I invited a co-worker to go to lunch with me today. Although it ended up that I couldn't make it, due to problems we were (and are) having with a server, he asked if I what I wanted to chat about was critical (or urgent, I can't remember his exact words.) I said, no, well, yes. So we agreed we would meet later in the afternoon, in a conference room, to chat.

I had been praying since yesterday, LORD, please give me the right words, even more importantly, the right attitude toward M. I prayed for compassion, and gentleness. I prayed that I might be able to restore a brother.

Flash back a week, I'm in the snack room, at work, and M is there getting something. Just to make small talk, I asked him how life was going. He said ok. He said, how about you, are you doing anything for the holidays? I said, that I wasn't going anywhere, because we had family coming in from out-of-town. I said, what about you, and he said he was going to travel to (I don't remember where but it seems like the Caribbean or maybe he said the Bahamas, I don't remember), with his girlfriend. I was immediately grieved.

You see, a couple of years ago, M. Came to our Bible study at work a couple of times. He came at my invite. He sat near someone else who regularly attended, and while I was delivering the study sheet to her desk, I had the opportunity to invite him.

Now, I have a dilemma. Is M a brother, who needs to be exhorted and corrected to turn away from sin, or is M a non-Christian, who needs to hear the message of the Gospel? As we walked into the conference room, he turned on the light, and I closed the door, and he said, "so, what did you want to talk about?" I had considered trying to lighten things up, by asking him if he wanted to join Amway or something like that, but I decided not to go that route.

I said, "you came to our Bible study a couple of times, a while back, and you haven't attended since, I just wanted to invite you back into fellowship and come to our Bible study." We're planning a special presentation, ah... Sometime around the first of the year, about science and the Bible.

He said, "are you going to discuss the topic of Intelligent Design?" I said, "no, actually we're going to talk about what I've heard called Scientific Fact In Foreknowledge" In other words, we're going to examine statements in the Bible, about scientific findings that have only recently been made. For example, that the earth is round, was written about in the book of Isaiah. Hygenic practices that were written about, and that the life of a person is in the blood. Blood is precious, but not even a couple hundred years ago, bleeding was considered good medicine.

He said, I respectfully decline. I have kind of a questioning skeptical view of things.

I said, that's fine. Do have a Christian background? Would you consider yourself a Christian?

Yes, but I kind of keep religion separate from work.

Okay, are you in regular fellowship at a church.

No.

Okay, well thanks for talking to me.

[Editorial] (as if the previous wasn't editorialized)
Obviously, M has sin in his life that he doesn't want to give up. Maybe he will notice and consider that a Christian was willing to care about him and invite him to a Bible study.

Or, maybe the LORD will give me another chance with M. Outside of work for sure.

God bless...