The saying “separation of church and state” is pretty common. Most people attribute it beginnings to a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote in the early 1800s. The way most people perceive it is that your religion is fine but it stays at the door when dealing with politics. Everyone is entitled to do what they want, but they can’t make laws out of it. They can’t require anyone to do something because of religion.
This is often engrained in us at a young age. I would say even to the point that we often shut off ever trying to mix the professional and religion together. After all, we don’t want to force anything down someone’s throat, right? We don’t want to come off as too harsh or too crazy.
School is one monster. If it’s a public school, then you have even more reason that you may not want to bring your religion up. At the same time though, it’s school. There’s only so much that can happen to you…depending on what school you go to.
Once you hit college, the stakes start to get higher. These are people who you want to make sure you keep relationships with. People you want to know that you care about them and want to build the friendship, and yet you may wonder how the religion comes into it.
Perhaps the highest stakes come when you are finally in that job. The one that so many years of school got you. How does the mix of religion blend into that? You now have maybe more freedom to talk about what you believe than you did in college, but now the stakes are so much higher. You can talk about it and all will likely be okay, but what if it’s not? Also, how do you balance maybe being the guy who has to be “mean” while also living out your religion?
What I think all of the above misses though is that belief is not something we should be able to turn on or off, or show or not show.
If I am a Christian, meaning I believe the whole truth of the Bible and that God is my absolute Lord and savior, this is not simply a part of my life. It’s not just one of the many pieces of luggage I carry around with me when I need it.
This is my life. It’s what every breath rests upon. I can’t take one step without God granting that step to me. Of course this may look different in different situations, but if you are stepping into the life of being a Christian, while it’s a free gift that we don’t have to earn, we have a relationship with God. It’s not that we’re forced to live a life for some God. It’s that we have given our life to Him, so our whole life is guided by him.
If we are truly not ashamed of the gospel, and it’s truly the defining factor of our life, it will come up naturally in conversation. It’s not something that you have to force. You don’t put on a face of “religion,” you simply are a child of God, and as such you live as if you are one.
There are going to be difficult situations that you are put in as a Christian in a professional workspace. Times when you have to be the bad guy, or you have to make a tough decision and it may look poorly on you. Instead of putting yourself in this box of “what if they hear the mean side of me and not the Christian side,” think of it as, “I am a Christian, and the decision that I make reflects that.”
The trick for Christianity in the professional workspace is that there is no trick and you simply don’t hide it. Let it shine through who you are when it comes up, talk about it.