It’s not possible to live a Christian life in our present age. I can’t possibly make a difference. Being a Christian at work isn’t going to put food on my table. Being a Christian at work could get me fired. Being a Christian could keep me from getting a promotion. No on cares if I show signs of being a Christian. I can’t afford to be a Christian at work. Nice guys always get the raw deal.

   Do you ever have thoughts such as these? I know I have. I’m sure many people have these thoughts everyday. But what good does it do to think about them? We can’t act on them can we? The workplace is no place for our faith; or is it? One might live as a Christian outside of work, but why do we check our Christian faith at the door or time-clock? I certainly have. God told me, I was wrong.

   Many people sit back at the table, sipping their coffee with one hand, reading the paper in the other, and complain about how sad the world is today. We think about where we’ve been as a country and we think now, regretfully where it’s going. Now, there are a lot of colorful words that I could use to describe the state our country is in today, but wait, I have more describing to do.

   I can also use these colorful words to describe the youth of today, the politicians who are driving our country into the abyss, Godless corporations that have no care in the world about its employees. Indeed this is no place to be a Christian today, so it may seem. There are still so many people and politicians to be blamed, but wait, allow me to posit a more likely person to blame for the many woes of our country today.

   While you may have thought otherwise, the people I am going to blame today, for the sad condition of our country and its youth, is not politicians and corporations, nor even the many anti-Christians and atheist organizations and promoters. No, today I am going to blame you! That’s right, I’m going to blame you Christians. But wait a minute, I’m a Christian too, therefore in all fairness, I must blame myself as well. I do.

You think I’m joking? You think I’m just another crazy, left-wing loon blaming the right-wing Christians? No. In fact I’m quite serious. But now that I’ve got your attention, let me explain the premise of my argument.
I’ve learned that both I and many of my fellow Christians, are to blame for all the anti-Christian troubles this country has faced over the past several hundred years. I realize it may be too late to say this, but I do say this with all respect.

    It is more so my intent here to lay out before you, where we as Christians have gone wrong and what we can do, individually as well a together, to begin repairing the tears in the fabric of our society. Now understand what I provide you with today, is not my own personal viewpoint, but rather plain observations, that I and many others have made, but have overlooked.

   There was once a time in our country when many companies were owned and run by believing Christians. So much so were they believing Christians, that they provided times throughout the workday, for both prayer and Bible study. In fact, I’ve heard that right here in Southern California, there was an airline manufacturing company that provided a Bible study at their plant.

  Now, it’s my understanding that this was a fairly widespread practice back in the 1700s, 1800s and even early 1900s. Barring few exceptions, where has this practice gone to today? Why was the practice stopped? Was there a lack of Christians in the workplace? Did the number of Christian workers drop dramatically?

  I know there are a myriad of companies today that are clearly run by Christians and they even promote their Christianity in their business models. That’s a great thing. Why don’t more businesses do this? Where are all the Christian business owners today? Now as I propose these questions, I must be clear, I am speaking of very large companies. I’m asking about nation-wide and even international companies that employ hundreds of thousands of workers. One would think that in a company of these sizes, there must be at least a few thousand Christians.

I’m sure that there are thousands of small companies throughout our country today that operate via a Christian business model, and many might even allow employees to have Bible study during business hours. That’s wonderful. However, not only would I like to see more doing it, but I’d like to see many more mega-size companies jump on the band wagon. Later, I’m going to suggest ways in which we Christians can make this happen.

  So back to why I blame myself and my fellow Christians? I lay the blame on us because we have acted as if we were weak. Most of us simply said, “I can’t make a difference.” We sat in our safe, comfortable homes, shouting obscenities at the evening news cast, and complained about the politicians. We complained about corporate greed. We complained about the prices of our groceries. We complained about the wages we’re paid, by our employers.

  There’s really not much at all that we didn’t complain about. We complained because we have to work on Sundays. We complained about all the ways that our faith was being oppressed and belittled. We complained because some nut job wanted the Ten Commandments removed from a school or a courthouse. Of course I could go on and on.

   But what is the real reason for most of our so-called anti-Christian woes today? It’s us. We are to blame. We can’t point the finger at anyone else, though not for a lack of trying, I’m sure. We point at the politicians, atheists, company CEOs. Actually, the only people that we don’t point our finger at, is ourselves.

   You and I are to blame, because when some judge in our court system stood up and declared prayer in school, to be unconstitutional, we did nothing. Sure, there were a few protesters gathered on a street corner, waving signs and yelling some inaudible chant. But what really happened here, is that we sat at home, like we have always done, and yelled obscenities at the evening news.

   So now we have made school a battlefield. We have dug the trenches. We packed their bags with MREs, and sent our children up to the front lines to face the advancing forces. Then, we sat back and yelled obscenities at the morning newscast. Thank goodness we now have 24/7 news channels. What would we have occupied ourselves with while waiting for the evening news to come around again, so that we could begin the cycle all over again?

   While our children are off, engaged in hand-to-hand combat in the trenches of the school battlefield, There is yet another judge whom slams his gavel down and now tells us that the Ten Commandments must go. Who are these Judges? Where do they come from? Alas, another battle front has emerged. Once again, I see a small group of protesters waving their signs and chanting with determination, as more of our Christian religion falls by the wayside.

   What did the group do at the end of the day? They dropped there heavy, chant-wielding signs to the ground, disbanded, returned to the comforts of their homes, turned on the evening newscast, and you guessed it, shouted obscenities at their televisions. Another fine day on the western-front.

   The next day this band of protestors is called to the home of its commander-in-chief. Battle plans are drawn. New signs and chants are prepared and tested. The meeting place is filled with fury, with rage, as the commander-in-chief points out the newest battlefront.

   Suddenly I had to use the commander’s restroom. He points me the way down the hall. Moments later, emerging back into the hallway, my eyes darted from wall to wall. With each step I took, a room here, a room there. “It must be here somewhere,” I think to myself. “No. It’s nowhere to be found.” I silently return to the war room, and join the others.

   Later, after our commander dismissed us, and I made the short trek down the walkway, passing the homes of my fellow Christian warriors. I began to wonder if they had “them” on display in their homes. My sub-conscience was scratching it’s head. Here I was asking myself, if my fellow Christians had a leg to stand on, in this battle to keep the Ten Commandments on display at our local courthouse.

However, as I drew closer to my own home, I stumbled and fell to the grass along the sidewalk. Not only did my fellow Christians not have a leg to stand on in this battle, but neither did I. I eventually picked myself up and made my way into the house. I was able to make it to my Lazy-Boy recliner. I twisted and distorted my dreadful excuse of a body and fell back into my safe, comfortable chair, and thought about what a fool I had been, hooking up with my fellow Christians, to protest the removal of the Ten Commandments from the courthouse.

   Why was I the fool? Why did I suddenly see my fellow Christians as fools? We had been through so much together. We had spent so many hours standing on street corners, waving our signs, singing out our chants. Why did I suddenly lose my heart in this war against the Ten Commandments?

   Why? Because I had found myself with no leg to stand on. It dawned on me, that nowhere in my very own home, would one find the Ten Commandments on display. Honestly, now that I took the time to quiet my mind and think about the war, I realized I had no clue what the Ten Commandments actually were.

   I knew they were important. I’ve heard about them all my life. I’d seen them on display each week at my church, I just can’t recall where at church, there were displayed. My mind rushed through the church yard and in through the door. I hadn’t found them yet, but I knew they were there. I wore myself out in my frantic search, to find a leg to stand on. Yet I could not find them.

   These Ten Commandments which I and my fellow Christians so cherished, were nowhere to be found, neither on the grounds of our church nor within its walls. There were no displays of the Ten Commandments, and still, I could only even recite a couple of them, at best. My mind struggled to recall recent sermons about them, but to no avail.

   I couldn’t recall our pastor ever speaking of them in church, yet, here we were, a bunch of pious, middle-aged men and women ready to follow our commander-in-chief onto the battlefield to defend that courthouse display of the Ten Commandments, and not one of us displayed them in our own homes and they’re not even displayed in our church.

©2016 Clayton Moore