Marla held a contest to select five ladies to join a team blog called Intellectuelle. I entered a piece and although I was not selected for the team, I was proud of the entry I submitted. I have it here for your reading pleasure.
Maple Syrup Ethics
A friend recently presented me with an ethical dilemma. It seems among her Christian friends she has noticed a trend of people making a verbal commitment to do one thing and then backing out when something more attractive comes along. In the most recent case, a friend had verbally accepted an “adequate” job offer – not the dream job but doable – and then was offered a much better one elsewhere. Since she had not signed on the dotted line, she felt she was completely justified in taking the second job, even telling my friend that she felt God protected her and kept her options open so she could have the better job. My friend wondered what I thought of this.
Having been faced with an almost identical situation several years ago, I already knew what my answer was. If you give your word, you keep your word. It is my conviction that to give your word is as good as a signed commitment. Even if it means an apparent loss, you keep your word and trust God to honor your commitment to be a person of integrity.
This is just one example of the challenges we face as we seek to live biblically in the world. At one time not so very long ago, a person’s honor and reputation was of paramount importance. Integrity, honesty and reliability mattered a great deal, especially in the business world and in the church. Now it is commonly accepted in our culture to cut corners and improve the bottom line by any means necessary in order to please the stockholders. This attitude does not stay in the business world. It filters down throughout society, even into our homes and churches.
Not too long after I received the email mentioned above, I was faced with my own ethical dilemma. At the store I discovered that a whole case of expensive maple syrup had been priced incorrectly and was fifty percent off because of the error. The frugal part of me thought – great! I can stock up and this will last us a long, long time. The law was even on my side because the store is required to sell the product at the price marked. But I wavered, my conscience already rebuking me. As I started to deliberate the situation, my husband asked me what I would want someone to do if I were the store owner and someone else discovered such a mistake. Enough said. He was right. He took off to let the stockperson know and I continued on with my shopping.
Sometimes it is inconvenient to be a person of integrity. Sometimes it would be more economically beneficial to convince ourselves that we are facing a gray area situation when we know deep down inside we aren’t. To buy that maple syrup when it was marked incorrectly and not alert the store would have been setting aside the Golden Rule. Although it may be out of fashion now in our culture, the following words of Christ are a critical guide as we go through each day.
So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
Matthew 7:12 (ESV)
If there is any hope for our culture, it is in people making each choice from a biblical perspective. As Kenneth Myers writes in All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes, culture is not something imposed on us. It is millions of people making billions of decisions each day. Which way will the culture move today because of the choices we make?
I read your article on Marla’s site and I disagree with your analysis of the job offer thing. There was nothing wrong with your friend in taking a job that would be better for her and her family, as long as she was up front with the first job about it and perhaps even gave them a chance to meet the second offer. Do you think the first job would have had any qualms of letting her go if there was a drop in business, or if they decided she wasn’t a good fit for the position? Of course not.
I also think your premise about the job situation goes against your “Two talent living,” presuming of course that one of those talents is to provide well for the family and NOT to benefit any outside employer who makes the first offer.
I agree with you Sallie. It’s a very poor witness to give one’s word then break it just because you don’t have a letter offfer to sign. In thinking about a comment of the company’s behavior – we are to live by God’s principles, not man’s. I do not believe an argument of what another person, or company, would do is a valid argument against keeping God’s principles in our life.
Seems to me one of God’s most basic principals is to provide for the family first. I don’t see adhering to someone else’s sloppy business practices as more “Christian.”
Thanks, Sallie, for the reminder of how highly Christ values our words. I have the feeling that this came at a good time to help me to be watchful of what I say I will do when God hasn’t clarified my or my family’s way yet. It is so easy to give our word to someone- either because the offer or request seem convienent at the time or because we don’t want to deal with a sticky relationship situation by saying, ‘no, I have other priorities’ or, ‘I don’t know yet, I have to check with my husband and God first.’
It is very sobering to see how highly God values our promises in the Old Testament (Numbers chapter 30, Psalms 15:4, Eccl. 5:4-7), and how He makes the rules even tougher in the New by telling us just a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ is the same as swearing an oath (Matt. 5:33-37). But if words don’t matter to us how will we ever be able to really trust God’s Words?
Just as suggestion, Sallie, it IS a little unclear in your article just what happened with this person’s job offer- it leaves to the imagination just how serious the situation actually was.
Also, you only reference God’s commands to us on keeping our spoken word and being honest very vaguely. I don’t know if that was intentional or just an oversight, but, truly, if all we have to stand on is our culture in the past and our conscience, than we don’t have a very strong voice in this world. The only thing in the universe that really matters is God and His thoughts, all the rest is shifting sand that we are free to form to our personal comfort.
🙂
Thanks, ladies, for the comments and feedback. I do appreciate them. It was a brief piece (and I think I even went over the 500 word suggested limit!) so perhaps I wasn’t as clear as I could have been.
I guess my point is that Christians should be people of integrity and one of the examples I used was that if we make a commitment, we should stick with it. Our culture is rampant with people not keeping commitments whether it be divorce, bankruptcy, infidelity, etc. Our culture is so pragmatic that everything is about what feels the best, will benefit me the most, etc. Elena’s comment about businesses getting rid of people is very true. My husband was downsized from a job and his department outsourced. Businesses don’t hesitate to get rid of people if it is the best thing for the bottom line.
As Christians, I don’t think the bottom line is what should motivate us, including when shopping for maple syrup. Our motivation should be walking in accordance with God’s biblical principles (as JoAnne said). I truly believe that if we walk according to God’s principles, even if it doesn’t make sense from a worldly perspective, that God honors that desire to be biblically obedient and He will work things out together for our good (Romans 8:28), even if that “good” is something we would not have forseen or anticipated.
HTH!