A CEO, CUSTOMER, AND EMPLOYEE GO TO CHURCH

Reading Laurel Dykstra’s The Other Side of Exodus reminded me of a series of recent conversations. As I relate those conversations, you can anticipate a question, “Do you know which side of Exodus you are on?” Here’s the short form of those conversations.

I recently heard a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, saying that his company is overwhelmed by demands, “Not only do I feel that my company is oppressed, I myself feel oppressed.” Upon reflection, the collective demands of regulators, shareholders, customers, and employees do indeed lend an oppressive atmosphere.

I heard a customer of the very same company, lamenting about the quality of his recent big-ticket purchase, “They just don’t respond to my phone calls. Customers are oppressed and I myself feel oppressed.” His lament has merit.

That Fortune 500 company relies on Mexican Americans to make its products. By any standard, they are poor, often lacking basic necessities to live. Think about where they are at, in the bottom 20% of wage earners who receive a mere 3% of the total American income, a trend that is somehow worsening. Check the Census Bureau stats for more of these un-Christly facts.

Income, however, is not a reflection of intelligence, as evidenced by one such worker, who commented, “We number in the thousands, yet we are weak. We feel oppressed and I myself feel oppressed.”

This CEO-customer-employee microcosm reveals a cycle of oppression, a pattern unclear to the oppressor yet clear to the one oppressed. The solution to this conundrum has to fall outside of some stereotypical suggestion that draws a line, tossing evil wealthy capitalists on one side and poor innocent ethnic groups on the other. The real answer is infinitely subtle, intangible, cerebral, and…spiritual.

We start to get at the answer by knowing that God is always asking, “Where are you?” As Denise said, “Our responses may not be decisive, but they are crucial.”

A response to God may not remove the physical condition of oppression, but it is a start. A response to God will not redistribute income tomorrow, but it does redistribute righteousness today. A response to God will not bring that CEO, customer, and employee into utopian harmony, but it might bring them to the same church.

With God, we cannot be oppressed.

Dykstra’s reading is sure to raise more questions than answers, but sometimes One answer is all it takes. Now, really, which side of Exodus are you on?