Work

By All Means, Write a Blog, But…

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I’ve been on LinkedIn since it debuted. In that time, despite all the lavish praise the business social media site has garnered, it’s done nothing for me. And it’s not for my trying.

Still some people swear by it.

The prevailing wisdom bandied about on LinkedIn is that writing a blog is one of the best things you can do for your career and for yourself as a growing, actualized, with-it person.

Really? A blog? How 1999!

I thought social media sites and microblogging drove a stake through the heart of bloggers everywhere. I thought blogs were the tools of wizened tech fiends who still program in COBOL and prefer to send their résumés not to Apple but to Xerox PARC. You know, anachronisms. Fogeys. People who wear polyester and tighten their belts above their navels.

Well, I was wrong; mark the calendar. Blogs are hotter than Hades.

So, because LinkedIn says you need one, you better be writing a blog.

As a blogger since 2001, I have some advice. It’s pretty simple, and it will spare you a lot of grief.

Find a theme for your blog. Something that will appeal to everyone. Like recipes for fattening foods made with organic ingredients that make them sound healthier than they are. Everyone likes to eat.

Go to Pinterest. Find what women about 60 years old like. Or since 60 is the new 50, what 50-year-old women like. Write about that. Quilting and knitting are safe so long as you avoid quilting and knitting controversies, such as which needles are best.

If you’re a man, talk about cars. Just don’t get too opinionated about any one make or marque.

In fact, if you’re going to write a blog, never get controversial. Write about stuff that is status quo that everyone can agree on. Or, if you want to seem cutting edge, write blog posts that concur with “thought leaders,” since nothing is better than ideas that seem radical on the surface but are really just warmed-over oatmeal that everyone can stomach.

Stay away from any topic that might get you writing about ideas that actually change society for the better. In fact, never put any opinions in your blog that might offend anyone. This is hard, since people are so easily offended by anything nowadays. Should you decide to write a recipe blog, don’t even get into the butter versus margarine versus lard battle. You never know when you’ll run into a lard hater out there. Those folks are vicious, plus they have long memories—probably because their cerebral arteries aren’t clogged with lard.

Oh, since LinkedIn is the site giving the advice on how it is in your best interest to have a blog so that the business world knows you are a serious person with serious ideas, better offer some business insights too. Just stay away from insights that challenge the state of current business ethics, the “loyalty” businesses have toward their employees, equitable pay or a living wage, and how meeting shareholder demands often means a company resorts to short-term thinking that hurts other people in the long run. For heaven’s sake, never mention anything like that.

And whatever you do, avoid the religion thing like the plague. You mention Jesus at your own peril. Too controversial. Not good for your blog or your career. Opposition to abortion or same-sex marriage? What are you, nuts? Not blog topics. Ever.

Even if you are a Christian blogger, never, ever, ever suggest that the Church can improve. Or that the Church has issues that need improving. Nor should you offer ideas on how the Church might improve. Didn’t you read this paragraph’s first two sentences? You’re not skimming this, are you?

Puppy & kittenRemember, everyone is walking on eggshells. Help them by not breaking any eggs. Because decisionmakers will Google your blog, and people who break eggs don’t get work, which, according to LinkedIn, is the sole reason for existence.

In fact, if you are going to write a blog, it may be best to write one that focuses on recipes intended for kittens. Or for puppies. Because you don’t want to show a preference for cats over dogs. Better add recipes meant for mice and rats, too, because mice and rat lovers are out there. Yes, they are weird. Oops, I didn’t just write that, did I? Just don’t include pictures of rats on your blog, because rats bother some people. And you NEVER want to bother anyone with your blog posts. Never, ever, ever.

So, in short, write a blog. Just be as innocuous as hell. Heaven knows hell doesn’t like to be challenged.

The Church, Tech, Ethics, Jaron Lanier, and the Destruction of the Middle Class

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Jaron Lanier - www.jaronlanier.comAfter reading my recent post “‘Free’ and the Destruction of Worth,” reader Brian Auten sent notice of a compelling Salon interview with tech futurist Jaron Lanier—“The Internet Destroyed the Middle Class”—in which the polymath suggests he and other prognosticators underestimated the negative impact the Internet would have on our lives.

As a musician, Lanier thought the personal freedom offered by the Internet would enable music makers to take greater control of their careers and enhance their freedom to create the kind of music they wanted to make, free from corporate interference. Sadly, the Internet has instead reduced the net worth of musicians and created a career wasteland for many of them.

In a bold confession, Lanier admits he was shortsighted concerning the negative impact, saying his naiveté helped fuel the downturn.

Lanier goes on to note that rather than freeing people to do what they want, the Internet has destroyed aspirations—especially those related to jobs. The promise that the Internet will let us pursue the job we want to create for ourself has instead been replaced with the reality that it and other tech tools are allowing fewer and fewer people to do the work that once employed thousands, leaving no options for the displaced.

While many will just nod their heads and say We told you so, Lanier brings up an ethical issue raised by the destruction of middle class jobs that few are discussing:

Do corporations have an ethical responsibility to society to create jobs simply to employ people, even if technology has rendered those jobs less essential?

This is a question that has bothered me since the economic meltdown of 2008. Because it seemed that at one time companies DID stay loyal to employees whose jobs were less essential. There was a long view that a working middle class was universally better than a nonworking middle class that would slide gradually into poverty. And it may very well be that attitude of support for the less essential employee made America great.

Globalization and the race to the cost bottom may have put pressure on companies to abandon this ethic, but the 2008 meltdown pretty much sealed the deal in their collective minds.

Which brings me, as it always does, to the Church.

In the fin de siècle period (around 1900), the American Church was actively addressing many changes in American business. As more women entered the workplace, the Church was concerned for their welfare, especially in what could have become a predatory environment for young, inexperienced women moving from farms to the burgeoning big cities. And this was only one area of concern and active involvement. Speaking to the business world was a huge concern for the Church.

Today, the Church seems more concerned with how to start a workplace Bible study than any greater vision related to social change and the general welfare of employees.

This paradigm shift has worked against the Church in the long run. American Christians no longer prioritize general human welfare. In the case of the typical workplace, the Church’s concerns are not the ethics and operation of that workplace and how Christ can impact it, but the Church thinks solely of how to preserve some aspect of institutional church operation within that sphere.

I contend this is a wrong, selfish mentality. We Christians should be less concerned with preserving traditional church functions and more with the general welfare of people. It’s as if we have no more confidence that the Church can survive because we are afraid of the world’s successes against traditional Christian bastions. So we operate from a position of desperation instead of from our position of strength in which all the riches of heaven are on our side.

What is today’s Church saying about the ethics of hiring people simply so those people can have a job? And how can this NOT have an impact on the Church itself? The starving man is more concerned with food than with the Gospel, but give him that food in the name of Jesus and his ears will suddenly open to the message of Christ. We see this demonstrated again and again in the Gospels and the Book of Acts.

What is the need? Meet the need. Then speak about Jesus. It could not be more simple.

In addition, the Church has decided in the last century that it has nothing to say to corporate leaders about other aspects of employee welfare. And where is the boldness, in the midst of the ongoing ethical meltdown in big business, from a Church that should be able to promise those businesses that if they give them their people, the Church can return a more ethical employee?

Instead, the primary Church goal is relegated to fighting the corporation to ensure that a handful of employees can enjoy a lunch break Bible study in a back room someplace. Yes, that may be needful, but God help us, the vision is so vanishingly small!

What tech has done to the workplace and general employment MUST be something the Church, like it once did 100 years ago, speaks to.

Tech is increasingly outpacing the ethical answers the Church once provided to society. In other news, it is now possible to print guns with 3D printers, those printers available to the average consumer. What does this or any other tech-driven issue mean for the Church?

Are we Christians asking these questions? If so, where are the answers?

Is the Church simply in survival mode—or are we Christians actively working toward addressing the most intractable issues of our day, issues that, in the end, affect every person on the planet?

If the Church can’t answer these questions, who will?

Radicalism and Reality (A Response to “Here Come the Radicals!”)

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Christianity Today has a smart piece on the rise of preaching a radical Christianity (“Here Come the Radicals!“). It’s a solid examination of “radical” voices in contemporary Christianity that are calling people to a faith that eschews the trappings of treacly Christian comfort and feel-good Evangelicalism.

As they say, read the whole thing. It’s an astute commentary.

Cerulean Sanctum readers will recognize a lot of the call for radicalism that some of these preacher/teacher/writers like Francis Chan, David Platt, and others demand. In fact, it’s heartening to read their books and hear some of the things that have bothered me for years finally published in the wider court of public opinion.

But there’s a disconnect between that radicalism and reality. This is also something I’ve talked about for years, but no preacher/teacher/writer with a national voice, publishing contract, or a megachurch pulpit ever takes on.

The buzzkill remark by Matthew Lee Anderson, author of “Here Come the Radicals!”:

“By contrast, there aren’t many narratives of men who rise at 4 A.M. six days a week to toil away in a factory to support their families. Or of single mothers who work 10 hours a day to care for their children. Judging by the tenor of their stories, being ‘radical’ is mainly for those who already have the upper-middle-class status to sacrifice.”

Bingo.

In 2003, the majority of Christian households I considered peers were single income. Today, none are. It’s crazy hard to sustain a single-income household anymore, and hardly anyone, no matter how radical, is up to the task. The economy is wrecking “simple living,” and the government plays fast and loose with real inflation numbers to make it look less horrifying than it is

Reality: I replaced the windshield wipers on my wife’s car yesterday and the cheapest I could get them was $25. That’s two to three hours salary for some people. For windshield wipers. How do people survive?

What does genuine Christian discipleship look like when everyone is working like crazy just to keep up with rapidly increasing costs of living? It’s one thing to be radical, but quite another when you get socked with a $15,000 hospital bill because your uninsured child needed an emergency appendectomy. Try paying that while working with street kids in the inner city while on donated support or working part time.

There’s another issue too.

So you feel called of God to be a doctor. You go to medical school. You end up with $350,000 or more in college and medical school debt, even if you go to a cheaper, no-name school. So, after graduation you, the newly minted doc, go to Africa to work as a doctor in an orphanage, just as the preachers of Christian radicalism would have you do.

How unlikely is that radical move to Africa? If your debt obligation makes it impossible to do something radical because you have to make serious cash to pay down your debt, does that put you in a position of earning hell for yourself because you fell into a comfortable suburban medical practice that charged enough for you to pay down that debt? Or do you simply bail on the debt in your pursuit of radicalism and hope someone else can absorb your failure to pay?

This is the reality for which radicalism offers no solutions.

Because there are no solutions within our present system. Too much of that system demands a certain adherence to the system or else. Yes, some people can flaunt that, but not everyone. If every Christian did the radical thing, then there would be no Christian doctors, lawyers, engineers, or any other professional in a career that demands much of its bearer in both time and money.

And after all, who is it who pays the support of those radicals who abandon the traditional lifestyle to work in an orphanage in Africa or save street kids in inner city America from a short, brutal life?

Notice this doesn’t even address the issue of the exhausted dad or the single mother mentioned in the quote above who is simply trying to get by. Or the caretaker dealing with sick and dying parents. On whom do we foist those in our care? Will the Church take care of them for us so we can be radical? Do we really just abandon them in their time of need? Where does this fall between “honor your father and mother” and “[he] who does not hate his own father and mother…cannot be my disciple”?

I’m not saying that God can’t come through with miraculous resolutions when we live “on the edge.” But at what point do we end up in a “you shall not put the Lord your God to the test” situation where we abandoned responsibility to pursue a radical Christianity?

I’m all for a radical faith. I’ve been saying for years we need it. But until Christians in the West address work-life issues with some modicum of sense, we’ll keep preaching a radicalness of faith the majority of Christians can attain only in their dreams.