No More Tyrants In the Workplace

HAVE you ever worked for someone who is temperamental, given to bouts of anger, who acts at times arbitrarily and unfairly? It's hard to work for people--or with people--who lack self-control; and it can be frightening if we think we could lose our job at any time.

Often, I've found, such situations relate to a simple question: Whom do we acknowledge as God? That is, who do we feel truly governs and controls our life? If we feel that our boss holds our life and our career in his or her hands, then we are setting up our boss as a god and we are vulnerable to the insecurity that necessarily comes with that belief. Do you really want a god that has bad days and good days? That has favorites in the office? This is what we end up with if we think and act as though our life, our job, and our career were in the hands of another person.

But if we recognize that God is actually divine Love, infinite, ever-present Spirit, inexhaustible good, then life is very different. Gone are the insecurity and fear. Instead we have a growing assurance of the authority of God over all creation, over our own life, and over all those we work with. We have a remedy for injustice and unfairness. We have a recourse to God's law, to His love.

Fine, you say, but how can I prove this? Moses declared the first of all the Commandments: ``Thou shalt have no other gods before me'' (Exodus 20:3). If we fear that someone else governs or controls our life, we are breaking this basic commandment. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science, writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, ``All is under the control of the one Mind, even God.'' (p. 544).

So we have a choice. We can maintain the spiritual fact that our life is in the hands of God, supreme good, or we can believe the falsehood that our well-being is in the hands of an undependable mortal. When fear or anger is evident, we are choosing the undependable mortal. When peace and assurance hold the fort in consciousness, we are choosing to worship and acknowledge the power and presence of God, divine Love.

Acknowledging the supreme authority of God has a very practical and noticeable effect. When God is in the midst of our thoughts, evil ceases to have any impact. We begin to see that it is not actually a power at all. The entire life of Christ Jesus illustrated that nothing could deprive man of the proof of God's care, of the evidence that God is supreme. Evil--sickness, corruption, wicked motives, hatred--lost all effect as Jesus brought to light the everlasting government of God.

This eternal activity of the Christ, presenting to consciousness the omnipotence of God and destroying the so-called effects of evil, is available to all today. When we acknowledge the presence of God in the workplace, we are simultaneously acknowledging that everyone working there is governed and directed by Him. The more we recognize that God, divine Mind, governs man, the freer we are from the belief that human will, a bad disposition, greed, or rivalry governs man. It comes back to the questions, Whom are we acknowledging as God? What power governs our motives and actions?

Having one God is absolutely necessary if we want to experience Christianity's healing power. At first, this may seem pretty demanding. But abiding by God's commandments brings us all the blessings and goodness that God gives. The workplace needs this practice of true Christianity. It places our life and everyone else's on a sure foundation.