Be gentle with me people, this is my maiden attempt at opening a thread.
This may be a simple exercise in blowing off steam. I have been a small town lawyer for some thirty years. Over the last three or four months I have run into something that is driving me up a wall. I recognize that to a great extent my livelihood is dependant on the human frailties of lust, greed and stupidity. Those I can deal with. Some time I even recognize them in myself. Lately the whole thing has been complicated by self-righteous.
The typical scenario is that a citizen comes in with a legitimate legal problem, which I should be able to recognize even if I can’t deal with it. Some time during the conversation the client sees fit to announce that he is a Christian. Apparently the client thinks that this information has some bearing on the merits of his cause, a species of a declaration that because his heart is pure, his strength is the strength of ten.
Now, I live in a part of the Mid-west that is lily white and almost universally Christian. For Pete sake, the nearest Jewish congregation is 60 miles away. Like Lake Woebegone, the town is pretty well divided between German Catholics and Norwegian Lutherans. In all likelihood the client’s advisory is a member of a mainline church and may well be of the same denomination and congregation as the client. When the issue is pushed it emerges that the client regards himself as more pious than the advisory, or nearly anyone else for that matter. Beyond this, I am starting to run into other lawyers who as part of their pitch insist on telling me that their client is “a good Christian.”
What is with these people? Do they think that their particular level of piety affords their self-serving approach to the facts with some special credibility? Do they really think that they are more deserving of immediate personal gratification because they don’t drink, don’t chew, and don’t go out with boys who do? Do they expect the Living God, the Father and Creator to divinely intervene in their penny-ante lawsuit? Are they looking for a discount, as if their faith is a buyers club? Do they announce their relationship with God to their mechanic, their plumber, their physician? Why are these people telling me? I don’t care! What are these people thinking?
All I can say here is that I can relate.
I went to a private Lutheran college where I was the resident Jew. They tried to cram religion into EVERYTHING!
During my last class of my major, Organization Management, we were require to read a book “Business Through the Eyes of Faith” and write a 3-5 page paper on it.
These are a few of the quotes I remember:
Business is all part of God’s plan
(paraphrase) you cannot be a good business person, if you are not a Christian.
My paper read something like this:
This is the most racist, narrow minded book I have ever had the misfortune to read. While I am not a Christian, I am reasonably sure I can manage in the business world without bilking the innocent people of their millions.
Beats the hell out of me what’s going on. It’s on a par with businesses who stick the little fishie onto their ads, as if to say, “You can trust me, because I believe in GOD!”
What maybe going on here is good old fashioned midwestern guilt, the type that would make Garrison Keillor spout off a monolouge faster than you can say “passive-aggressive.” In a world where we all dispise frivilous lawsuits and think of the sort of people who file frivilous lawsuits as the worst sorts of golddiggers, perhaps afirming one’s Christianity is a shorthand way of saying “I am a respectable person who wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think there was a legitamite reason, agree with me here, OK?” This is especially true in an area that is 100% Christian, where “Christian” means more “member of the community” than “follower of Christ.”
What makes me nuts is when these shit heels put their religious affiliation on resumes. I won’t even interview an applicant who mentions something like that. If they don’t have the basic common sense to know that that sort of horse shit is inappropriate in the work place, I don’t want them as a part of my organization. When I’m looking for a good engineer, drafter or technician they can be fundamentalist christians, atheists or worshipers of satan as far as I am concerned. I just don’t want to hear about it. These fucks act like it’s some sort of secret hand shake. They just don’t get it.