A Right Response to Wrongful Treatment

Michael Zigarelli

From: Christianity 9 to 5 (Beacon Hill Press, 1997)

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Step One: Don't Resist and Don't Immediately Respond

My friend Sal, a reasonably devout Christian, recently had a run-in with his boss.  Sal was clearly the next in line to move out of a cubical and into an office that boasted an impressive view of the city.  Along with the office came natural light, privacy, and respite from the office chaos just by closing the door.

Seniority dictated entitlements in all areas of the firm - compensation, promotions, schedule preference and so on - and it had always been used as the sole criterion for one's exodus from cube-land.  Now, with the imminent departure of an office resident came Sal's long-awaited opportunity.

He told me that all day on a Wednesday, while awaiting the official nod from the powers-that-be to relocate his stuff, he had been humming "Movin' On Up," the theme song from the 1970s sitcom The Jeffersons.  Sal had even identified the location of several sturdy cardboard boxes for the transfer of his books and files from his congested shelves.  Then came the blow.  Sal wasn't getting the office; instead, a female colleague who Sal had conjectured was sleeping with the boss, found herself in need of those cardboard boxes.  New company policy: offices will be awarded at the discretion of the boss.  Sal was beside himself.

Point of decision.  Whether one has a cubical or an office with a view may appear completely trivial to many of us, but to Sal, it mattered a lot.  When he saw Colleen settling into his rightful place, Sal, in that instant, had a choice to make regarding how to deal with his anger.  Unfortunately, such a potent emotion can confound one's better judgment and, in the heat of the moment, we do or say things that we later regret.  So it was with Sal as he promptly stormed to his boss' naturally-lit desk, demanded an explanation, and brashly insinuated that Colleen got the office in exchange for sex.

Not smart.  And certainly not scriptural.  But all of the scripture verses, Biblical principles, and poignant sermons Sal had absorbed to that date were dominated by his anger.  Even his normally-reliable common sense couldn't save him.  He responded in knee-jerk fashion with open aggression and, consequently, was later penalized for it.

A dispassionate examination of this event leaves us shaking our heads.  Why would anyone respond so tactlessly?  Who in their right mind yells at the boss?  When we think back on our own lives, though, most of us can easily recall a time when we did something just as bone-headed.  Perhaps it didn't happen in the workplace, but we let anger control us and later wished we hadn't.  Injustice visited us and we threw objectivity to the wind.  We responded instinctively.  Quickly.  Verbally.  Probably improperly.  Such a response is a function of the way we're made.

James spoke to this issue of our impetuous nature, offering a timeless admonition:

"When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal.  Or take ships as an example.  Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go.  Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts.  Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.  The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body.  It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell." (James 3:3-6)

Our tongues get us in at least as much trouble as any other part of our body.  James warns us here that they can be like a vehicle out of control, leaving a woeful path of destruction in their wake.  He then goes on relate the discouraging news in verse eight that "no man can tame the tongue."  However, this does not relieve us from our obligation to put some reigns on it.  Christ-likeness entails being "quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry" (James 1:19).

When confronted by some type of unfair treatment at work, then, the lesson of James 3 (and Romans 5, and 1 Thessalonians 5, and many other places in scripture) is to avoid an immediate reply, as difficult as that may be, and to distance ourselves from the situation.  That is, the first step in responding to unfair treatment is to tighten the reigns on our tongue and initially to retreat.  Then, while in refuge, we must do something that may be even more uncharacteristic in such situations: we must follow the Master's example and get on our knees.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, the One who was facing the most egregious unfair treatment ever perpetrated fell to His knees and spoke to His Father.  He did not run, He did not hide, He did not instantly seek counsel or invoke His rights.  Anguished, He prayed, first that the injustice may pass Him by, but then that the Father's will be done, regardless the fact that it might culminate in His death.  Jesus's response to the pending travesty began with a retreat and a conversation with God.

Along similar lines, King David was in exile because his son Abselom had turned against him.  Psalm 55 affords us some trenchant insight into David's fear, his anger, his grief, and the alternative responses with which he wrestled.  David first contemplates flight writing: "'Oh that I had the wings of a dove!  I would fly away and be at rest - I would flee far away and stay in the desert; I would hurry to my place of shelter far from the tempest and the storm.'" (vv. 6-8).  In the next verses, however, he entertains notions of a fight with God as the avenger: "Confuse the wicked, O Lord, confound their speech, for I see violence and strife in the city...Let death take my enemies by surprise; let them go down alive to the grave, for evil finds lodging among them." (vv. 9, 15).  Finally, though, David reconciles himself to the most appropriate starting point whenever confronting unfair treatment: trust in God and confidence that He is at work.  He writes in verses 16, 17 and 22: "But I call to God and the Lord saves me.  Evening, morning and noon, I cry out in distress and he hears my voice...Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall."

David is now resigned to the promise that God will placate his trepidation, bringing him the inner peace he so desperately craves.  And in doing so, David offers us the same lesson of Gethsemane: our first reaction to unfair treatment is not flight (i.e., quitting our job), not to fight (i.e., immediate open aggression), but to pray.  At the critical moment where your emotions begin to consume you - at this definitive point of decision - select prayer as your first step to redress the wrong.  It will be the turning point in this process.

Step Two: Reflect On Your Needs and Your Boss' Needs

It's at about this point that one might begin to dismiss this approach to overcoming unfair treatment as patently unrealistic.  One might protest: "Are you telling me that when my firm ratchets up my workload by 20 percent because they're too cheap to hire more people, that I'm supposed to just pray?!  Prayer won't get me home in time for dinner, pal.  Action will."

Prayer is only the first step in the process.  It simultaneously affords God the opportunity to drain some of our anger, to offer us His wisdom, and to prevent us from doing or saying something we'd later regret.  From here, though, unless He directs us otherwise, we begin to take action - assertively, but respectfully.  Christ Himself advised us that "If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you" (Matt. 18:15).  Clearly, it is entirely appropriate - arguably, mandated - that we take action and address our boss directly regarding the decision or circumstance we perceive as unfair.  Before broaching that topic with him, however, we should prepare a "respectful" response: a response that considers not only our needs, but those of the boss as well.

Admittedly, this is tough.  We don't care about our boss' needs at this moment.  In fact, his needs are the last thing we want to think about after all that he's done to us.  However, all of the teachings on servanthood, indeed Christ's living example of the principle, call us to succeed in this difficult task.

To effectively consider your boss' needs, begin with a list of the possible reasons why your boss may really have made the decision that angered you - in this case, why he increased your work load.  You recall the reason that he gave to you, but there may be other underlying factors involved as well.  Put yourself in his shoes and think about what these factors might be.

Hypothetically, let's say your list looks like this:

• He needs to stay within the budget and could not afford to hire more help.

• He does not have the time to recruit and hire more help for the department.

• He is responding to the demands of his boss who insisted on this solution.

• He knows that there are only a few people in the department that he can count on in a crunch and you're one of them.

From this list, you can now ascertain the specific needs that must be met by any "alternative solution" you present to your boss: it cannot go over budget, it cannot require too much time to implement, it must satisfy your boss' boss, and it must assure that the work gets done right.  Many solutions may satisfy these interests.  Your boss has chosen one of them, taking the position that your work load should be increased.

Thus, your strategy here, well-articulated in books like Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury, is, for the moment, to forget about the boss' actual decision (i.e., his "position") and instead, to focus on his needs that led to the decision in the first place.  In doing so, you may identify other possible solutions to his problem that meet not only his needs, but your own as well.  Focusing on individuals' needs rather than on their stated positions is elemental to crafting a solution that satisfies and serves all parties involved.  And it is the centerpiece of any "assertive but respectful" approach to addressing unfair treatment.

So let's assume that you conclude the real issues here are money and time: your boss can't afford another $25,000 a year in salary and $10,000 more in benefits for a new hire and because he's too overworked, he doesn't have the time to investigate alternative resolutions to the workload problem.  By uncovering his core interests in this situation, you may now be in a position to satisfy these needs in a way that doesn't entail increasing the work load (thereby satisfying your own needs as well).  Hiring temps or independent contractors alleviates the benefit burden; moreover, it does not permanently increase the size of the department, so any budgetary strain may be temporary.  You may therefore have another possibility to satisfy the boss' financial concerns.

But don't stop there.  If you're going to make such a suggestion, go the extra mile and get some estimates for him.  Do the groundwork for hiring someone by making a few phone calls.  Identify what might be the best price in advance of your meeting with the boss to alleviate some of his burden in this process.  In doing so, you may very well remove a stumbling block to the viability of this solution.  You have saved your boss much of the time required to implement your solution.

The point here is basic.  Before you set foot in the boss' office to address the injustice you perceive, consider the other side of the issue.  Try to put away your anger at this person for the moment, to identify his needs to the best of your ability, to generate several options that will meet both those needs and your own, and to carry some of his burden in the process.  Although this tactic doesn't guarantee a solution to your problem, it is a respect-laden approach that could maximize whatever chance you have of redressing the unfair treatment.

Step Three: Respond With Gentleness

It's now time to respond verbally.  If you're like I am, though, the greatest obstacle to accomplishing your goal here is not your boss, but yourself.

For many of us, civility is not necessarily our forte after we have been wronged.  Although we may know intellectually that we must keep our emotions in check, as soon as we lay our eyes on our oppressor, the guy who just dumped another truckload of files on our desk, our commitment to this lofty teaching mysteriously absconds and our old nature takes control.  I recently crossed paths in the men's room with a superior whose subjective, short-sighted evaluation of my work deprived me of a several thousand dollar bonus.  While exchanging brief pleasantries with him, all I could think about was shoving his head in the toilet and giving it a good flush!

Such thoughts can sound the death knell for an assertive, respectful, scriptural approach to our problem.  All of our effort to this point will be for naught if we do not, when engaging the boss, contain our emotions and respond in gentleness.

Webster's dictionary defines "gentle" with such words as polite, generous, kind, tame, serene, patient, and meek.  It is an attribute that is clearly embodied in the Person of Christ.  Jesus was gentle in the face of all kinds of potential adversity: when preaching a new doctrine, when run out of His hometown of Nazareth, when admonishing His disciples, when He stood before the Sanhedrin, when He faced death before Pilot, and countless other times.  So too, we are called to personify gentleness throughout our lives, but especially during its most contentious moments.  Philippians 4:5, for example, directs Christians to "Let your gentleness be evident to all...," and 2 Timothy 2:24 reinforces the principle, instructing that "the Lord's servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful."  Similarly, Paul tells Titus to "Remind the people...to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and to show true humility toward all men" (Titus 3:1-2).  Gentleness is indeed the hallmark of a Christian.

However, God does not simply proclaim our duty to be gentle without also assuring us of its value.  In the Old Testament, we learn that "a gentle tongue can break a bone" (Prov. 25:15).  In the context of our discussion here, this means that there are ways to break our boss' bones that are more preferable than the traditional "openly aggressive" techniques.  Stated differently, expressing our concerns gently may gain us swifter recourse than will our more instinctive approaches.

Another benefit of gentleness is found in Psalms 34:12-13 where David writes: "Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days, keep your tongue from evil..."   That is, a gentle disposition in everything we do is the vehicle to a happier life - in and out of the workplace.

Most Christians know such things implicitly, but it is still the exception for us to actually apply this principle on the job.  In this sometimes despotic environment, we easily rationalize "an eye for an eye" because it is the cultural norm, thereby turning our backs on the entire New Covenant.  But God doesn't do loopholes.  He permits no exemption for those of us employed by a curmudgeon.  Instead, the Lord counsels us that when we finally confront our boss about unfair treatment, regardless of what he's done and regardless of how he responds to us, gentleness is to be our modus operandi.

Step Four: Patiently Endure While Working To Drop It Altogether

Now let's say, hypothetically of course, that the top dog denies your appeal to return your workload to a level that is humanly achievable.  He flatly refuses to consider augmenting the staff in any way and he doesn't seem to care that you now have a lot less time for your family.  He simply retorts matter-of-factly that the industry has gotten so competitive that we all have no choice but to bear some hardship.  Then he gives you one of those patronizing, canned lines about being a good team player and doing your part.

You seemed to have done everything by the Book to this point.  You initially backed off, you prayed, you considered the boss' needs and sought ways to meet those needs, you approached the subject privately and gently in his office, and you bit your tongue when he scoffed at your suggestions.  And for all of this effort, you lost the battle.  Miserably.  It wasn't even close.

Time to go ballistic?  Time to complain or sulk or steal stuff or enjoy more extended trips to the water cooler?  Time to slash the boss' tires?  Not exactly (although by now, every fiber of our being yearns to do so).  Time to apply one of the most excruciating principles in scripture: it's time to patiently endure a trial.

An assertive response is one that persistently seeks to preserve our personal worth, needs, and convictions.  However, it by no means assures us that those things will in fact be preserved - immediately or ever.  And for those of us who tend to be impatient, we are tempted at this point to throw up our hands and say: "enough is enough!"  Openly and passively aggressive responses are looking pretty attractive right now - especially since it seems that everyone else is traveling those routes.  It's almost impossible to resist being corrupted in such an environment.

But God calls us to resist and, furthermore, to patiently endure.  And here is the place where so many Christians seem to recoil.  We drop the ball at this point because God is simply not making any sense.  We have been faithful to Him and have tried to obey the rules.  In fact, we've been pretty good by most standards.  And now He rewards us with hardship?  This seems like nothing short of betrayal!  After all we've done for God, why have we become recipients of His wrath?  It's completely unfair for Him to ask for patience.

But consider this: isn't this exactly the attitude of many children with respect to some of their parents' actions?  Don't children resist just about any form of discipline at the time it is administered?  We know that parents discipline their children out of love for them - to shape them, to mold them and to train them to behave properly.  It is, in fact, for the child's own good.  We know these things.  So why is it so difficult to accept that our Heavenly Father may be doing the same thing for us?

Let's face it, we Christians are not all that Christ-like.  We fall light years short of His perfect standard.  To usher us toward that standard - to shape us and to train us - the Lord sometimes uses suffering.  It's not a punishment, although we may choose to see it this way, but an instrument of love used for our greater good.

Patient endurance of trials develops in us attributes that make us more Christ-like.  First, it gives us a greater ability to gracefully overcome life's storms.  They are inevitable and numerous, as they were for Jesus Himself, and we can only learn to cope with them properly through experience.  Just as a good work out makes us stronger for the next one, so too patient endurance of trials increases our capacity to endure.

We also develop a more earnest reliance on God through this process.  When we examine our hardships in retrospect and see how God did indeed come through for us and maybe even changed us for the better, we are that much more confident during our next bout of suffering that God is there with us and that He'll come through again.  Having seen this process come to fruition, we now trust Him and depend on Him more than we did before.  Patient endurance bolsters our dependency and our faith.

In short, God is building Christian character within us.  As we persevere through trials, our persona can be transformed to more closely resemble Christ's.  And when this happens, it precipitates something miraculous: our perspective on everything in life changes.  As we are sanctified and begin to see the world through the eyes of Christ, burdens seem less burdensome, daily irritants seem less irritating, unfair treatment seems less unfair, persecutors seem less sinister, personal needs become less important, and our fears and anxieties abate.  And into this vacuum rushes hope.  As we start to at long last embrace the principles of the Sermon on the Mount, we gain a confident expectation about the future, about our ability to handle anything life has in store for us.  Moreover, with our faith fortified, we gain greater hope for eternal salvation.  This is the chain of events Paul speaks of in Romans 5 where he boldly asserts that: "suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope" (vv. 3-4).  It is out of love - out of a desire to give us hope - that God permits suffering in our lives.  As with a woman in labor, from something overwhelmingly painful comes a blessing of unspeakable proportions.

This is why scripture makes the seemingly bizarre claim in several places that we are to rejoice when suffering comes our way.  Most notably, in James, we do not get more than two verses into the Book before encountering this truth.  James says hello in verse one and then, in his quintessential, no-nonsense fashion, immediately presents one of the most exacting tasks in all of scripture:

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of any kind, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.  Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking in anything." (James 1:2-4).

…As Christ was mature and complete, not lacking in anything.  Suffering produces perseverance which sanctifies us and gives us hope.  For this reason, we are to "give thanks in all circumstances" (1 Thess. 5:18), including those times when our jobs and our bosses make our lives miserable.  God is working here, shepherding us down a path that will ultimately culminate in real relief from our burden: the ability to accept our circumstances as they are and to drop the anger we feel toward our boss.

Dropping our anger is the last footprint on this long, agonizing journey.  We see this instruction conveyed to the Ephesian church as Paul writes:

"Get rid of all bitterness, rage, and anger..." and instead, be "kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you" (4:31-32).

But when you think about it, is it really possible to forgive your boss and to just "get rid" of your anger?  Probably not if we stubbornly adhere to our conventional responses to workplace injustices.  Certainly not if we have allowed our hardship to engender bitterness and resentment.  However, if we've patiently endured, heartened by the knowledge that God is transforming us, if we've truly "set (our) minds on things above, not on earthly things" (Col. 3:2), no boss' behavior is insurmountable.  No managerial decision is unforgivable.  In fact, seldom will we be ruffled by the subjective decision-making that is so prevalent in our organizations.

Instead, the fruit of patient endurance - a changed heart - will enable us to consider this workplace matter against the backdrop of eternity, to put it in proper perspective, and to firmly believe that "our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us" (Rom. 8:18).  Thankfulness for God's "indescribable gift" (2 Cor. 9:15) will supplant any bitterness we harbor, paving the way for genuine forgiveness.  And then, by God's grace, the anger will be gone.

When things do not go our way at work, when we are treated unfairly or get some other raw deal, we have the option to patiently endure the outcome, allowing God to mature us and to help us drop our anger.  Even when we cannot find justice in the workplace, through Him we can always find solace.

Michael Zigarelli, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Management at Messiah College and the editor of the Christianity9to5.org.