Two Ways News is a weekly collaboration between Tony Payne and Phillip Jensen – a newsletter and podcast on a topic to encourage gospel thinking for today (subscribe at twoways.news).
A discussion of the moral question: How should we respond when our workplace or school wants us to take a stand about some social issue that we think differently about? What should we do, for example, when ‘Wear it Purple Day’ comes around in support of LGBTQ+ rights? Wear a purple tie and keep our head down? Or ‘forget’ to? And what biblical principles should inform our decision?
The next episode is Paris Olympics Scandal! The previous episode is God the Inscrutable.
WEAR IT PURPLE
A case study in moral thinking
Tony Payne: Philip, today we want to talk about a topic that you’ve been invited to speak about recently. What was this talk about?
Phillip Jensen: I was invited to do a talk with a group of business people on Wear It Purple Day. These business people were raising the question, because in late August, there is a day set aside by the Wear It Purple community who persuades schools and businesses to wear purple at work for that day. Now these people who invited me didn’t want to wear purple; they wanted to wear their normal clothes but felt obligated, felt they were letting down the team, felt that they were being compromised by symbolizing something that they didn’t agree with. They just weren’t sure how to continue to work in the office when the office is officially calling upon you to ‘Wear It Purple’. They wanted to know what do you do in this case?
TP: For those who aren’t familiar with what that symbolism is or what that organization is promoting, why are they wanting you to wear purple?
PJ: It’s a cause of inclusiveness of the LGBTQ+ community within society, but also within the office. This has happened a lot in schools as well, and many Christian families have found it difficult that their children have come home saying we should all wear purple tomorrow. And the children are being taught about inclusion of others, which is a nice thing, but it’s an inclusion of a particular group that is in mind, namely the rainbow community.
TP: Yes, parents have talked to me about this. And what do you do on those kinds of days when, for reasons of conscience you’re uncomfortable being seen to promote a particular view that you personally don’t believe in, but you expose your child to be the only one in the class who’s not wearing purple and you don’t want your child to be persecuted or isolated or in some way made to feel on the outer? And yet you also don’t want to say to your child that we’re fully on board with this whole program as well. So it can be very difficult.
PJ: Yes, it’s an inclusion which, like most inclusions, will involve exclusion. But in this situation, the Christian is dealing with symptoms rather than diseases. That is, sin is the disease that gives rise to all kinds of sins. And we Christians are often knee jerk quick to attack the symptomatic sins, and caught out in hypocrisy about sins, when what we really need to deal with is the disease.
For example there are society norms that are terrible. Greed is a terrible thing. Advertising gambling is a terrible thing. And yet, we’re not necessarily attacking that or opposing that. We will run out on the football field with an advertisement for a gambling process or for a hotel and its drinking practices and seem to not have a problem with it.
TP: The only time we poke up our heads and get all upset is only over certain issues. And so we can be seen to be hypocrites or inconsistent by objecting to just one kind of issue.
PJ: Whereas what we’re really objecting to is the sin that has given rise to gambling, or whatever the particular issues are at the time. And so the trouble with Wear It Purple Day in a sense is it just raises one issue. And in our reaction to that one issue, we can make it seem that this is what Christianity is fundamentally about, when in fact, it’s just one of hundreds of issues that we could complain about.
TP: So, you’re talking to a group of people in this business context—what are they going to do as Christians in this context? How do you start?
PJ: Well, I think the first step is to think carefully about the actual situation you’re facing. What is being implied or signified by taking action or by not taking action in the context in which you work? So if you work in an organization that always wears uniforms, well, you’ve accepted that working here means I’m going to wear the company uniform. If the company uniform changes for a particular reason, you need to work out whether you’re going to disagree with wearing this particular form of the uniform, like the Manly rugby league players did a couple of years ago. They wore the Manly uniform every week. But the uniform changed for a particular round.
TP: ‘Pride round’, wasn’t it?
PJ: Yes. And so some of them said they wouldn’t wear that, which of course, caused terrible trouble at the time. But that’s different than if you’re working in an office where no one wears uniforms for anything. And there’s the context of whether you’re dealing with the public, and therefore representing the company to the public, or whether you’re one of the backroom people who never actually deal with the public so what you wear is not of the same significance or importance. So what is it that is being asked of you, in your context? If you’re in a social work company or a medical company, then inclusion of people, like the LGBTQI+ people, is an important element of the activity you’re involved in. Whereas if you’re auditing books for the government, the inclusion of these particular people is irrelevant to the activity.
TP: So you could envisage circumstances in which wearing purple would signal the fact that you welcome and are fully ready to engage with and provide your services to people of the LGBTQI+ community, if they were an important sector of the people you relate to in your work. But that would be a different context than one in which you’re, as you say, an accountant or a bakery or something that just provides services to the public.
PJ: Yes. And it’s also got to do with what’s happening in your situation.
TP: Yes, what’s the history?
PJ: If in your office, there has been past discrimination or people who have been bullied, then as a Christian, I don’t think you should symbolize inclusion. I think you should be taking action to stop the bullying, to protect the victims, to change the culture. It’s not a time to put on a symbol; it’s a time to actually do something much more serious than that. Because nobody should come to work and be discriminated against or be victimized. But if actually no one from the LGBTQI+ community works in your office, and if there are no actions that have discriminated against anybody on any issue, then to wear the symbol for the day is … well, what’s the point?
There’s also the issue of who I am in this office context. Because the problems for the new worker who’s just arrived in the office, as opposed to the middle management, as opposed to the senior executive are actually different. And what role do I have in setting examples for others, either by wearing things or by not wearing things? I need to take care that in supporting one group that feels marginalized, I’m not at the same time marginalizing another group that can feel equally awkward and unwanted because of these actions.
But then the next thing, I think, is symbolism, which pushes the context issue a little further. What does the symbol symbolize? For example, wearing purple (simply because that’s the presenting issue, not because it’s the important one). By wearing this particular colour on this particular day, am I symbolizing I’m a member of this staff? Or am I symbolizing I support what this staff is now promoting? Or am I accepting homosexuals? Or am I accepting homosexuality? Those are different things. You see, in not wearing the shirt, it may be that I am disapproving of homosexuality. Or it may be that I’m disapproving of being coerced into wearing something. Or it may be that I’m actually disapproving of this whole issue being raised in our company because it’s got nothing to do with our company’s policies, company’s practices or company’s purpose. It may be that I’m just not interested in symbolism at all. Another example is the wearing of coloured ribbons to indicate I oppose domestic violence. But some of the people who wore the ribbons have now been found guilty of domestic violence.
TP: It’s easy to wear a ribbon to say that I support something. It’s a very cheap form of action, isn’t it? It doesn’t cost me a lot. This is why we’ve talked about gestures or moral gestures as a tokenistic way of flagging my support for something without actually having to do anything that costs me anything. I can just go along with everybody, click ‘like’ or in this case wear the ribbon or band or whatever it is. I’m not forced to actually change the way I treat other people or call myself out to say sorry to people for how I’ve treated them.
PJ: And for me, wearing or not wearing purple is nowhere near as important as the issue of coercion. I really dislike coercion on any issue. And I dislike coercion for a variety of reasons. Put it another way, it is censorship. Censorship can be stopping people saying things. But censorship also can be forcing people to say things. Jordan Peterson objected to being coerced into using certain pronouns with certain people. He personally actually would use those pronouns, but he objected to the government or university command that you must use these strange English pronouns. Because, he said, that’s not how language works. You can’t have the government telling people how to speak. I agree with him on that kind of thing very strongly, and I would also strongly oppose it.
TP: There’s been a lot of fuss recently about the tableau used in the opening of the Paris Olympics. And Christians have been offended by it. But do you think our response should be to complain and get them to take it down? To try to stop them from saying or doing such things? To try to censor them, in other words?
PJ: No, not at all. I’m as offended as anybody by such images, but the response should not be to coerce or censor them into silence. Let the intelligentsia of the French artistic community express themselves, and we can see exactly what they’re like, which is dreadful. They advertised the alternative to Christianity very graphically, in the form of a mocking parody of Christianity. They showed the world what the pinnacle of French culture currently stands for, which is decadence. So be offended and appalled, but don’t try to censor them.
TP: Why is censorship or coercion to be avoided?
PJ: We’ll look at the Bible. In the Bible, sometimes coercion is right, isn’t it? I wear seatbelts because the law says I should wear a seatbelt. The Bible has teachings on this. For example, Romans 13 says we must submit to every governing authority, and the passage in 1 Timothy 2 tells us to pray for those in authority; not just the governing authority but all authorities come from God. So my employer is my authority, the principal of the school is my authority. 1 Peter 2 says to submit yourself for the Lord’s sake, to every human authority, whether the emperor or as the supreme authority or to governors, who were sent by him.
And there are all kinds of other passages. I like the one about work in 1 Thessalonians 4 that says to “make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders”.
So I don’t think we should go into the office looking for a fight. But I think our knee jerk reaction, as Christian people, should be to conform to what is required of us by those in authority over us. But there is still a problem with that as to what is the authority authorized to do? And so the second part of Bible teaching is civil disobedience, because there are times when authorities go beyond their authority. The book of Daniel is full of this issue, down to what the young men were to eat.
TP: Yes. And where, when and how you’re allowed to pray.
PJ: And that’s where you get that wonderful verse Acts 4:18.
So they called them and charged them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered them, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”
And that civil disobedience is a Christian way of action.
We see the great turning of the issue of racism in America with the Reverend Martin Luther King, who was out of the churches of Birmingham in the south and who actually led the change. And you remember Rosa Parks who was the woman who refused to move from her seat in the bus because she was an African American and sitting in the wrong seat. She was a fierce Christian and she acted out of Christian obedience. And it wasn’t that she was a revolutionary. It wasn’t that she took up arms and guns—she just didn’t get off the seat that she had every right to sit on, and was not going to obey a government that required her to do the wrong thing. It’s like the rugby league players back in 2022 who refused to wear the ‘pride round’ jumper. Half the team did. They stood up and rejected what was being demanded of them for conscience’s sake. But with conscience comes a cost. You’ve got to then be willing to be dropped to the bench. And in fact, their team did badly for the rest of the season and they were blamed for it.
But subsequently, the pride round was quietly replaced with ‘multicultural round’, in which pride is one of the alternatives. And that was a much better outcome, because it was advertising genuine inclusiveness whereby you could wear whatever inclusion you wanted, rather than an exclusionary inclusiveness.
So there are times for civil disobedience, but it comes with a cost and Martin Luther King was put in prison and eventually killed, but vindicated in history for taking a stand.
TP: So there’s the rightful authority. There’s that stream of biblical teaching that, yes, you may have to stand up to the authorities, but as you do so, to be prepared to pay the cost.
PJ: It’s not a revolution either. Civil disobedience is a different thing. And then there’s holiness of life.
TP: The sense of being different and distinct,
PJ: Yes, and about certain particular issues. So, for example, in Ephesians 5:3-5,
But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.
Now, you see, there’s the classic of symptoms and the disease. The real problem is the disease. But the symptoms are things like covetousness, foolish talking, filthiness, and Christians should be objecting to dirty jokes as much as objecting to a particular sexual practice. We mustn’t just be concerned about one symptom, to select some and not others. The word ‘covetousness’ here is the word greed. You can be working for a company that is fundamentally about greed, and then object to an inclusion program. The hypocrisy of that is really great. And our opponents notice the hypocrisy. We mustn’t get caught out like that because we have to be people who live differently because of the Lord Jesus Christ, in holiness of life across the whole board, not just picking on a particular thing that we find objectionable.
TP: So that’s a third principle in the Bible. I guess another biblical principle that strikes me in all of this, though, is that the Bible calls on us to relate to outsiders for the sake of the gospel, to relate in wisdom towards outsiders, to recognize the difference between insider and outsider and, as it says in Colossians 4, to be gracious and seasoned with salt in our conversation with outsiders, to be wise in the way we interact with outsiders. Because we recognize that we interact all the time in our culture with people who don’t follow the Lord Jesus, and we must be ambassadors for him in those conversations.
PJ: Absolutely. That is, the fourth principle, wisdom. Wisdom towards outsiders is an important part of the Bible. That is the discussion in 1 Corinthians 5, where Paul has told them have nothing to do with adulterers and they have taken that to mean, have nothing to do with all adulterers. But Paul writes and says, no, no, I didn’t mean that—I mean I have nothing to do with those who are insiders who are committing adultery. You see, what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom we’re to judge? And there really is no point in me criticizing my neighbor for his adultery, because what can I expect from those who do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and who do not honour God as their Father and as their Creator? What I’ve got to expect is that they will sin. And if I see them sinning then I mustn’t be surprised. They’re just being true to their profession. And so it’s not for me to be judgmental to those outside. And that’s why Jesus is sitting with the sinners and the tax collectors. He didn’t approve of tax collecting; he didn’t approve of sin. But that was not the issue. The issue is their rebellion against God; the issue is their sin that he came to die for. And if I’m going to cut myself off from sinners, well, I might as well leave the world, says Paul.
TP: So we have a series of biblical principles here. And then we come back to the situation. I’ve got the privilege at the moment of filling in and doing some teaching here at Moore College in third year Ethics and really describing the process of ethical deliberation. You come to a circumstance that requires something of you. And the first step is to really think carefully about the situation and look at it in light of what you already know from the Bible. To some extent, you’re already bringing some understanding to the situation. And then you draw back and you reflect on what Scripture says and the different streams of biblical thinking that you want to take notice of and try and hold together in your mind, then you come back to the situation again and say, okay, well, there are various good things to pursue or bad things to avoid and the various principles to bear in mind. How do I bring them back to this situation and in that sense, come to a deliberation or a resolution as to what would be the best thing to do in this circumstance.?
And one of the ways in which Christians sometimes get confused here is they confuse the clarity and absolute truth of the Bible with the lack of clarity and difficulty of all the circumstances that life throws at us. In one sense, the Bible’s word is clear as a bell and it’s true. It’s always true. We don’t have to deliberate about whether it’s true or not. It’s true and good. But when we come to action, well, that’s less clear because we have to figure out how does this truth play itself out in action in this particular circumstance? And usually, in those circumstances, there are a number of good things we might be wanting to pursue and not able to achieve all of them.
PJ: Yes, it’s about how you maintain and apply your principles, but deal with the messiness of life. The principles cannot teach you about every mess, because life is too messy. So you’ve got to work out what is the wise, best, good thing I can do in this situation, when there are four good things that I could do.
TP: And they all have advantages, they all would achieve some good and yet, by doing one, I’ll be closing off another and might be causing harm and vice versa. In fact, one of the principles that we would hold to be true is that this is how we should expect the world to be. The Bible teaches us that the world is fallen and complex. And that wisdom is sometimes like it is in Proverbs—it’s sometimes about knowing when you should address a fool according to his folly, and when you should not address a fool according to his folly. One of the true principles that the Bible teaches us about our world is that the moral landscape we navigate is fallen, and therefore complex, and sometimes certain good things we’d really wish that we could achieve, we won’t be able to because of the nature of the world. And in other times, many times, we’ll be forced to put the good things that we’re trying to achieve in order. I’d like to achieve this good thing, but because of that other more important good thing, I’ve got to prioritize that.
PJ: And that leads to that Christian doctrine of liberty and freedom, which is so important. I choose never to drink alcohol, that’s my choice. Your choice may be to drink alcohol. We both agree we shouldn’t be drunk. I’m choosing not to drink alcohol because of my view of the use of alcohol in the Australian society and community, not because I believe alcohol is sinful or wrong. There’s a certain culture that I am opposing and practices that I think need to be addressed which our society refuses to do so. But if we do not have a doctrine of liberty at this point, we actually make drinking alcohol or not drinking alcohol a part of the gospel. We turn a pragmatic issue into a principle rather than turning the principles into a pragmatism.
TP: Yes, that’s exactly right. The Bible is clear and true and we stand under its authority. And we want to affirm that in the strongest terms. But life is not always clear. We live in a complex moral field with all kinds of things happening, a fallen world in which there’s sin and suffering and all kinds of difficulty. This means that very often, the course of action open to us won’t be clear. Now, sometimes it will be relatively clear. It’s not as if every situation is a terrible dilemma and you can never know what the right thing to do is. Sometimes it’s very clear what the right thing to do is. But that is why Christians will come to different conclusions because their contexts and situations may have subtly or even obviously different characteristics, but also because they’ll come to different discernments because you have to make that discernment in the moment in a situation.
In some ways the principles we’ve outlined are almost like boundary markers or map guides that guide you as you go through life, lights onto your path as you press forward. The four principles we’ve outlined are like four boundary markers that you say, well, however we act, these are the sorts of things that that we don’t want to step beyond or these are the kinds of principles that should drive us.
PJ: Yes, and that’s why that will lead to us having different answers, because some of us will see this as a matter of obeying authorities, while another person may be saying we mustn’t concede to bullies. At the same time, someone else will be saying, I’ve got to be caring for others, I must be demonstrating to them that better way of life in the holiness of my own life. And we all want to be saying, well, it hasn’t compromised the truth in the whole process of doing this. But I still have to make a choice of decision as to what to do. And my choice might be slightly different to your choice within that boundary.
TP: And so Phillip, as you spoke to the businessmen, what kind of emphasis did you end up with?
PJ: Well, I’m happy for people to disagree, but for me and my house, I would not wear purple, because the principle that drives me most in this particular issue at the moment is anti-bullying and anti-coercion. And even if I agreed with what the purple was symbolizing, I would not agree that the office or the school is a place where it should be imposed by anybody on anybody, even by using the kind of coercion of shame that you’re not doing what everybody else is doing. I just think this is an inappropriate exercising of authority.
