Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
In this episode, Pastors Josh and Zack tackle a listener question about boycotting businesses that promote non-biblical values—especially around LGBTQ+ issues like Pride Month displays at Target. But they quickly move to what they see as the bigger, more personal issue: How do Christians faithfully navigate secular workplaces when companies push agendas that conflict with biblical convictions?Topics covered include:The practicality (and limits) of boycotts in a globalized economyWorking as salt and light without withdrawing from the worldThe difference between a company selling certain products vs. requiring employees to affirm or celebrate sin (e.g., wearing pride pins, using preferred pronouns, teaching gender fluidity)How to stand for conscience without being combative or a poor witnessThe importance of integrity, hard work, and character before you take a stand (Daniel in Babylon as a model)When it might be wise to leave a job—and when to stay and endureLegal protections for religious liberty and resources like Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)The Protestant view of vocation: every job is a calling from GodThe pastors emphasize that Christians cannot find a “perfect” workplace, but we are called to live with clear conscience, bold conviction, and humble faithfulness—being in the world but not of it.This is practical, pastoral advice for teachers, corporate workers, and anyone facing increasing cultural pressure at work.
In this episode, Pastors Josh and Zack tackle a listener question about boycotting businesses that promote non-biblical values—especially around LGBTQ+ issues like Pride Month displays at Target. But they quickly move to what they see as the bigger, more personal issue: How do Christians faithfully navigate secular workplaces when companies push agendas that conflict with biblical convictions?
Topics covered include:
The pastors emphasize that Christians cannot find a “perfect” workplace, but we are called to live with clear conscience, bold conviction, and humble faithfulness—being in the world but not of it.
This is practical, pastoral advice for teachers, corporate workers, and anyone facing increasing cultural pressure at work.
Join Dr. Josh Hutchens, director of Gateway Seminary's Rocky Mountain Campus and pastor at Overland Church in Fort Collins, Colorado, as he explores spiritual faithfulness amid life's challenges and suffering. Through discussions on theological questions and inspiring stories, Wisdom for the Wilderness offers guidance and hope for navigating the complexities of faith in a broken world.
speaker-0: Welcome to Wisdom for the Wilderness, a podcast from the pastors of Overland Church where we talk about the Bible, theology, and cultural issues, which is something we're talking about today. We had a question come in, â and the question was about boycotting businesses that are promoting non-biblical values, especially around LGBTQ issues. So, you know, the example of â you know, a few years ago Budweiser had the big â trans issue and people boycotted Budweiser. I think you ought to boycott Budweiser all the time.
speaker-1: I've boycotted Budweiser.
speaker-0: My entire life. â Or, you know, Target is always the target of this. Same. You know, they'll, you know, especially in June, whenever it's â Pride Month, they'll have these special t-shirts and stuff. So, can Christians â support â those businesses with their dollars when they're doing things like that? But, you know, as we were discussing this, we decided that there was actually kind of a bigger issue
speaker-1: Not my wife, but I guess.
speaker-0: that I think is worth a little more discussion, and that is for the people who work in â organizations like this. And so, you know, we have a lot of Christians that are working in secular environments, as we should, but then your company is asking you to, during Pride Month, put on a rainbow pin, or â maybe our school teachers in the curriculum. are told they're supposed to talk about affirming different sexualities and things like that. So, I think that's the bigger issue of how do we navigate a secular workplace and not compromise our Christian values. So, big question. Where you want to start?
speaker-1: Hey, can I start and let's just talk about the, the boycott question first. â it's impossible. So, know, I am very much want to, want to spend and steward my dollars the best way that I can. I I can, I can boycott target. Right. And by and large, like I couldn't tell you the last time I even went in target, â you know, We could say we're going to boycott Disney. We're going to boycott these different, different places. You're still going to end up spending your money, whether you know it or not on people who have opinions that are greatly different than yours. It's impossible to like go on Amazon and figure out, you know, this cell phone case I'm buying is, is it made by a Christian company? Well, actually it's probably made by, you know, child labor in China. Yeah. And our consumeristic kind of world we live in is all problematic. Right. I would tell you, â if you've got a conviction, â about it and we, you can kind of adopt the, you know, the saying was go woke, go broke and, and we can, you, we can, you know, say, Hey, I'm not going to shop there. And then they'll change what they do. It doesn't change what they believe. Yeah. You know, so many of those companies, they're just trying to make money. Right. And so they're appealing to the culture anyway. Yeah. So I go back to think 2020 and. Black lives matter. There's a whole bunch of bunch of companies that that they just didn't want to lose money. So they embraced Yeah, this DI world They don't really care. They don't really care about racism And I would just say there's probably a lot of companies that don't really care about transgenderism or whatever They're just trying to figure out how to make money, right? And so
speaker-0: Yeah, and you bring up there are ton of even bigger issues. know, if we understood that most of the lithium in the batteries in our cell phones and our cars and everything we use is coming from slave labor in the Democratic Republic of Congo, â then, you know, we would have â major conscious issues over using those things, but how can you avoid it?
speaker-1: So â ultimately, I would say where you can, spend your money â in companies that you believe in. Even if it costs you like a few more dollars or whatever, I would say support when you can buy local from local companies, American made, do so. And the rest of the time when you can't, just do what you gotta do to live.
speaker-0: Yeah. You know, and this isn't the, like, a new thing for Christians. mean, Christians going all the way back to the New Testament are living in a pagan society where commerce and worship are all intermixed. And so, this is why in Romans and 1 Corinthians, you have this discussion over buying meat in the marketplace, because most of the meat in the marketplace had been killed as an offering to idols. â And so, you know, Paul comes down to it at the end in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, and basically says, just don't ask questions. Like, if you're buying meat, don't ask if it was offered to idols, and then if they tell you it's been offered to idols, then don't eat it. But as long as you don't know, then it's not going to bother anyone's conscience about it. So, You sometimes I think that's where we have... don't ask too many questions because, â you know, you just can have a clean conscience if you don't know. â
speaker-1: Yeah, and obviously we're not saying, just go in all in on slave labor or whatever. Right, right. But there's just so much that you are so much out of our control.
speaker-0: Well, we live in a globalized economy where you start pulling the strings. There's going to be problems in every string you pull and your mind will explode.
speaker-1: So that's why when we read this, you know, it's like, it will explode, but what is the more real practical thing that we're dealing with? We're dealing with people that, are, that are public school teachers that are being told you need to teach gender fluidity or something that you are really opposed to. And so I want to frame this up as we talk about then, like, â frame this up of like our faith and work. â I want to give some clarity. This is not asking the question, can I find the perfect workplace? Right. Can I work for, you know, do I have to be in total alignment with someone to work, some place to work there? Because you absolutely.
speaker-0: You're not gonna find it. It's really hard.
speaker-1: â The question rather is how do I live faithfully where God has me and should I stay where God has me? Should I stay in this job? So as we think about that biblically, you know, we have to think about like, we're told you're in the world, but not to be of the world. We're told we're in the world as salt and light. Explain that illustration of salt and light.
speaker-0: Yeah, so Jesus brings this up in Matthew â in the Sermon on the Mount, and â this comes right after the Beatitudes, where â these are kind of character markers of what a Christian ought to be like, someone who belongs to the kingdom, and then He explains that we are the salt of the earth, that we are the light of the world. and the salt of the earth is that we bring flavor to the earth. The light of the world is we are like a city on a hill. Everything's dark, and we're shining light. And so, I think in both of those instances, it's the idea that we are an example in the world. We â are what we are some people that belong to the new creation. a new age, a new kingdom existing in a fallen and broken world in creation, and so there's going to be a contrast that people are going to see between us and the way things are here, and it ought to be attractive, like flavor in salt, and it ought to demonstrate the uniqueness of who we are, like the difference between light and darkness. â And so, â that's the calling of believers in the world. And so, like you said, that still requires being in the world. â You know, we can't just go to our own little holy huddle. I mean, people actually do this. They buy acres of land in Tennessee, and they all move there.
speaker-1: compounds. By the way, that's not just a Christian thing. Like have you seen the news where that's happening?
speaker-0: with Muslims in Texas and...
speaker-1: It's happening in Fort Collins. Yeah. And the community is going to have a temple. It's more, it's more of a Buddhist Hindu thing â of white Subaru, Subaru, you know, white older Subaru driving hippies. Anyway, I won't go there. And if that's you at your church, I love you. Glad you're at a church. Don't join a cult. â So, right. It's not about this question. Isn't like, Hey, do we, we all just go work for Christian companies? Do we all just totally...
speaker-0: Ha
speaker-1: pull out of the world. That's not the question. The question is when the company asks you to do something that is against your Christian conscience, what do you do? Most of our people in our church are going to work in a non-Christian â context. Even as a pastor of the church, half the time I feel like I'm working in a non-Christian context. â Most of our people are actually, a lot of our people are going to work in a company where a lot of the people in the leadership of the company or the owners of the company have values that disagree with theirs. What I want to get at though is like, this is for the person who's working for a company that is asking them to do something against their conscience, which would be sin.
speaker-0: Yeah, and I think there's a difference. Maybe you're going to get to this. There's a difference between just, you know, my company is doing something and they're asking me to celebrate something. Or forcing me to celebrate something. So, you know, if I'm working at Target and they're selling, you know, they're selling pride gear and I'm scanning that, that's
speaker-1: are forcing.
speaker-0: different than them asking me to a pride pin and celebrate sexual immorality. So, you know, just kind of start to frame that out a little bit.
speaker-1: Wear a pride pin. Yep. Right. â so that would be, that would be the difference, right? Are they requiring speech actions or endorsements that require you to violate your conscience? So, â I think, I think pronouns might be a good example of that, you know? â and I think, I don't think there's a very clear line here and this could be a different line for different Christians, right? â they require you to put your
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: preferred pronouns in your email tagline versus they require you to say it every time. You know, my name is Zach Thurman and I'm he, him, it stud, know, like whatever, whatever I would choose mine to be. â am I having to say it every time? I'm probably not doing that. You know, I'm probably not putting in my email either, but, but maybe you would, you would choose to do that. think that would be one of the, like the distinction we're making. What do you do? Where must the lines be drawn? And so how do we navigate it?
speaker-0: Yeah, and those are a lot of conscience issues that we're not going to have direct, you know, this is right, this is wrong, you know, every Christian has to make this decision. And I think even for us, being in ministry, I think we should have a bit of a humility addressing this, because it's been a long time since we've worked in secular workplaces, and we have, but I mean, it was before a lot of this â that has come about, you know? So, â haven't necessarily had to navigate all these things ourselves, even though we've, you know, had to help other people navigate it. So, there has to be a humility there. But at the end of the day, I don't think Christians should be afraid to do what their conscience says is right, and not to violate...to go against conscience is sin, and it's not wise, the Scripture says. So,
speaker-1: I want to be real clear here. I would hope that our people would take a stand and would stand up and do what's right. But before they take a stand and stand up against it, I hope that they've been working as unto the Lord. That they've been faithful in work, that they're hard workers, that they show up on time, that they're not clocking out early, that they're not robbing the company. that they're not turning their head for things that, someone's stealing from the company or they're stealing from the company, right? I would hope before you raise your hand and say, Hey, there's a problem. You've been really working with an integrity and character because, I believe that when you've lived out the faith and you stand up and you say, Hey, this is wrong. I'm not going to do this. It violates my conscience. Just like Daniel. did when he wouldn't eat meat. Like you've lived it out because I think it's a bad witness when the opposite is true. When you've show up late, when you've robbed the time clock, when you don't do your job well, you just come across like a whiny bratty Christian.
speaker-0: Yeah, those Daniel examples are great examples. You know, have the three that are thrown into the fiery furnace, then you have Daniel again that is thrown into the lion's den. And especially with Daniel in the lion's den, immediately Darius is regretful that he created this law, because didn't see how it was going to affect Daniel, and Daniel is such an important person to him. so valuable. valuable. And so he immediately regrets it. so, you you want to definitely be in the position where if your employer says this and then you raise your hand and say, I can't do that, and I'm willing to take the consequences for this, whatever it is, that they're like, Whoa, wait, what have we done? This is one of my best workers, â my most valuable people. I really hate that I've put them in this position.
speaker-1: Right. That's how that's, so that's where I want us to be. Yeah. I don't want it to be, he's, he's raised, you know, dudes worried about the trans debate, but he's married and flirts with women. Yeah. You know, aren't his wife like that? We don't want that. We want to see a clear, you're living out your faith. Now, now this is real. Yep. So, â here, here's the wisdom. I would say that we should bring to the table here. How, how you. how you question it matters. Your tone matters. Your kindness matters. Not coming across harshly. We can be kind without being contempt. And we can really, really frame things in a wise way and we can be humble in how we're representing Christ. That being said, when you're being asked to do something that violates your conscience or you're being asked to a clear sin, you must be willing to not do it regardless of the consequence. Know that this could very much cost you your job. More than likely, will kind of put you in a, what do call it, a â black box or...
speaker-0: I know, awkward position.
speaker-1: Well, it's like you're blacklisted. You're not going to get a promotion. You're not going to get the raises. That's probably what it's going to do to you. It could cost you one of those things. And I would just remind you that, listen, again, this is about being faithful, not comfortable. So I want you to be faithful over comfortable.
speaker-0: Yeah. I would just add that we live in a country where you have â recognized religious liberty, â and so you cannot... â be discriminated in these ways â in the workplace. It's not right. â And there are organizations, especially Alliance Defending Freedom, ABF, that take cases like this â in order to protect your rights. And those are rights that are not given to you. by the government or by your employer, those are rights that have been given to us by God and that are recognized by our government, and that must be upheld by your employer. So, you know, if you find yourself in the situation where they're going to fire you because you won't put pronouns in your bio, then you don't have to lay down and just take that. â You certainly, like you said, be kind to all these things, but there is also, â that's a violation of your rights, and there are ways to make sure that â what ADF does in bringing a lot of these cases to the courts all the way up to the Supreme Court â is help to ensure not just your rights, but the rights of other Christians in their work. place. you know, employers are going to see that this case was ruled in this way. They know that they don't want to pay millions of dollars to their lawyers to take this to court. And so it's going to help other people as well. you know, we've had plenty of examples of that in Colorado. Yeah, Jack Phillips is the big one who the Baker, the Baker in Denver. â And so there's a there's photographers, the
speaker-1: especially in Colorado. photographer.
speaker-0: those types of things so that that resource is is out there.
speaker-1: So. Stand up. Now, is there a spot? Is there a time where you're going, okay, the culture here, the beliefs of the people here, I just don't want to work here anymore. Is there a right time to leave that, that job? You know, their values and my values don't align. Yeah. Should I leave? Yeah. And, and I would say it depends. Yeah. You know, um, are you leaving because it's uncomfortable? Are you, you leaving because, right, this really is like, there are some people that go, hey, this is uncomfortable. I'm to use public school teachers. Public school teachers go, I really believe it's my calling in life to teach kids. And this is where the Lord has me. And is there ever going to be a time where I think as a public school teacher, you might go, yeah, it's so far out of alignment. I don't want to do this. I'd rather go teach at a Christian school or teach at a private school. Yeah, maybe. And that's going to be your conscience kind of decision. But I do think that there, there absolutely can be times where the tension is so thick that it is good to leave your job. When your conscious is constantly, when you're, when you're being asked to consciously violate your. Conscious, right? When you're just all the time it's happening. â in, you, it's wearing you when wearing you down. I think when you're being influenced and being shaped. more than you're influencing and shaping the culture that you're in. That maybe it's time to go, okay, I got to get out of here because this is changing me. I think that would be a good time to leave.
speaker-0: And there are certainly some industries where Christians have no business being in those industries. you know, the gaming industry, you know, if you're, you know, offered a job at, you know, â a sports betting app, turn it down. I would not be involved in something like that.
speaker-1: Right. Yeah. Computer programmer that's going to go somewhere that's doing anything with pornography or any sort of the internet brothel. You turn it down. There's a number of places. A number of places that, you know, Pot shops and those kind of things like you want out of those you want to be you want to you want to work for a place that better aligns from you
speaker-0: Yeah, and there's also not any, â you shouldn't feel any guilt for trying to work at a Christian-led company, because there's a lot of great things about that. You know, I was counseling with a young woman who's wrestling with Caldera to missions, and she currently has a job â in an engineering firm that has Christian leadership. And she was talking about maybe doing a different job, and was like, why would you leave this? You have Christian leaders, they're going to give you vacation to go on any mission trip you want to go on. They're going to give you tons of support in what you're pursuing. Stay there. It's a great opportunity for you. Don't go take the chance to go somewhere else that isn't going to be supportive in the things that you value even more than your day-to-day job.
speaker-1: Right. That's a, that's a good word. So let me talk about when, when, when you decide, Hey, it's time to leave because there could be an abrupt ending where you go, Hey, I'm not going to do that. And there say where you're fired. Here's your, here's, know, here's the door more than likely. I would tell you that like when you're getting there over and over and over, and you're constantly having to fight and you've decided it's time to leave. Don't just quit. â the wisdom says it's easier to get a job when you have a job. Yeah. So you start the job while you're there and look for a place that aligns with your values. Look for a better work environment. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Right. There's absolutely nothing wrong. Matter of fact, I would tell you, you want to work at a place where you can get behind, like the, the, the best thing, â for us is when we can align ourselves and we can put our, our energy into our work and, and feel good about it. So, I think the bigger danger for our folks, though, is the danger of just being compliant and quiet. Just like, know what? I don't want to rock the boat. I don't want to be uncomfortable. I don't want to have to speak up. I don't want to have to leave. And I think that I would just call you to, like, be unashamed of the gospel, to be strong in your... convictions and to live those convictions out. Don't be combative. You're not trying to be just trying to fight a fight at every corner. You're not trying to be this warrior, but just try to be faithful.
speaker-0: Yeah. All right. All right. You have any parting words or anything else to add?
speaker-1: I would just say, just you don't have to have a perfect workplace to be a faithful Christian. You just have to have clear conscience, bold conviction, and you can go and be fulfilled in your work.
speaker-0: Yeah. This is just â a time to remind us that, as Protestants especially, we believe that every person has a calling, and that's why we have traditionally used the word vocation rather than career, that every job is a calling and that GodâLuther talked about the hiddenness of God. So, God provides for all of our needs. How does He do that? He does it through all these various careers in society, these vocations, these callings coming together so that we have food on the table, and so that we have a bank to put our money in, and so that we have schools. You know, all these things are the ways that God provides for us. And so, â God doesn't just have a calling for us in the ministry, He has a calling for every single person in the world to contribute to what He's doing in the world. So, â embrace that, embrace what God has called you to. all right. Thank you for listening. Hopefully, that was helpful. If you have questions like the one that we answered today, you can always email that to wisdom at overlandchurch.org, and we may answer it next time. May God bless you, and may He keep you. God bless.