I find that the question of how to be Christian at work is a much more difficult one than, apparently, most people do.

In the first place, it is difficult to find a job – any job – which does not do net-harm – let alone a job which does net-good. But such things are impossible to quantify or know for sure, and perhaps it has always been thus.

The aspect which I find particularly horrible is the extent to which people are required to be dishonest at work – the expectation that people will select, distort, hype and spin – wherever and whenever required.

Outright lying by fabrication is still forbidden – but dishonesty up-to that level is not just permitted but wanted.

(The point is that dishonesty should be factually correct – hence deniable.)

I have in mind the routine, pervasive, near-continuous deliberate misleading and distortion which characterises almost all official situations – meetings, form-filling, memos, statements; the requirements for job applications, promotions, applications for grants and funds; the description and presentation of one’s own work whether verbally or in written form… these are all employment situations where dishonesty is required and/ or expected in some combination.

Now, I work in a university – mostly in a science context, and until about 25 years ago the situation was very different – honesty was the norm. Now it is almost impossible – and is actually impossible to be honest without breaking some rules and making oneself a nuisance to the employer and colleagues – and these situations arise pretty much on a daily basis.

What I find most sinister about this situation is that it seems as if other people don’t notice it – and certainly they deny it when asked. The usual idea is that things have always been the way they are now. Also my experience is that people hotly deny even the merest hint or implication of their own dishonesty; even in a context where they have only just finished asking or instructing me to be dishonest on grounds of expediency.

So there is cynical dihonesty, and even a pride in cynical dishonesty as norma and ideal – yet a self-righteousness which refuses to acknowledge the norm of cynical dishonesty.

I am curious to know what others have experienced on these lines – in particular how a Christian can operate in an employment situation (which now seems to be pretty much all employment situations) where expedient dishonesty is more-or-less compulsory and more-or-less continuous.

My only suggestion is to be explicitly aware of one’s own dishonesty on each and every occasion and to repent without excuses as being due to personal weakness, albeit repent without the intention of reforming oneself in the future (which some people, although not me, would say is an unreal repentance).

But I don’t see any way that a modern Christian can be genuinely honest and also employed.