If you were a African-American Woman, deeply Christian, who just started a new job (in a predominantly white/Caucasian populated office space) yesterday and found a wooden cross neatly placed on the center of your desk today (your second day on the job), what would you think? There was no note. No person there with an explanation. Just a plain, small, wood cross placed in the center of an otherwise barren desk.
Being the thoughtful and forgiving individual you are, you think that perhaps a custodian had come in that evening and found it dislodged on the floor and perhaps placed it on your desk thinking it was yours. But you know it wasn't as you hadn't had time to decorate your cubicle. So you set it on the side rail of the cubicle in case the real owner might see it, pick it up and be happy someone found it.
Instead, on the next morning, the same cross was placed neatly on your desk. Directly on the center. Again, no note, nary an explanation.
A friend of mine related this story to me yesterday evening about her office mate, so this is not a hypothetical. Four Questions:
- What are you to think?
- How do you interpret this?
- What should you do?
- Is this good Christian behavior?
3 comments:
1. It seems very, very wrong.
2. Honestly, I'd think someone was being creepy about something.
What's even creepier about it is that you can't explain it.
3. Take the cross and give it to a re-sale shop or something. Don't leave it laying in the office.
4. I can't speak to that 'cause I'm neither good nor a Christian.
Really, though, I'm sorry for your friend's coworker. That's just plain creepy.
1- I'd think that someone was trying to make a not so subtle point or was trying in some absurd way to determine my religious beliefs through intrigue rather than just by asking.
2- It would be obvious to me that I had entered some sort of wierd, adult playground session or had been inadvertently hired by some kind of fringe cultist.
3- I would begin asking everyone who the culprit was and what it was they were tryign to ascertain.
4- Is there good Christian behavior? (Just kidding.) It is probably misdirected Christian behavior.
I think the thing to ask yourself is how offended you'd be if someone did the same thing to you with, say, a pentagram. It's an extreme example I know - but it's no different in principle...it's the action and intention that's the main point here, not the symbol being used. It's wrong IMO and I'd be pretty offended and pissed off if someone did that to me with a cross - or any sort of religious symbol. I have my beliefs - I don't need to be "guided" into someone else's thank-you-very-much, no matter how much good they think they're doing.
Post a Comment