Emails to get You Fired ...

Privacy is a myth.  Electronic privacy a long expired dinosaur.  What you put out there in “the ether” of the internet, whether via text, or email, or social media platform remains “out there” forever.  You can’t take it back.  You can’t really delete anything.  Best you can do is apologize for it.  But a meager apology is sometimes not enough to undo damage that can affect your career, or your livelihood.  Your words, your thoughts, and the motives they sometimes clearly reveal, remain unhidden from the entirety of mankind – and frankly this is rarely a good thing.  Now most folks understand this, at least where it comes to stuff you put on social media platforms, but they take exception where it comes to emails or direct messaging.  And if you can keep from accidentally including the entire company in your addressing of an email note, you can seem to keep it limited to just “someone” to read, not everybody.  While you talk about “business” topics you might remain safe.  But just ask any “former” executive whose emails have been subpoenaed what private truly means.  Or ask some poor jilted lover whose correspondence has now been made public by the other party, what private really means.

And lest you think Uncle Sam is not an avid reader of every note you ever send … think again.  Whether they keep it or not is a question on how big, big data really is.  But whether they read it, and potentially flag it, is just not in question.  If you do nothing but write love notes to your mom, you can bet those notes were read and discarded.  But if you read or write notes between suspect financial organizations, drug dealers, or folks on the watch lists for whatever reason – your notes become flagged, your accounts become flagged and you will also join the watch lists forever.  And this is where having the crazy uncle does not do you any favors either.  Because when crazy uncle Bud decides to make posts that would make a rational person cringe, your familial relationship with that uncle earns you the unwanted attention of the government as well, even though through no fault of your own.

And beyond criminal threats, or threats of violence, any kind of threat to the economy is treated just as seriously.  In our banking industry we are required to take continuing education certifications every single year on our responsibilities to prevent financial crimes of many kinds.  Education is the first step to prevention.  But if some other crazy uncle gets caught up in a scheme to rob banks, or print fake currency, everybody in the family will get flagged on watch lists that last forever.  The simple logic is that whatever a family member may do or say, may not truly be an independent action, but might be an action that is shared among other family members.  Not so with me, probably the fact the my dad was a policemen for 3 decades, my family knows I would turn them in 😊.  Does not stop the love from me, but I tend to have a zero tolerance for crime, or for that matter for crazy.  But that does not change how your family thinks, or speaks.  And unfortunately, I do have a few crazy uncles, that I wish posted differently, or had lived differently while they had the chance.

The breadcrumbs of what you say then, can follow you forever.  For us, imagining that every word we ever said, in addition to what we may have written down, is an ever more terrifying prospect.  But not so for Jesus.  In contrast to you or I, every word Jesus ever said was truth, and love.  Every word, intended to find a spot of redemption in your soul, to lure you back to the throne of God.  Not so you could kiss the feet of God, but so that He could stand you up and kiss your cheek and hold you close to Him.  God does not need our worship, He needs to be able to share His love with you, up close and personal.  It is for His love’s sake, that He wants to save you, even though that means having to forgive your choices, and bare the pain of your rejection so often repeated.  Still He comes for you.  And so Jesus even while being plotted against by the leadership of His own church, still uttered every word in an attempt to save the very men bent on killing Him.

But to kill Jesus, those men had to discredit Him first.  So they kept track of every word Jesus ever said, looking for the chance to trip Him up.  Kind of like a stalker in our world, looking for the chance to pounce on you when they catch you in a lie, or indecent remark, or sin they can publicly exploit.  Except that with men, this kind of stalking works, because we fall and embrace sin.  With Jesus, He never did.  Imagine how utterly frustrating that must have been for those bent on killing Him.  To find, that even after time, and watching Him everywhere, that He says nothing to condemn Him over.  Imagine looking for hate and finding only love.  It was killing them.  It was frustrating them.  It was turning the lot of them into a group of crazy uncles.  So they had to escalate the situation.  They had to start setting verbal traps that there was no good answer out of, so they could by intention trip Him up.

Luke records one of these incidents starting in chapter 20 of his gospel letter to his friend about what we believe and why.  It picks up in verse 19 saying … “And the chief priests and the scribes the same hour sought to lay hands on him; and they feared the people: for they perceived that he had spoken this parable against them. [verse 20] And they watched him, and sent forth spies, which should feign themselves just men, that they might take hold of his words, that so they might deliver him unto the power and authority of the governor.”  These men were not only interested in discrediting Jesus in front of the people.  They were trying to find any reason at all to turn Him over to the governor of Roman authority.  It is irony that these same priests and leaders considered tax collectors to be the ultimate sinners because they took money from the Jewish people and turned it over to Rome.  Yet here they were ready to turn over innocent blood to Rome to have it murdered.  Beyond that, not only innocent blood, but the very blood of God.  How much worse than that is blood over money.  Yet they considered themselves pure, and the tax collector as untouchable.

Luke continues in verse 21 saying … “And they asked him, saying, Master, we know that thou sayest and teachest rightly, neither acceptest thou the person of any, but teachest the way of God truly: [verse 22] Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Caesar, or no?”  First the flattery to loosen Him up.  It works on other priests, why not on Him.  Then the question that will either kill Him in the hearts of the people, or kill Him on a cross of Rome.  Do we give money to Caesar or not.  They were just certain this question was so clever it could not be answered without killing Him some way or another.  Luke continues in verse 23 saying … “But he perceived their craftiness, and said unto them, Why tempt ye me? [verse 24] Shew me a penny. Whose image and superscription hath it? They answered and said, Caesar's. [verse 25] And he said unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's.”  Here is their irony on display.  They value money more than life.  They are trying to use the hatred of the people in paying taxes to kill Jesus if He stays true to the idea of obeying the government in charge.

But Jesus does more than that.  Jesus shows the true value of money, and of things that belong to God.  We are not to obey the government ahead of, or over God.  But it is God that should hold our hearts, our love, and our devotion.  And in so doing that, we still give the government what it asks for in taxes, even if that is all we have, or what we think is unfair.  And that answer beat them.  Luke picks up in verse 26 saying … “And they could not take hold of his words before the people: and they marvelled at his answer, and held their peace.”  They were beaten and could do nothing more than marvel at the beauty of His Truth.  But what is it that Luke wants His friend to know about this gospel passage?  Is it just that Jesus was more clever than the most clever conspiracy ever launched?  I doubt it.

I think the greater lesson was to teach us all, that our words should leave a bread crumb trail back to the throne of Grace.  If they do not, we speak in error, or our words require apology. Just like in social media platforms once you say something hateful it remains in the ether, and in the heart of one impacted by them.  You cannot pull those words back into your mouth and down your throat, having never uttered them.  You said them.  You may have even meant them.  And you caused pain by them.  But what you can do is to apologize for them.  Not just to say you are sorry, but to feel the pain you have caused and truly be sorry for them.  You can look to Jesus to learn how to keep from uttering more words just like them ever again.  To not only be sorry for what you might have done, but to avoid any kind of recurrence ever again.  To love differently, to love so much, than you could not even conceive of saying such things, because in truth you do not feel such horrible things again.  Temper is not an excuse.  And even when people are not looking to hold something against you, when you speak in anger and hate, you leave others hurt in the wake of those words.  And sometimes that wake cannot be undone.

Send a hasty email note to your boss, or perhaps his boss, and rant and rave about how stupid management is, and how doomed this program or project is, and see what happens next.  Your only “out” there is to claim you were off your meds.  But send that same note to a co-worker who you thought a friend, but in truth was always ever looking to get you in trouble, and they will forward your “private” sentiments on to management, and the off the meds excuse just does not work.  You get fired for what you said.  You get fired for what you shared.  The trick then is not to just say those things, the real trick is to find a way to think differently about those things.  To find peace, and solution ideas in Jesus.  So that when you speak, it is in kindness, patience, and love to make things better.  You can assume everything you say is public never private.  But don’t just be on guard against some enemy trying to use what you say, instead be inspirational in what you say as you ground even your sentiments in Jesus Christ.  After all only Jesus beats the impossible.  And there must certainly be a lot impossible in the situations you face.  Start by changing how you feel, how you think, and who you rely on for answers that might improve everything you encounter.  It is so much easier to live that way.