Ethics on the job

I had the oppurtunity to hear author and pastor Shane Hipps speak at my college recently. His story was particularly interesting. He was an advertising guy, and was really good at it. He worked on a few businesses you’d know, and things like anti-smoking campaigns.

Then he realized that what he was doing was manipulating people, and really was not helping people. If a campaign was successful, people thought that he was helping them, but in reality he wasn’t.

I could go on about what he said about advertising techniques, but that’s not the point here. Eventually, he couldn’t take it anymore, and realized that he couldn’t live out how he saw his faith while doing his job. Ethics were just not taken into account at his job. So he quit his job and became a pastor.

Now in no way am I trying to put this across as “Oh look, the heathen ad salesman did a 180 and is a Man Of God now.” What I was impressed with was his willingness to change his lifestyle drastically in order to do something good for the world. I’ve often wondered if I could work for MTV(the scapegoat for bad TV), with a goal of changing it form within. But as I noted in Monopoly, people within systems have a hard time becoming better than the system, as they go along the path of least resistance.

So this is why I want to be intentional about the work I do, realizing that my choices are not necessarily best for everyone, but necessary for me.