Religious persecution is real for many people, but some people needlessly bring opposition upon themselves

In many parts of the world religious oppression is an everyday reality that affects adherents’ ability to move about freely, earn an income, and purchase life’s necessities. A deep religious hatred limits the daily freedom for some people of faith. Their unwavering devotion to what they believe only earns them more revulsion. In some cases this animosity results in physical harm, sometimes fatal.

While horrific, I don’t have the perspective to write about this kind of severe religious persecution with the insight it deserves. Instead I’ll address a lessor form of suffering, the suffering we bring on ourselves: self-inflicted persecution.

I once had an employee who had recently converted to Judaism. She didn’t know much about her faith practices, at least not that she could explain to me, but I did admire her unwavering commitment to follow what she had been taught. (Once, at a company luncheon, she declined a cheeseburger but couldn’t tell her perplexed coworkers why she was prohibited to eat it. I later explained to them the Levitical law behind the practice.)

A few months into her employment I noticed a disturbing trend. She would sometimes leave me a voicemail message—always after 5 p.m.—informing me that she wouldn’t be working the next day because it was a religious holiday for her. And she had lots of them that fall.

From a planning standpoint this frustrated me. Often I had specific things I needed her to do that next day, but she was giving me little time to make adjustments. I explained that I was happy (okay, willing) to accommodate her religious observances, but I needed advanced warning. A list of holidays would be helpful.

She said that wouldn’t be possible because sometimes she didn’t know until the day before. Really? When I pressed her on this, she was steadfast that she couldn’t give me a calendar of her religious holidays. I suggested she ask her Rabbi for a list. She didn’t too much like that.

A week or two later she shoved a sealed envelope into my hands. The stationary bore the name of a Rabbi. Glad to be making progress, I opened the envelope in excitement, but the Rabbi hadn’t given me a list of dates as I requested.

Instead, he had drafted a tersely worded missive to inform me what I already knew, that I needed to provide her time off to observe Jewish holidays. And that a failure to do so discriminated her for her religious preference. He implied I was persecuting her for her faith.

No, I just wanted a list of holidays so that I could provide time off in the best way possible.

I don’t know what she told her Rabbi, but I doubt she asked for a calendar of Jewish holidays so that I could plan better. I doubt she told him I was making the accommodations she sought and merely needed some basic information to do so better.

Based on the tone of his letter, I suspect she presented me as someone who discriminated her for her faith, perhaps even anti-Semitic. (I have great affinity for religious Jews, as their faith history is my faith history.)

I considered contacting her Rabbi directly to explain—since she didn’t understand when I tried, once again, to clarify—but with the press of other work I never got around to it. A month later she quit, likely believing that I had persecuted her for her faith.

In truth she brought the situation on herself.

She told me that her new employer would provide her the time off that she sought, something I had done every time she asked, even though she failed to provide a simple list of holidays.

While we can experience varying degrees of negative reactions to our faith practices, we need to be careful that we aren’t the reason for the animosity. Maybe it’s not our beliefs that cause the problem but the unwarranted way we conduct ourselves.