This is the story of how I came to learn an important
moral lesson from someone that I thought had nothing to teach me.
Even before I met him, I didn’t like Tim Jordi. Without ever having laid eyes on him, I was
convinced that he was a narrow-minded, ignorant zealot whose sole purpose for
existing was to annoy any and all who did not agree with his warped sense of
morality, and who could blame me? His
resume clearly stated that he was a graduate of the Pensacola Bible Institute,
a “college” whose founder preached that blacks are mentally inferior, and
without the white man to guide them, would naturally devolve to their genetic
propensity for drugs and cannibalism. I
loathed him before I met him.
I was part of a group who were to interview Tim as
part of his interview for a position
as the supervisor of the technical writing department where I was
employed. Others in our group were
willing to give him a chance and listen to what he had to say. I was not.
Indeed, I was adamant and very vocal in my opposition. As far as I was concerned, he had nothing of
value to offer, and he did not deserve the chance to be heard. Had it been my decision, he would never have
been tapped for further consideration. Since
I had been overruled, I eagerly awaited my chance to speak to him face to face,
convinced his lack of formal education would righteously shine on him, exposing
his utter lack of qualifications for the position.
His interview did not go as planned. He came off very humble, yet
knowledgeable. He was not a stuttering,
blithering idiot. He did not once invoke
any sort of religious platitude. He even
acknowledged that there were probably facets of our operations that he was
unfamiliar with, but that he would do his best to come up to speed and
hopefully lead us in the direction we needed to go. All of this behavior served only to infuriate
me. He was lying. He was being purposefully contrite. Beneath that self-effacing politeness lurked
the smug charlatan, speaking to the lambs in a soothing voice while his forked
tongue sharpened his teeth with every syllable.
He was fooling everyone except me.
Tim was hired, and I couldn’t have been angrier. The idiots who hired him, for whatever
reason, couldn’t see the blindingly obvious.
I alone knew there was a wolf in the fold, and I was resolved to unmask
him so that the others could see how they had been so easily duped.
I expected no quarter from Tim, and gave none in
return. I glared at him every time he
looked at me. I chatted and joked with my
other co-workers, smiling and laughing, but if Tim dared interject himself into
the conversation, my smile almost audibly disappeared and the stare I shot him
could have turned a Florida waterfall into an ice sculpture. Everyone in the room could see it and feel
it. Best of all, though, was that when
that happened, when I passively attacked him, I could see the disappointment in
his countenance. He looked as though he
was crestfallen at not being accepted. I
did not feel one bit guilty.
Two weeks or so into Tim’s stint as my supervisor, he
pulled me aside, and asked why I treated him the way I did. I told him that I would love to discuss my
behavior with him, but I wasn’t going to do it at work, because I didn’t think
I’d be allowed to speak freely. I
suggested we go to a bar near work. I
fully expected him to balk at that idea.
I expected him to be a teetotaler, and I wanted him to be as
uncomfortable as possible. I wanted to
be leisurely sipping a drink while I eviscerated his beliefs and crushed his
confidence. I didn’t care that this
could cost me my job. It was more
important to me to call Tim out on his (lack of) formal education and the
philosophy that shaped his world view. I
daydreamed about marching into the HR office with a claim of religious
bias. And to my surprise, he readily
agreed to meet me after work for a private meeting. At the bar.
I followed him, a few car lengths behind, from work to
the bar. I watched him park and then go
in. I sat out in my car and had a
smoke. I wanted him to wait in the bar
and be uncomfortable. I told myself to
not be too eager to pounce. I needed to
lead him to the point where I could unleash my fury quietly, yet painfully. I almost half-hoped he would break down; I
wondered if he would cause a scene?
Would the police be called? I
couldn’t wait. I stubbed out my
cigarette and went in.
He was sitting at the bar. I sat down next to him and ordered a
drink. I saw that he had a rock glass
that was three quarters full of…I didn’t know.
It looked like whiskey. While I
waited for my drink, I asked him what was in his glass. (I thought it would be tea or something that
looked like booze so he would “fit in”.)
He said it was scotch. I looked
at him, and for the first time smiled, and expressed my surprise. “I didn’t think you would let the demon
alcohol touch your lips.” He studied me
for a second, then, with the tiniest of snorts, and a relaxed smile, said “So,
that’s your problem, eh? You think I’m a
Jesus freak.” I was ready.
“You’re not?
You just happened to go to Pensacola Bible Institute long enough to (air
quotes) ‘graduate’?”
“I did”, he agreed.
And that’s all he said. To ask “why”
would have been absurd. He had
unexpectedly put the ball in my court.
Instead of him being on the defense, it was up to me to attack, and I
found myself…at a loss for words.
I dropped my defense shields a little. I asked him why, with the Jesus college
degree in theology, did he think he was qualified to be the supervisor of the
technical publications department? Once,
again, Tim’s answer was very simple, and impossible to argue with. He said “I needed a job.” In a flash, I remembered every time I’d been
desperate to have a job, and how I had applied at grocery stores, of all
places, just so I could have the stability and self-esteem of being
self-sufficient. I distinctly remembered
being so broke I once ate pretzels for dinner.
I plopped down onto my barstool wondered what had happened to my
onslaught? I was supposed to be taking
him apart, and here, within less than five minutes, we were having a drink,
agreeing with each other…and smiling.
We each ordered another drink, and I asked Tim why he
had gone to a college so out of touch with mainstream educational curricula. He said, again simply, that at the time he
attended, he was a true believer. He
said he was an active and fervent Christian, confident the path for his life
was to do the Lord’s work. He wasn’t
wistful or nostalgic. He didn’t look
back on that time as if he missed it; it simply was the way things were for him
at that time. And I’ll be damned if I
didn’t realize right then that I had stopped looking at Tim as an
adversary. He was no longer a foe to be
vanquished. I asked him what happened to
his faith. He told me that he came to
realize that he had become the very thing his biblical philosophy had warned
him to avoid. Non-Christians were not
deserving of pity and deserved to burn in hell for their sins. He looked right at me and told me that he
didn’t believe that’s the way God intended His word to be interpreted, and that
he’d had enough. He was quick to judge
and slow to understand a different point of view. Put another way, he was young and dumb, and
he admitted it.
I asked if he had abandoned Christianity altogether,
and he said no, but he was sure that fire and brimstone was not the way. I could see that he had put a great deal of
thought and effort into reaching his conclusion. Finally, he said he was “still searching” for
his place in biblical teaching, but that he had a long way to go. And once again, in the same sitting, I was
thrown for a loop. Tim, suddenly, was acting
like a human being. And to be fair, he
had never acted any other way, no matter how much I wanted him to be a rabid
bible thumper. It appeared that the only
problem in our working relationship was…me.
We spent at least an hour trading stories. I told him my religious beliefs. He told me he was under some strain because
he was getting divorced. He missed his
kids and his wife. I told him I had been
divorced, and it was unpleasant as well.
I told him some good places to eat around town, and pointed out some
interesting places to visit. We both
shared our opinions of the shapely bartender proudly displaying her impressive
physique. In short, we sat like two men
at a bar and talked about things men who sit in bars talk about. And at the end of our time (he had only two
drinks), as we were getting ready to leave, I told him that he had made a huge
impression on me. I apologized for my behavior. I told him that I was ashamed for the way I’d
treated him, and I hoped that he could see past it, because he was a person
with whom I could be friends, both in and out of work. He was then, as he always was, affable and
understanding, forgiving and friendly. I
pointed out how ironic it was that my intention in meeting him was to disparage
his religious beliefs, and it turned out that I ended up learning a decidedly
biblical lesson in humility.
The epilogue to this story is that we remained friends
even after our company laid us all off and we scattered to different parts of
the country. We talked on the phone a
few times now and then. I invited him to
my wedding, but he couldn’t make it. He
would always post about his upcoming weekend kayak trips; I had wished him a
happy 50th birthday recently on Facebook.
It sounds painfully cliché, but I was shocked
when I heard of his passing.
On 8 March 2018, Tim was found murdered in his
apartment. His 21 year old son Joshua
has been arrested and charged with 1st degree murder in the death of
his father. I have no other words for
what happened to Tim.
The world is a smaller place without Tim in it. This event has caused me to want to believe
in his heaven, and that he is there, content and at peace with all things. He deserves it.
Rest in peace, my friend Tim.
