THE ETHICIST
By RANDY COHEN
Syllabus
I am a member of the clergy (I will not identify the denomination), and I no longer believe in the tenets of my faith; indeed, I am an atheist. I am praised for my services, counseling, teaching, etc., and I receive glowing reports in staff reviews, but it is a futile, empty performance. On the one hand, my congregation is happy with me, but on the other, I feel like a fraud. Must I disclose my doubts to my congregation, knowing it would cost me my job? Anonymous
Your unnamed denomination is the key to your question and your professional obligations. We don't demand that most workers be true believers, only that they do their jobs well. A librarian may detest the Library of Congress filing system and yearn for the forsaken Dewey Decimal. Even in a house of worship, we don't question the spirituality of the guy who repairs the synagogue's boiler or the woman who plays the church organ. But the clergy may be different. In some religions their essential task is to be a teacher and leader; in others, faith is the sine qua non.
The Rev. Dr. Alida Ward of the Greenfield Hill Congregational Church in Fairfield, Conn., takes the latter view: ''If, as is clearly the case here, the preacher can no longer hold on to his/her faith, then, yes, the most fundamental and necessary qualification for this 'job' has disappeared.'' She adds, ''It simply isn't fair to a congregation not to believe what you're telling them to believe.''
From this Christian perspective, you must come clean. (Ward suggests that you consider teaching or counseling.) To do otherwise would make you a spiritual snake-oil salesman, like a stereo dealer who pushes a CD player he knows works poorly and is likely to burst into flames. Hellish flames. But from one Jewish point of view, this is the wrong metaphor.
Here is how Steven Nadler, a professor of philosophy and Jewish studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, responds to your dilemma: ''I'm not convinced that, with the possible exception of Orthodox Judaism, it is a rabbi's job to promote a specific set of theological ideas. His job is to explain what the demands of Judaism are and to lead people in study and prayer. He is a teacher, not a salesman, and outside of the sciences it is not the job of a good teacher to tell you what to believe but only to show you how to go about figuring out for yourself what you should believe.''
This interpretation imposes no obligation either to step down or to discuss your inner life with your congregation. Your doubts may actually be an asset, suggests Rabbi Jonathan Gerard of the Temple Covenant of Peace in Easton, Pa.: ''My suspicion is that your writer has merely lost faith in an older and unacceptable notion of God.
He or she should continue to serve his or her congregation, for out of this will come new spiritual insights. We all feel inauthentic at times.''
Ward adds that your experience is widespread for civilians as well as your co-professionals: ''Most people of faith, if they are honest with themselves -- clergy included -- will admit to passing through periods of doubt and spiritual confusion.'' But unlike Gerard, Ward permits only transitory doubts in the clergy.
Because people of various faiths will differ about this matter, my conclusion is that you must adhere to the doctrines of your religion. If your denomination demands faith, you must reveal your doubts, and if called to -- not an inevitability -- step down. But if your religion does not impose such a demand, then you have no ethical obligation to resign. However, your own desire for authenticity may lead you to do so. There's little contentment to be found in persisting in work for which you have no heart.
When I got to a toll plaza on the Garden State Parkway, a crumpled-up
dollar bill was stuffed into the toll basket. It was too late to go to another
lane, and the bill was obstructing the chute, so I took it out and deposited my
correct change. I kept the dollar.
My wife and grown children said I should have left it there. But then the
next driver would have taken it. What should I have done? Mark Lesser, New York
The battered bill belongs to the Garden State, but if it can't be returned, it's yours. Letting it lie might seem virtuous but would have been, as you suggest, literally passing the buck to some later driver who surely would have pocketed it. If honking your horn failed to attract a toll collector to whom you could toss the crumpled currency, you could have replaced it with a dollar's worth of coins. Lacking spare change, you could have mailed the battered buck to the state when you got home, but the cost of your postage and handling would have made this counterproductive. Thus, the dollar could indeed be considered unreturnable.
It is the dollar crumpler who acted badly here. He might as well have poured 35 cents worth of soy beans into the chute: the machinery is designed to handle coins, not trade goods or origami.
I work for a not-for-profit organization that licenses its name for a variety of products and events. After we were each given two event tickets and a chance to buy more at a discount, the donor, a licensee, complained that one of us was selling eight of these tickets on eBay, and the organization fired him. Was this the correct thing to do? Anonymous
It was more correct than having him keelhauled, but not by much. There's nothing wrong with an organization giving its employees nontransferable freebies -- a gym membership, for example -- but any such restrictions must be declared in advance, as must the penalty for illicit use. (Although even then, termination is astonishingly harsh for such a transgression.) But in this situation there was no rule to break, and so your co-worker had every right to do what he wished with his tickets -- use them, sell them, give them to a friend (or, if they were Knicks tickets, an enemy). Under the circumstances, the organization was entirely out of line to fire him.
Send your queries to ethicist@nytimes.com or The Ethicist, The New York Times Magazine, 229 West 43rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10036, and include a daytime phone number.