How a Man in the Workplace Must Reconcile Honor with Duty

“There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.” –Aldous Huxley

Loyalty to an employer, or a friend, or an institution, is a gentlemanly trait. And a gentleman’s first reaction when an employer, friend, or institution goes wrong is to stand by them, and quietly guide them back to where they should be. But every gentleman ultimately recognizes a higher loyalty, a higher duty, that goes back to first principles, which can be tested in extreme circumstances. 

Consider Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945). Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor, theologian, and author who becamean anti-Nazi dissident in Hitler’s Germany. In June 1939, he accepted an invitation from the Union Theological Seminary in New York, which would allow him to stay in the United States, safe from Nazi persecution, but he soon regretted his decision. He wrote to Reinhold Niebuhr, an American theologian, “I have come to the conclusion that I made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people.”

Bonhoeffer returned to Germany, knowing that his opposition to Nazi policies, and his support for the anti-Nazi resistance movement, could cost him his life. The Gestapo arrested him in April 1943, and he was eventually sent to aconcentration camp. In his absence, he was tried, found guilty of conspiring against Hitler, and sentenced to death.

His judge was Otto Thorbeck. Thorbeck, like many Germans, had to decide where his duty lay. He believed that his duty was to the Nazi regime. He pursued that duty so fervently that even as Nazi Germany was collapsing, he insisted on witnessing that the death sentence was carried out against Bonhoeffer. When his train broke down he rode the rest of the way to the concentration camp on a bicycle. He saw that Bonhoeffer was taken out of his cell, stripped naked, and hanged at dawn on April 9, 1945. Two weeks later the United States 90th and 97th Infantry Divisions liberated the camp where Bonhoeffer had last been held.

Eberhard Bethge, a student and friend of Bonhoeffer’s, quoted a man who saw the execution as saying, “I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer... kneeling on the floor praying fervently to God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the few steps to the gallows, brave and composed.”

Thorbeck is now a footnote in history, but Bonhoeffer is a man who has inspired millions. Bonhoeffer was loyal to his country, his people, and most especially his faith.

Even in the day-to-day circumstances of our humdrum business lives there may be times when we have a higher duty than merely following the dictates of our bosses. There are times when even we might need to take a stand.