In religion (and the religion of IT), we often find ourselves accepting the majority of the dogma while having to choose to reject the minority. In this episode, Josh, Doug, and Leon talk about how to support something that you disagree with because it’s just part of a larger system that is mostly good. Listen or read the transcript below:

Leon: 00:00 Hey everyone, it's Leon. Before we start this episode, I wanted to let you know about a book I wrote. It's called "The Four Questions Every Monitoring Engineer is Asked," and if you like this podcast, you're going to love this book. It combines 30 years of insight into the world of it with wisdom gleaned from Torah, Talmud, and Passover. You can read more about it, including where you can get a digital or print copy over on adatosystems.com. Thanks.

Josh: 00:25 Welcome to Technically Religious, where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh, or at least not conflict with our religious life. This is Technically Religious.

Leon: 00:48 So tell me, what do you think the hardest part of your job is?

Josh: 00:54 You know, when I lived in Las Vegas, a retired LAPD gang squad detective that I knew, I think he said it best, he said, In order to be in leadership, you have to tell people how to go to hell and have a good time getting there."

Doug: 01:08 Wait, what does that even mean?

Josh: 01:10 Well, I think that it means that sometimes to lead, well, you have to tell people things that they don't want to hear, but you have to do it in a way where they don't hate you or hate the process.

Leon: 01:21 Okay. And that takes us into our conversation for today, which is, opposing something even as you are a part of it. Even as you follow it. What we're going to talk about is where the majority of the thing that you're in, your work, your religion, the club you're in, most of it you like, it's good, but there are certain elements that you absolutely can't stand. It is wrong, wrong, wrong. So how do we as good IT people, as good practitioners of our faith as good members of our family - How do we oppose something while still being part of it, rather than just rage quitting. So that's the topic for today.

Josh: 02:09 Well, I'm going to oppose the fact that we've started this podcast without introducing Doug.

Leon: 02:15 Oh, right, sorry, everyone, uh, sound off

Josh: 02:18 Josh Biggley

Doug: 02:20 Doug Johnson

Leon: 02:22 and I'm Leon Adato. Thank you. Okay, good. That... See? So sometimes opposition can be good, and be done respectfully. Right?

Josh: 02:28 Well, you know, I, I if you've been on the Internet lately, I think that they would disagree. I'm just going to say that Reddit and every comment on every article I've ever read says that you have to oppose by burning down the world.

Leon: 02:43 Right? Right. They would oppose the idea that you can oppose something respectfully.

Josh: 02:47 Absolutely.

Doug: 02:47 Yeah. It seems like, but it seems like what they're doing is by burning down the world, they're burning down the very thing that they want to preserve. It drives me crazy that people are just like, "Let's just go and destroy this thing cause I hate this part of it. So I'm going to ruin everything for everybody."

Leon: 03:04 Everybody. Right. And, and Doug, just a little background for the listeners that don't know you really well, you, um, the way you described yourself to me first is best, uh, Steve Martin once said that, "two years of philosophy is enough to screw up anybody." And you've had four.

Doug: 03:18 That is correct.

Leon: 03:18 So I can only imagine that some of the arguments that you see on the Internet are maddening for you.

Doug: 03:26 It can be and I've actually gotten off of all of the long form ones because I was tending to do too