Faith Venture

Pastor and church leader Andy Stanley teaches often on leadership. Recently he tackled the topic of political leadership. “What if our leaders made a fearless moral inventory and took appropriate action?” he asked. Congressmen resigning; politicians coming clean and being transparent.

What if also our church leaders? Business leaders? Us?

Stanley made two comments that have stuck with me. First, he asked the question, “Do you view religion through the filter of your politics; or do you view politics through the filter of your religion?” That’s really something to ponder. Which value system comes first?

His second point was that all the politicians we love to criticize have one thing in common–they were elected. By us.

In both cases, change starts within us. Regardless of conservative or liberal, if that person running for office is a moral scoundrel, should we vote for her or him? Think about it.

Once again, I think we need to look at the example of leadership modeled by Nehemiah. Talk about moral authority. When he confronted the local Jewish leaders upon his return to Jerusalem about how they were ripping off many of the people financially, he revealed that not only was he not taxing the people for his income (which was the expected and accepted practice) but he used his own wealth to help them pay back their high interest loans and his own wealth to run the governor’s office and staff.

This is moral authority. He didn’t take on political leadership to become rich. He took it on to serve God.

In all we do, why are we doing it? What do we expect of our leaders?

Paul said it. James emphasized it. Our tongues can create all manner of troubles–both for us and for others.

YouTube is great, isn’t it? Just like once you had to have access to the limited number of publishers to have your writing published, once you had to have access to the limited number of TV networks or movie companies to get your video published.

Now we have publishing platforms such as WordPress (where this blog is published) or SquareSpace (where my business blog is published) and photo sites such as Flickr where you can see my photos under “Garytheeditor”. Now YouTube is the new TV. And it can get you international attention in an instant.

I’ve been listening to a discussion in another area about Americans’ sense of entitlement. Not just recipients of U.S. government “entitlement programs” (which is probably most of us if you really analyze it), but an attitude that many have that they are entitled to things. We’re entitled to getting stuff. We’re entitled to voice our opinion even if we don’t think about what we say before we say it.

It’s a little like the driver I saw yesterday as I was driving on the freeway. She was entering the freeway along the entrance ramp. What’s the purpose of the entrance ramp? It’s to allow you time to match the speed of traffic and fit in. What was she doing? She set her speed and just expected others to get out of her way. The 18-wheeler couldn’t and didn’t. She wound up stopping (fortunately this was rural interstate so there was space off the travel lanes).

Just so, even we as Christians often feel entitled to just spout out any half-formed opinions and others can just get out of our way. But we can put them on YouTube. They can hurt people. Our words have reach far beyond our close circle.

Freedom requires responsibility. Responsibility is maturity. We’re not entitled to much of anything. God’s grace is for us even though we don’t deserve it. A little humility and gratitude in our attitude helps get us over that feeling of entitlement. It’ll help us avoid the dangers Paul and James warned us about.

Our small group is reading 1 Timothy. Got to Chapter 2 yesterday reading about how a church should be a praying church–oh, yes, and how women should dress with modesty before the Lord. The leader suggested that if Paul would have proof read what he wrote, he’d have deleted those couple of sentences. This same (male) leader often has suggested taking a black magic marker to parts of Paul’s instructions.

I had been contemplating that chapter and said that, on the contrary, Paul knew exactly what he was writing. I presume that men, much like through the 19th and much of the 20th centuries, wore pretty boring attire. We started changing by the 70s, but even there we went to khakis and polos rather than black suits, white shirts and ties.

But women–they were for adornment. In those New Testament times according to our resident historian, women displayed the family wealth. You knew the family was wealthy depending upon the amount of jewelery displayed. But I think even more than that, the focus became on the external person of the woman and not on her soul. We are all to be humble before God, but women can show it externally more than the average man when they are not.

I asked the group (rhetorically, of course, and understand that I’m the youngest one in the group), when you stand in front of the mirror getting prepared for church, are you thinking about how great you look or are you thinking about being humble before God.

My wife told me I wasn’t very uplifting to the women. I said, I’m a teacher not a motivational speaker. I want people to think. Is it all about them? Or is it all about God?

So, have I made you stop and think about why you dress as you do? If so, then I succeeded.