Faith Venture

I’m beginning to practice minimalist packing for traveling. In this era of airlines charging fees for checking baggage, people respond by carrying on more and more luggage. Overhead bins fill. Even though I have “status” and early boarding rights (and can check for free), it’s still a hassle.

Tuesday and Wednesday I was in St. Louis. Everything I needed I took in my backpack. Razor, toothbrush, hair brush, a little bag of toiletries, a little bag of connectors for my electronics, a couple of books, laptop, iPad, change of shirts and underwear.

I always pack running and workout gear and then seldom use them on trips. I need to do my normal work packed in to a couple of hours early in the morning before heading out to breakfast meetings and then meetings. Then dinner. So, I left them behind. No sense packing extra clothes I’ll not wear.

The ethical behavior I was just reading about is non-possessiveness. Do you carry more baggage than you need?

Jesus talked about this several times–storing up treasures in heaven, not on earth. We get tied to our material possessions.

You can take the baggage metaphor a number of ways. Sometimes we possess old hurts and longings that we actually are tied to. We perhaps like that victim feeling.

What is essential for your journey through life? What can you really do without? Getting rid of the need for possessions can be freeing.

It’s not that I don’t have possessions. They are not bad. The question is rather am I tied to them. Is my self worth wrapped up in having a certain car, house, painting, shoes, whatever?

Pack light for the journey. Carrying too many possessions is like a boat anchor dragging you down.

Today’s news from the world of sports transcends sports. An exhaustive investigation into the Penn State University football program in the wake of child molestation by an assistant coach shed light on the way Joe Paterno ran not only the football program, but the university.

As Frank Deford put it on NPR July 4, football coaches live a life of keeping players eligible to play. That extends to coaches, as well. When reports surfaced that top assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was molesting young boys, Paterno chose to keep it quiet rather than tarnish a carefully honed image of a spotless football program. Who cares about the boys?

The Bible is full of examples of heroes with flaws. Our history is full of examples of heroes with flaws. Yet, especially in this age of finely tuned media manipulation, heroes are still cultivated and revered. Then we discover that they are merely human.

Even Jesus was seen as a hero with flaws when he failed to lead the anticipated revolution against the Romans. It took a couple of months for even his closest friends to understand the type of revolution he was talking about. But, there are no more like him.

Paul told us at the beginning of Romans that all humans are sinners. If you ever think otherwise, go back to Rule 1.

It is very hard for people to live an ethical life. You have to try very hard. Billy Graham is perhaps the best example I can think of. He understood the seduction of crowds, publicity and adoration. He worked very hard to maintain his integrity.

Football coaches, indeed all coaches and even corporate and religious leaders, can become all-powerful. They can rule by force of personality. They can come to believe their press clippings. Then comes the inevitable fall.

It’s the same with all of us. Where is your integrity hiding today?

Much of ancient philosophy and certainly the writings collected in The Bible are there to teach us how to live. We probably took courses in philosophy and religion if we went to a university. The professors probably taught it as either history or an intellectual pastime.

This post’s title comes from Proverbs 19. People are still people, no matter how sophisticated or rich we become. During the past couple of weeks we’ve witnessed more cases of people in power acting like emotional children. And the effect was devastating.

Yahoo! is one of the oldest and most respected brands on the Web. Yet lately it has had trouble finding a chief executive officer to lead it to new progress. Then it settled on a guy by the name of  Scott Thompson. Then, oops, it came out that his resume said he had a degree in computer science. That gave him technical credibility in Silicon Valley where he felt he needed it (evidently). Trouble is–he never earned such a degree. Well, he won’t be poor. He was paid $6.2 million for his four months at the company. But he is far poorer in both wealth and reputation.

Then I read about the technology products retailer Best Buy. Seems the CEO of that company had an inappropriate relationship with a female employee according to news reports. Those reports appeared just after he resigned after a quarter of poor financial performance. Although nothing was said at the time, the assumption was he resigned due to performance. Over the weekend, new appeared that the founder and chairman of the board resigned as chairman because he knew about the relationship and did not tell the internal audit committee.

Have you ever lied on your resume? Or stretched the truth when seeking a job? I have a weird educational history–partly because even though I have a college degree, I’m mostly self-taught. I try to be very careful when describing my background (even though my last three positions didn’t really require much, but when I had engineering jobs, well…).

It’s all about how you live your life. Do you live with-God to the best of your ability? Or do you live in a trail of deceit?

So, how many sermons or homilies have you heard on ethics where the speaker will inevitably get to, “money can’t buy happiness”? Michael Norton, a researcher at the University of British Columbia, decided to try some experiments. He started with Canadian university students and eventually took the research global.

He spoke at a TED conference (Google it, you hear some great short talks and learn a lot). Let him describe his results.

Oh, the answer is yes–but only if you spend it on others.

Here’s a link to the video.

I was listening to Bill Hybels, senior pastor of Willow Creek, talk last weekend about commitment to serving the poor and disadvantaged. He suggested reading Isaiah 58 every day for a month. Among the things that God says is, “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?”

This message came just after I had listened to at least three talks over the past couple of weeks from people who had visited “third world” countries recently. The reports included descriptions of the results of modern corporations moving manufacturing and production operations to these countries that have corrupt governments with few regulations. Nothing prevents the companies from taking shortcuts in processes. They dump wastes into rivers resulting in water unfit to support life. People were thrown off land that had supported them perhaps for generations and who now had no food and no means of support.

As a manufacturing professional, I’m grieved that we take advantage of people so easily and flippantly. Ethics apply everywhere. In fact, ethics is also good business. Being careless with waste and environment is a sign of sloppy, wasteful thinking. Actually, long term profits and success result from doing just the opposite of managers who take the easy way out.

Most of us will not be making those decisions. The question remains, when faced with decisions or choices about whether to grab a short-term easy benefit or whether to help other people in the long run, I, for one, hope that I choose the latter.

And for reinforcement, I’ll be reading Isaiah 58 daily for the month of May. Just to write it in my mind.