Archive for the ‘Ethics’ Category

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Learn to Speak Up

July 13, 2016

I am such a coward.

I have a certain talent for writing–at least that what people tell me. I appreciate the comments, especially from the ones who pay me to write.

Arguing is emotional. Sometimes emotions can run away from your control. Way over. It’s the way over that’s bad. Been there in my life. Once, a long time ago, I was quite argumentative. But it was always an emotional response. I don’t handle confrontation well. Always regretted it in the end.

I care about two things in the political realm (carries over into personal)–peace and justice. There was once a stream in the Democrat Party that was focused on peace and justice. Now, to me at least, it seems like they all are just out to see what they can get from the government. Different things for different people (whoever they think will vote for them, of course).

But, peace and justice come from within. If there are enough of us, then we’ll begin to see Shalom–that deep peace that we read about in the Bible.

Some of that starts from speaking up. In a forceful, but peaceful, way.

There have been many conversations I’ve witnessed over the past few months where I’ve heard some of the worst racial comments. And violent comments. Comments such as, “Maybe we would be better off to kill all the (name your hated group–gay people, people with different colored skin, people from different cultures).”

So far as I know, all the people would self-identify as Christian. Some were in church–that is a hint.

And, did I speak up as the lone dissenter and ask, “What would Jesus think of the state of your heart this moment?”

Jesus could stare down an angry group with rocks in their hands. And me? I whiffed.

Unfortunately, I’m sure there will be another time at bat.

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It’s All About Trust

July 11, 2016

Once upon a time I was entrusted with thousands of dollars from two soccer referee associations. There were few checks and balances. That always bothered me. This is not a confession. I was careful with the money. But one of my colleagues many years ago made off with tens of thousands of dollars before it came to light.

There’s a lot of cash floating around in our economy. Much of it flows to organizations that operate with volunteer leadership. The New York Times recently ran an article about people who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from their youth sports clubs. It can happen in churches, service clubs, school support organizations.

These are trusted people. But they got into personal financial trouble. Often due to gambling. Sometime personal circumstances–divorce, lost job, medical bills.

Leadership begins with trust. But trust must be earned again every day.

Every story of leadership and leadership theory I read has trust as the foundation–whether explicitly stated or not.

It goes deeper. I’ve talked with many people in the aftermath of affairs. Many of those don’t realize the damage done to their trustworthiness. See, it’s not just money, but when you are trusted in a relationship, too.

How would you like to have a job like a policeman where you have trouble trusting anyone? With all the guns carried openly, how are they to know if they can trust that the gun won’t be turned on them? Or us, when we see the guns around?

You’d like to trust everyone. Many of us grew up in small towns where trust was the cement that held the society together.

I’d hate to live life as a cynic, distrusting everyone. On the other hand, if I’m in an organization, I would want to see trust with oversight. Just to be responsible.

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How Long Does It Take To Sin

June 8, 2016

It’s only 20 minutes of his life. It shouldn’t take away from 20 years. (Sports Dad)

There are no moral giants in the story. Must be a story about real life. Privileged athlete takes advantage of girl. Has sex. Walks away.

His point of view–so what? It’s just sex.

Her point of view–I’ve been physically and emotionally violated.

The philosopher Ken Wilber once wrote, “Civilization is a race to overcome testosterone.” There is much to think about there.

Look at King David. A warrior-king. Doesn’t get any more “manly” than that. He saw a woman. An attractive woman. The hormones spoke, David listened. How long did it take out of his life to commit a sin that kept on giving? 20 minutes?

20 minutes with a woman led to murder of her husband and many of his own soldiers.

Some people have somehow gotten the idea that women are objects and think it is Biblical. Don’t know how they got that. The Old Testament records a time of warriors. The stories prize strong men who could fight against enemies. Yet, look at the stories of strong women, full of faith, who also led.

Paul, whom many cite as the philosopher of subjugating women, is often misread. As Andy Stanley put it in the recorded Your Move talk from last weekend said, “They didn’t read the verse before it” regarding the verse about wives being submissive to their husbands.

Quick test–who knows the verse before?

This is a story about men who think that women are only objects, not real people. Who think they only exist for their pleasure. It’s a story fed by pictures, TV, movies.

That’s not the story of people living under grace. Who value every human being as a person God created and loves. Every woman who is someone’s daughter.

That’s not 20 minutes of “slipping up” that would have been ignored if not brought to light. It’s 20 minutes that proves character.

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Theology is Nice, But How Do You Live

May 3, 2016

The small group was reading in Romans. More reading than studying.  Many just hit a verse and say they’ve underlined it many years ago.

Inevitably, someone starts in on “theology lite.” She/he begins to expound on some theology from a thinker they’ve probably never actually read. Happens all the time.

I intercede (interrupt?). That’s one of my weaknesses–speaking up.

Let’s look at the simplicity and beauty of the letter, I suggest. Paul says we all start life as sinners. We may have the “Law” or may not, but it doesn’t matter. We’re all the same. Given the era Paul wrote in and his audience, he tries to explain the whole Jew/Greek thing. Same conclusion.

By the way, as an aside, some people stop here. We’re all sinners, they proclaim darkly. But that’s not the end of the story.

By chapter 6, Paul starts to hint that there’s a better life ahead. Chapter 8 he hits us full on with grace. We can dwell in sin, or we can live freely in grace. Chapter 10 reinforces the thought.

Paul concludes the letter with how we actually live under grace.

Sinners–>Grace–>Belief–>New Life (beginning Now)

Theology is nice. It’s an intellectual exercise. Makes for heated arguments. Humans have done it for thousands of years.

But, does it help you when you walk through the door into the world?

When you boil it down, almost everything Jesus taught, almost everything Paul taught, what James taught, what Peter taught–how we live beginning right now, this moment. Are we harboring evil thoughts toward another? We just committed murder in our hearts. Watch someone with lust in our hearts? We just committed adultery.

Or

  • We saw someone in need and helped them (not preached at, gave them a meal)
  • We saw someone mourning and we wept with them
  • We saw someone rejoicing and rejoiced with them
  • We saw someone lost and showed them the way to life through discipleship

We can think all we want. It’s our response to living with God that counts.

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Taxes and the Pursuit of Spiritual Practice

April 12, 2016

Working on income taxes brings out so many spiritual issues that there could be a book. Or maybe spiritual practices and personal development practices (as if they could be separated).

I’m working on mine. Yes, I know they are due in less than a week. But mine are a little complicated. I have a business with income and expenses and the like. On the personal side, my wife and I are reasonably generous and have many charitable deductions–our major personal deductions.

While pondering all my receipts and expenses, I thought of all the ethical decisions based on each item.

Is this truly charitable? Well, in the eyes of the Internal Revenue Service, is it truly charitable and deductible? This is both an ethics and a legal question. Deserves honest answers.

There are so many ways for a non-rich person to ignore income that was cash only or came in a variety of “off-the-books” ways. Not illegal, but not reported. More ethical decisions.

I use a tax preparation program. Fitting things into the categories has always been an intellectual exercise calling for yet another cup of coffee.

Yes, tax time is definitely moral inventory assessment time.

It’s also personal growth and productivity time.

I’ve written about Getting Things Done, Evernote, and Nozbe (my to-do list capture and productivity tool).

The first practice is to capture everything–idea, receipt, income, contract–in one trusted place. I keep almost no paper. I use Evernote for documents. I photograph or scan all receipts or use the cloud where possible. Send directly to Evernote. I link important things that relate to next actions from Evernote to Nozbe. Nozbe is my daily (hourly) reference for what I should do next. This one is easy–sit down, concentrate, do taxes!

This collecting process is the one thing that helps that few people do. Looking around for scattered notes and odd pieces of paper is time consuming and will definitely lead to your missing important documentation.

Good record keeping circles back to help on the ethics issue. You have the document and know what sort of income or expense. Of course, you still have to make decisions and do the work. Where’s that extra cup of coffee?

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What’s An Evangelical And Why Are We So Popular?

March 11, 2016

Evangelicals must be an important group of people, whoever they are. Not from a religious point of view. Not even from a spiritual point of view. I guess more from a “traditional family values” point of view (therefore many who voted for a Mormon for president thinking they were voting for a Christian).

I bring up that voting thing, because we don’t read story after story every day in the news about evangelicals changing lives. We read about evangelicals as a voting bloc.

I guess all evangelicals vote for the same candidates. Well, er, not exactly if this year’s Republican race to the Presidential election is an indication. Evangelicals love Cruz. Except when they love Trump. Well, maybe they like Rubio. Or Carson (oops, he’s dropped out).

I was raised in the Methodist Church. If you are British, especially English, that may have more meaning than in the US. John Wesley and his friends (who followed spiritual disciplines methodically–get it?) decided to take the church outside the walls and preach and teach to where the people were.

The article about evangelicals in Wikipedia credits Wesley as one of the founders of the movement. The article estimates that about 13% of Christians are evangelicals. It tries to define evangelical, ultimately ending in confusion. But it begins by saying evangelicals believe in salvation by grace through faith in the resurrection of Jesus. Hmm, I figured that would define all Christians. Guess I’m wrong?

In the early 70s, I was trying to figure out what it meant to be evangelical. At that time, evangelicals did not participate in politics (remember those days?). I found a group called Evangelicals for Social Action. Christian evangelicals working for peace and justice for all people.

Sometime in the mid 70s to be evangelical meant being white. And building schools where white people could send their white kids so that they wouldn’t have to go to school with black kids. And I came fresh from the movement of Christian people working for civil rights–for black people. What’s an evangelical?

In the end, I am saddened that society thinks of evangelicals as a voting bloc to be manipulated.

I wish that we were back to the roots of the word where articles about evangelicals reported on how we change lives of hurting people through teaching, preaching, feeding them and bringing them into a life-changing community of worshipers and servants.

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Getting Along With the Opposite Gender

February 26, 2016

Do you do much traveling alone? Happens to me a couple of times a month. This week I’ve made a business trip to San Diego. Nice city.

Got into a conversation about guys we know who made a practice of making unwanted advances on women. I am so used to interacting with women professionally, that I don’t really give a thought to trying to get them into my hotel room–or the other way around.

No, honestly. I’m so naive that twice when women hit up on me, I actually realized they were prostitutes. But once (she was drunk), it was something like 12 hours later when the thought hit me that she was hinting strongly about following me to my room.

Americans still have some of that Puritan heritage (or is it just Calvinist?) about how we have to be so suspicious of relations. Any wink can send us spiraling into a sexual adventure.

Oh, grow up.

I think about Jesus. We don’t usually think about how scandalous it must have been that Jesus, a rabbi, had bunches of women followers. And friends. Yet he was single. No problems there.

But there are guys who just don’t seem to get it. They seem to think it’s like being at the grocery, and you’re looking to pick up the most attractive package. They don’t seem to realize that women are actually humans. Some times it works the other way around, too. It’s not always a man’s problem.

I guess I’m just making a plea to treat people of whatever gender as a human being with a personality, imperfect though we all might be. I’m sitting here in San Diego not 30 miles from one of the most notorious red light districts in the world. It services American men. The men never realize that those girls don’t really want to be there. That they don’t spend all day dreaming of the guy who is going to buy 15 minutes of pleasure.

What does it mean to be a disciple? One thing is to treat every human being as a child of God, loved by the Father.

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Fear, Anger, Lives Matter

January 21, 2016

My friend called this evening. He has Asperger’s Syndrome. He’s not very social, but deep down he really wants to connect. On the other hand, connections with people are stressful. 

He asked what I was doing. Reading the news, I replied. He said, “I never read the news. Too depressing.” 

I agreed. Said I mostly read tech news.

He’s right about the news. We learn about almost every murder in the world. In fact, it’s always about murder, shootings, rapes, confrontations, hostility, war. “If it bleeds, it leads” was the old newspaper mantra. That’s even more important in this 24-hour constant news cycle where eyeballs on the screen are crucial to financial success. (I was in the business.)

Inundation of stories of killing raises fear in the hearts of many. Fear often plays out in anger. We have lots of anger in the world. Even in America where things are really pretty good (don’t tell my Facebook “friends” that, they glory in bad news).

It seems everything gets politicized. Every life matters to God. But some people think that Black lives don’t matter to the white majority in this country. So, we get another bumper sticker slogan. Which leads good Christian conservative people to counter with “Blue Lives Matter” (policemen).

I’m not following all the election stuff very closely, but I will admit to having occasional nightmares about a Trump/Sanders election. Where would the other 75% of the voters go?

None of this helps the discussion. Where is the peacemaker when we need her? 

John Fischer wrote on The Catch “Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called the children of God.” He pondered the thought about what would have happened in the 60s with the pent up anger and frustration of black people without the non-violent leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr. Think of the riots after he was killed.

I read my Facebook news feed (more infrequently now) and see anger, fear, racism. I know most of these people. If asked, most would deny being angry, fearful, cynical, racist. But their words belie them.

Bill Hybels expressed his wish of the same thing last Sunday following a talk on race relations at Willow Creek. Our church stands firmly for good relations among those of various races, he said. “If you don’t agree, don’t let the door hit you in the back on your way out.” He’s just that strong–and concerned.

It’s not one of Richard J. Foster’s 12 Spiritual Disciplines, but I view peacemaking as a Spiritual Discipline–or Practice, if you wish. 

I’m way too low key. Most of my “talking” is with my fingers on a keyboard. Those of us who have perspective and take Jesus seriously for what he told us, need to step up the game.

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Shed a Little Light

January 18, 2016

I wrote today’s post over the weekend. I’m having trouble remembering what day it is anymore. Too many things on my mind, I guess.

This morning, reminded it was Martin Luther King Day, I was reminiscing about my youthful college days as a civil rights advocate in an all-white community (of 1,000 people) and the grief I took. Or driving through Mississippi on my way to LSU for grad school in 1970 with an equal rights decal on my car. Book smart, common sense stupid. That was me.

Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke at my little liberal arts university not long before he was murdered. Guys told me that the farmers from around Ada, Ohio joked about how they should have run his car off the road on the trip from Lima to Ada.

Thanks to John Fischer and his email newsletter The Catch for pointing out this great song on YouTube to remind us of having a dream. Do we still have the dream? Listen and enjoy.

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What Happened To The End of Racism?

November 16, 2015

Many people in my all-white home town gave me some grief over my civil rights views in the 1960s. But it was mild, if pointed. And I survived driving through Mississippi a couple of times in 1970 with equal rights decals on my car.

But I thought momentum was building behind the idea of judging a person by their character rather than the color of their skins or other external differences.

There has been progress. Almost all laws in the US are now color-blind (and gender-blind–that was a problem, too). Most police no longer are a serious threat to the well-being, and even lives, of people of color.

The goal remains elusive.

We can change laws (good). Train people (good). Heighten awareness and provide peer pressure (good).

But we can’t change people’s hearts that easily.

Reports from Missouri suggest that the University of Missouri race relations have changed little since 1969. We still have too many incidents.

And now I expect my Facebook “news” stream to fill up with a reaction of hatred and verbal violence toward all people who are followers of Islam and/or of Middle Eastern descent because of the attacks by a few nihilists in Paris. (I quit reading most of that stuff  on Facebook. If you want to reach me in Facebook, you can use Messenger rather than just a post.)

I have some friends and many acquaintances among those groups. They are peace-loving people with a moral code not unlike many Christians (I wonder about the moral code of some).

It all makes me so sad. An entire adult life span, and we have actually progressed so little.

Can we take some time to watch what we say? Pray for those hurting? Pray for justice? Judge people according to character rather than this painting an entire religion and ethnic group with the same brush as brutal terrorists?

Thank you.

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