#38 “Character, everyone needs some, nobody
should be one.” January 2015
LT is one plucky gal. Okay, not an
adjective common to our lexicon of descriptions so if I add spirited,
audacious, or bold you can add it to your vocabulary. I fondly admire this quality about my wife’s
sister-in-law (please, don’t let LT know I admire anything about her; it’ll disrupt
four decades détente). I’ll wager that RT married her for a list of reasons with
pluck at or near the top. A fairly
active Facebook friend, there is no ambiguity about LT’s values as evidenced by
her posts. Many months ago, LT shared a Facebook post of Micah 6:8 and I have
been chewing on it ever since.
Micah 6:8 He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And
what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk
humbly with your God.
About a month after that post my
bride and I attended a surprise celebration at Cuyahoga Valley Christian
Academy to honor RT’s thirty years of service. RT has risen from staff to The Right Reverend,
Mon senior, Ph.D., Dean, President, CEO or whatever the hallowed halls of
academia call him there; he’s the boss. While
listening to the remarks of his friends, peers, board, staff and family, Micah 6:8
was unsaid, but mingled with the many kind words. As the event concluded and RT
took the podium, the seeming coincidence of LT’s earlier post and a celebration
of RT’s work life no longer could be considered an accident.
RT is a student of history so in
keeping with his discipline, we look to the background of Micah’s book. The
prophet is a contemporary of Isaiah and witnessed a dark chapter in the account
of Israel between 750 B.C. and 686 B.C. He both presents the prosecutor’s case against
the nation to explain its defeats as well as foretells a greater glory to come.
In the middle of this he tells the folks that God has already told them how to
act in the clearest of terms.
…act justly …love mercy …walk humbly
To move to modern vernacular,
Micah may have written:
…just do the
right thing…cut the guy a break…get over yourself.
Act Justly
Everyone has values but
unfortunately a growing number among us have poor values. A core commitment to ‘do the right thing’, the
righteous thing, the intrinsically correct thing, at every opportunity, is rare
in our world today. While most might do right when someone is watching, C S
Lewis wrote, ”Integrity is doing the
right thing, even when no one is watching”.
In addition to doing the right
thing in secret, there is doing the right thing no matter who we interact with.
This encompasses matters of race, religion, creed, color, gender and any other
trigger to a common prejudice. A high threshold of ‘right’ is found in answering
whether everyone you encounter is treated identically.
Acting justly includes the battle
of greed with generosity. Growing up, if
I whined about dad’s pronouncement of justice in our home, Dad reminded me that
in all our transactions I never got the short end of the stick. He’d say, “Maybe the ‘stick’ isn’t as long as
you thought it should be but I have never given you the short end of the stick.”
God’s measure of right includes a component of generosity that exceeds the
minimum requirements of a contract. God is at his nature, generous, and if we
claim to follow him the fruit of generosity should be handed out to everyone we
meet.
Score one for my Dad and RT. The
story of my father’s life, all those testimonies about RT and decades of observations
prove a life of acting justly by these two men.
Love Mercy
Receiving mercy is not getting
the punishment your actions dictate. For example, somebody has a right and an opportunity
to punch you in the mouth for some reprehensible remark you’ve made and they
forebear from doing so. Giving mercy is deciding to withhold justifiable wrath.
Loving mercy is a commitment to a world where mercy is given freely. Christ adds a practical reason to live a life
of mercy: Blessed are the merciful: for they shall
obtain mercy Matthew 5
Forrest Bailey,
was merciful. If he had not been merciful, tons of punishment would have been administered
for my behavior over the twenty-one years we shared. Understanding God’s mercy in Sunday school wasn’t
hard after experiencing Dad’s mercy at home. Just like Christ’s admonition, dad
was even more merciful when his kids were, themselves, merciful towards each
other. Candidly, I was often more considerate of, more merciful with, my work staff
than my own family. My failures are made
clearer by men like my dad and RT who seem to understand this breakdown but
somehow avoid it.
There is one
more facet of mercy to consider. A manager frequently receives a rebuke from
their superior[s]. A merciful manager absorbs, like a car’s shock absorber, the
intensity of the reprimand to isolate their people from the destructive elements
contained therein. Being the shield means you get the dents, being the shock
absorber means you get the bumps, and loving mercy means, like Christ, you
takes the punishment without complaint to love mercy.
Forrest bore
the weight unfair rebukes and they took him to his early grave at fifty-five.
Being the shock absorber brought four heart surgeries from my thirty years in
corporate America and RT readily confesses the ‘dents’ from shielding his flock
from the predators throwing rocks at them.
Walk Humbly
The most
profound part of that command is ‘walk’; not talk humbly. Humility can only be
walked, patiently lived out, displayed in deliberate silence. Anyone who
proclaims their humility is at once eliminated from this exclusive attribution.
The label ‘humble’ can only be conferred upon you.
Like most
things we classify as virtues, humility is often thrown into the box of things we
consider so far from our reach that we relegate these qualities to people so
pious, so other worldly, that we consider them eccentric at best and
out-of-touch, more often. In this way we absolve ourselves from ever attempting
to reach, put on, many virtues. Let’s be honest, it’s little more than a lame
excuse to be content with status quo. In
truth these qualities are obtained by an intentional life of practiced
discipline. Said a little differently, what we frequently choose to call a
virtue is just a behavior that takes a measure of practice, over time, with
discomfort, to include in our repertoire.
What
humility often looks like is a process in decision making where you acknowledge
the reach of the decision, determine the scope of people affected, calculate
the impacts and consider the interests of each group as important as those of
the decision makers. Admittedly, all but unheard of in modern corporate
settings. It sounds like, “Who else is going to be affected by this change that
we haven’t considered yet?” or “How can I help my staff grow in their career
and financial future?” “What can we give
up to lessen the impact?” Closer to home humility says, “What’s best for my
family?” “What is best for my spouse?” or as simple as “Where do the kids want
to go this weekend?”
Humility
links arms with mercy and never says, “This is just like the last time you
screwed up!” or reminds a child or spouse of a failure in the past to
manipulatively shame them into obedience. No, humility chooses overwhelming
love to cover a multitude of sins.
Score three
for Dad and RT.
No, there
was no coincidence between the Facebook post of Micah 6:8 shared by plucky LT
and the celebration of RT’s thirty years at CVCA. Micah’s words resonated with LT because she
has been holding hands with that verse for almost forty years. The words ring
loudly with me because they remind me of my father’s legacy and challenge me to
live in concert with them for my remaining days.
