Responsibility "R" Us

In his speech last night President Obama used the term "responsibility" quite a few times. I hope it is a sign of a reversal in a decades long national trend toward evasion of responsibility, but I am not optimistic. The reason I am not optimistic is the fundamental structure of our society and culture in 2009. We have turned safety nets into entitlements, and our legal system has allowed countless individuals and groups to use it as a giant blank canvas on which to throw various convoluted legal theories about blame and someone else's responsibility, hoping some of it will stick.

All of this has been done in search of the money, not the truth, and some of it has stuck. That is how we get warning labels on refrigerators that tell us not to stick our head into the freezer and shut the door. That is why a box of food I recently bought warned me to only eat the contents, not the packaging. That is why we are inundated with commercials urging us to purchase some new, allegedly helpful medication, then warned it may cause death, dismemberment, temporary insanity, loss of all friendships, and horrific alterations to just about every bodily function (apparently the latter two are related consequences).

I even saw a billboard on the highway for a new website that helps you find someone or some company to sue, even if you aren't aware that you've been wronged. The message? There must be something that you're not happy about, and if you are not happy, there must be someone else responsible for that lack of happiness. Apparently our founding documents have been changed to read that everyone has an inalienable right to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of money damages from anyone who we can convince a jury has made us unhappy'.

This is also the culture that has produced 'helicopter' parents; so named because they hover over their children's lives in an overprotective frenzy. These parents do not merely support their children, they place themselves between their children and the world, doing their homework, helping them avoid any negative consequences, writing their college essays, showing up at admissions interviews, arguing with teachers and professors over grades, and, in some recent instances, actually showing up at job interviews with their children.

We all know that children watch what we do; they do not necessarily listen to what we say. We also know that they are imitators. For many centuries, the learning community of a multi-generational family was the major source of wisdom for most children and there were daily lessons and examples of responsibility. Even as families began to move apart, two world wars surrounding a great depression provided ample opportunities to witness and take on personal responsibility. A consumer society coupled with instanteneous technological gratification (I still remember making sure I had enough cash for the weekend before ATMs) now continually lessens the opportunities to develop responsibility, while time and money pressures entice us to find someone else to be responsible.

Our children are watching and learning. As Pogo said, "We have met the enemy and he is us." All of us as parents and educators must be responsible for acting responsibly and teaching our children to do the same. I checked the website from the billboard, and I still couldn't find anyone else to sue to make it happen.

Hope, Spring and Eternity

I didn't title this blog "Hope Springs Eternal" because I've never known what that means. Does it mean you should always hope for something or you should keep on hoping for the same thing even if it's not happening or that you will keep on hoping, despite your best efforts to give up and move on because you can't help yourself? I guess it doesn't matter what it means (other than forcing me to write a run-on sentence to try to decipher the phrase). What I want to reflect on is the relationship between hope and eternity.

I grew up a fan of the Red Sox because I lived in New England and many of my friends rooted for the Yankees. This is called being a contrarian, and I have paid mightily for the privilege: over 40 years of rooting without a championship, to be exact. Every spring I anxiously anticipated the start of another season and the chance to beat the Yankees. Every year I was disappointed... until 2004, when miraculously the Red Sox came back from 3 games down to the Yankees to beat them 4 straight and then win the 2004 World Series. Now that I live in Chicago, this is what allows me to root for the Cubs since I do not see it as hopeless, merely unlikely.

But hoping for something and having hope seem to me to be two different things. I can hope that Duke gets their act together and does well in the NCAA tournament this year, but if it doesn't happen, my life will not be appreciably different (except for the abuse I will receive from my "friends"). However, if I do not have Hope in my life; if I do not believe there is a purpose and focus to my life; if I do not believe there is an ultimate satisfaction to my yearning and striving; if I do not have hope that there is a God who cares about and loves me, then all the hopes (with little "h"s) do not mean much in the grand scheme of things.

Last week was great week in strengthening my Hope. I was able to speak to the students at the Trinity Forum Academy and attend their Integrity Weekend Conference. The two keynote speakers at the conference were Dr. Francis Collins, former Director of the Human Genome Project and author of The Language of God and Kelly Monroe Kullberg, author of Finding God at Harvard and founder of The Veritas Forum. These are two of the most distinguished and intelligent people I have ever met, and yet their distingishing characteristics were joy, inquisitiveness and humility. As I heard their presentations and spoke to each about the needs of our children and the challenges facing Christian educators, I realized there are many, many wonderful Christians in various careers and disciplines who are using every bit of their God-given talent to pass down wisdom to the next generation. And as we worshipped together on Sunday morning and I watched Dr. Collins and Ms. Kullberg play their guitars as we sang together "Be Thou My Vision", I felt once again that Hope, this time as it was shared in that room: that a God bigger than we can imagine, has done more than we can ever know, to provide an eternity for us that is far more wonderful and wondrous than we could ever conceive.

It's Just a Matter of Trust

With deference to Billy Joel, it does seem to be "a matter of trust" around us - whether it is the economy, politics, global security, the value of my 401(k) or the all-important task of raising the next generation. And trust is based, to a great deal, on honesty and integrity.

I read a great quote last week from Spencer Johnson: "Honesty is being truthful with other people; integrity is telling the truth to yourself." However, I would alter that second part slightly: "Integrity is acknowledging the truth to yourself." You see, integrity means acting on the truth, not just stating it. We all know of people who have told themselves the truth and then still acted to deceive others - take the recent Wall Street leaders.

But think for a moment - how much of our lives depend on trust? We trust that the products we eat, drink, drive and otherwise use during the day are safe and made to the standards indicated on them. What if our medications were wrong? What if our drinking water was unsafe? What if my steering wheel did not turn my car's wheels? Occasionally failures do happen - and it is just the infrequency of it that makes my point. It is news when the trust is broken.

I am afraid that in just a few months we are becoming almost numb to the breach of trust in our financial markets, our political leaders and our media. Our impeached former governor of Illinois is getting another round of talk show appearances as reward for his breach of public trust while our new Governor Quinn struggles to get people to listen. The media chooses to report on Jessica's ill-chosen blue jeans rather than the good, decent hard work of many Americans who are assisting others in these difficult times. CEOs take bonuses out of bailout money while laying off thousands and then quizzically wonder why anyone is upset. Our children are growing up watching this... and watching this... and watching this... because that is what they, and everyone else, does in this communications-saturated culture.

Yet, we cannot function as individuals or a culture without a certain level of trust. When that trust is broken, society begins to break down and the quality of our life begins to suffer. We cannot presume that it will improve, especially for the next generation, unless we proactively work to redevelop trust. We must teach our children to trust and to engender trust. We must be living examples of that trust because they will always watch what we do rather than what we say. We must teach them to understand the investment required to develop trust and the cost of not developing it or we will end up as a "society" of individuals sitting at our computers, building walls, barricades, fail safes and false identities around ourselves.

That is not what we want to teach to our children.