January 28, 2002

EDITORIAL:
Americans fail to connect dots, leave messy picture
___Can Americans play connect-the-dots? More specifically, can Christians in our culture apply the timeless truths of God's word to the humdrum realities of everyday living? Can we articulate the proclamations of Christ and the teachings of the Bible so that they have meaning for how we live our lives from Monday through Saturday?
___Lately, we've been reading and hearing evidence of failure to connect the dots. We're learning detail after detail of a moral failure that probably seemed rational, or at least legal, at first. But in the end, refusal to apply basic tenets of right and wrong resulted in shame, degradation and harm to thousands of people.
___And no, this failure doesn't have anything to do with sex--at least not that we know of. This failure happened right here in Texas, not in Hollywood or San Francisco or even Washington. The Enron bankruptcy spins on money, as well as greed, covetousness and deceit, not to mention power politics. The result has been plummeting stock prices, Congressional investigations, FBI involvement, news reports and personal economic failure. Don't forget economic failure: Many Enron employees lost not only jobs but also life savings, tied up as they were in company-mandated savings plans. "Man does not live by bread alone," but in the real world, people need jobs and savings to take care of their families and to take care of themselves, so they won't become a burden to society. Their circumstances are quite different from those of unscrupulous executives who build empires on actuarial fault lines and then parachute with the profits while the people who worked for them descend into the abyss.
___In this case, even people who are supposed to pay attention didn't connect the dots. For the most part, America's religious leaders have been mute about Enron, notes Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics. Theological persuasion is an equal-opportunity ignorer, he writes in the center's website, EthicsDaily.com.
___"Those who always have something to say about America's moral decline uttered not a bleep" he reports. "The organizational websites of the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family and Jerry Falwell were mute on Enron." But silence swung the other say, he adds. "The websites of the National Council of Churches and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops had no statements."
___Why the silence? Religious leaders of all stripes know Jesus preached much more vehemently and often against greed, deceit, lying and stealing than he preached against sexual sins and other failures.
___Fortunately, Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners magazine, provides moral vision. Writing in SoJo Mail, the magazine's e-newsletter, he insists: "The behavior of Enron executives is a direct violation of biblical ethics; the teachings of both Christian and Jewish faiths would excoriate the greed, selfishness and cheating of Enron's corporate leaders and condemn, in the harshest terms, their callous and cruel mistreatment of employees. Read your Bibles. The strongest media critics of Enron call it putting self-interest above the public interest; biblical ethics would just call it a sin."
___Ah, sin. We don't hear that word often. Anyone who grew up going to Baptist Sunday School can give a pretty good definition. It's "missing the mark" of God's will. It's doing--or not doing--things so that you displease God and hurt others.
___Nowadays, we talk around sin. We can use psychology and sociology and even anthropology and biology (all helpful disciplines when handled responsibly) to explain-away personal responsibility to follow God and do right. A person doesn't sin; she was raised wrong. A person doesn't sin; he was deprived by circumstance.
___So, maybe we need to sit down in our Bible study classes and work on connecting the dots. Let's look at Scripture, but let's talk about Enron and how the day-to-day decisions we make shape our lives, impact others and, more importantly, form our relationship to God. Of course, few people will have the opportunity to sin as flamboyantly as the Enron executives, but daily business and personal ethical decisions shape our lives. A young shopowner told his Sunday School class: "Life may be black-and-white, but if I don't live in the gray area, I'll go out of business."
___The Enron calamity points to truths about right, wrong and sin we know but sometimes forget:
___ Sin is sin. No matter how you cover it over, and no matter how sophisticated you are at explaining it away, sin remains. Sure, life is complicated, but the Bible commands us to "act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God." If our actions take us from that path, they lead to sin.
___ Just because "everyone else is doing it" doesn't make it right. This is one of the first lessons we teach our children. It's also one of the first lessons we ignore. We don't ignore it overtly. But we're smart enough to look for the loopholes: Is it illegal? Can an accountant explain it? Can we point to precedent? Our lips may never say, "Everyone else is doing it," but our hearts know what we mean.
___ The ends don't justify the means. You want your business to thrive so it will support your family and your employees' families. You want that promotion because you deserve it. You want ... . If the way you succeed is not just, merciful and godly, then the success you achieve is not valid.
___ If you can't do it in the light of day, don't do it at all. Our mothers used this one to keep us in line, to avoid "drinkin', smokin' and goin' with girls (or boys) who do." But the sophistication of business practices and the moral complexities of life today throw this adage back at us. Even if your mother "never" will know, God will. God sees. If you can't act openly, watch out.
___We need to practice the discipline of dot-connecting. We must connect what we proclaim on Sunday to what we do every other day. Enron executives failed to connect the dots and left a gaping hole--not in the company logo or even stock portfolios, but in America's soul.

___ —Marv Knox
E-mail the editor at marvknox@baptiststandard.com


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