Editor: Richard (Dick) Innes
Published by: ACTS International
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Volume 17, November 28, 2015
Thought
for the week: "A religion that does nothing, gives nothing, costs nothing, suffers nothing, is worth nothing." – Anonymous
"A wise man will hear and will increase learning; and a man of understanding will listen to wise counsel." – King Solomon (Proverbs 1:5)
"Well done is better than well said." – Benjamin Franklin
"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it. In other words, the harder I work, the luckier I get!" – Thomas Jefferson
"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." – Eleanor Roosevelt
"In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity." – Albert Einstein
"Leaders are like eagles; they don't flock ... you find them one at a time." – Anonymous
"Worrying is like driving a car with one foot on the accelerator and the other foot on the brake." – Unknown
Out of the blue one day, for no reason at all while 7 year-old Mark was sitting at his desk in the classroom, he felt something warm and looked down to see the front of his pants wet, and a puddle at his feet on the floor. Mark could never remember ever wetting his pants before. He could not believe it was happening to him. Immediately he realized all the ramifications that this would bring to his young life. He could already hear the taunting of the other boys on the play ground, and surely no girl would ever speak to him again.
He immediately buried his head in his hands and prayed, "God I need help NOW. Three minutes from now will be too late."
He heard someone approaching him and looked up to see Susie coming in his direction with a big gold fish bowl in her hands. It was Susie's day to clean the fish bowl. Oh no! not Susie. He had had a crush on her since Kindergarten. She would see and he would never be able to speak to her again."
But then it happened! Just as she got to his desk Susie dumped the entire bowl of water, fish and all into Mark's lap.
The teacher jumped to Mark's rescue. Scurried him away to the boiler room, gave him a pair of Gym shorts to wear, hung his trousers on the boiler to dry, and put her arm around him lavishing him with sympathy and understanding. When they returned to the class room, all the children were busy with paper towels drying up the floor and Mark's books, and scolding little Susie for her clumsiness. When Susie tried to help, the teacher said, "Susie, I think you have done enough for one day."
The acceptance and sympathy felt so good to Mark, that he failed to realize how rejected little Susie felt by the condemnation of his classmates. The more sympathy Mark received, the more rejection and condemnation Susie experienced. This lasted the rest of the day, until they were all out front waiting for rides home.
It was then he saw the pain in Susie's eyes as she stood all alone, while students from other classes heard about the incident for the first time and crowded around Mark lavishing more understanding.
Mark went over to Susie, and whispered, "Susie, you saw, you knew, didn't you? You dumped that water on me on purpose, didn't you? "
Susie replied, "Mark, I wet my pants once too."1
1. This story was told by Bob Tuttle, Prof. at Asbury campus in Florida. Submitted by Ernest Jones. Cited on WITandWISDOM www.witandwisdom.org
When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it—but all that had gone before.
Plato taught for 50 years, Aristotle for 40, and Jesus only three; yet those three years infinitely transcend in influence the combined one hundred and thirty years of teaching of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle—three of the greatest men of all antiquity. Jesus painted no pictures; yet some of the finest paintings of Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci received their inspiration from Him. Jesus wrote no poetry; but Dante, Milton, and scores of the world's greatest poets were inspired by Him.
Nearly 20 years ago I left the groves of academe as a law professor to spend full-time writing and speaking about ethics to anyone who would listen. When I set up the Joseph & Edna Josephson Institute of Ethics in honor of my parents, many viewed the idea of explicitly connecting moral principles to management responsibilities as a novelty.
It wasn't that the organizations claimed that ethics was irrelevant; rather, they took it for granted that anyone who rose to the highest leadership positions in their organization couldn't have done so unless they were highly ethical. So, when an organization asked me to speak to top management, it was viewed more as an affirmation of their moral commitment than as a meaningful challenge to the way they were doing business.
Yes, I poked and prodded executives about the inconsistency between rhetoric and reality and it made some people uncomfortable, but I was viewed more as entertainment than education.
It's very different now.
Huge fines, forced resignations and hundreds of guilty pleas and convictions (accompanied by long prison sentences) are evidence that plenty of scoundrels have worked their way to the top of the success ladder in business and government. And for every villain, dozens of good people succumb to external pressure or self-delusion. In fact, good people doing or allowing bad things account for a large portion of these recent scandals.
In the past year, more than 1,000 government employees were convicted of corrupt activities, and the FBI is investigating thousands more. The growing vulnerability of corporations to costly accusations of wrongdoing has made it clear that any company ignoring the ethical quality of its people and culture does so at great peril.
The problem is, many people's ethical compass has been distorted by decades of amoral thinking that focuses on what's legal rather than what's right. Whenever ethics is viewed simply as a business strategy, underlying moral principles like honesty and integrity become mangled by gamesmanship strategies and conscience-numbing rationalizations. It's time to recognize we don't need more compliance; we need more character.
This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.
"Be kind and affectionate to one another with brotherly love" (Romans 12:10, Paraphrase).
An American visitor in England was driving with a British friend who made a remark about the windscreen of his car needing to be cleaned.
"You mean the windshield, don't you?" said the American.
"No. Over here, we call it the windscreen," the Englishman said.
"Then you are wrong," the American corrected, "because we invented the automobile and we call it a windshield."
"That is quite true," countered the Englishman, "but don't forget who invented the language."
All of us see things through the lenses shaped and colored by our background. That is from our perspective. If we would only realize this, many of us wouldn't be as dogmatic as we sometimes are.
In conflict situations or where there is a difference of opinion we need to say, "This is the way I see it," and then ask the other person, "And how do you see it?" Not always, but often the truth is somewhere between the two. Remember, too, it is a very insecure person who is dogmatic, never wrong in his own eyes, and consistently has a neurotic need to be right.
Suggested prayer: "Dear God, help me to remember that I always see things from my perspective and that others see things from their perspective. Help me always to be willing to look at and genuinely consider others' point of view and be open and ready to see and accept the truth regardless of my personal opinion. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus' name, amen.
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