The Death of Integrity

I don't want to hear about it anymore. It's a dead topic, dead to me, gone, obliterated, covered in sackcloth and ashes, shamed, defamed, besmirched,soiled, sullied, trampled underfoot and left for - who cares for what? It's dead already, never really existing in the natural world, as far as we can tell with electron microscopes, spy satellites, and the entire, vasty science armada who tracked down the super-secret Higgs Boson particle.

I'm referring, of course, to the long, slow - bullet-time, really - super, super slow-mo - fall from grace of college football's own Mother Theresa look-alike , Joe Paterno. Joe Pa, as he was affectionately referred to by legions of Penn State students as well as players, current and former.

The death knell is sounded by a forensic whiz, a guy with credentials of his own, former federal judge, former director of the FBI, Louis J Freeh who looked it over, looked it over for seven months - they talked to everybody, over 400 interviews according to the New York Times, and tons of email and other documents - and Louis says that the top guns at Penn State, Joe Pa included, were more into protecting the status quo than they were into protecting children. Poof! There goes a legacy. There goes the whole enchilada.

This kind of thing happens all the time. It just doesn't happen to hallowed old men, for pity's sake, practically sainted old men, enjoying near universal adoration. This is different than simply powerful old men, this is old men lauded for being different, different in outlook, different in motivation, made of special stuff, sprinkled with the extra-special pixie dust, men, we love to say, of integrity. You can hear the holy hush bracketing that word when uttered, the angel choir sighs out a long breath in perfect harmony, and eyelids snap more open by a couple of millimeters. Hey, you've got our attention. Here comes a prince among men - nay! - grander than that. He's like an emperor.

And guess what? The emperor is buck naked.

If you're an institution - and that's a loaded word, meaning either an organization held to a higher standard, or an individual perceived just as trustworthy because of decades of perceived flawless, selfless service - if you're an institution, at some point you get more interested in preserving the institution than in doing the stuff that is the reason for the institution's existence.

What's the upside of this debacle?

Maybe it calls on us to quit trying shotgun coronations, kangaroo parliamentary promotions designed to win arguments and corral vast sums of loot or prestige or maybe just say-so. Maybe we'll quit trying to wield that kind of club, because it turns out that the sorry thing is hollow, rotten to the core - more useful as a threat than an actual stick to hit someone with. And now it's not that great a threat, either.

"Oh, really? Your guy's got integrity? ... Isn't that what Joe Pa had?"

Maybe we could start to cooperate instead of coerce. Maybe we could start to collaborate instead of compete. Maybe we could learn to discuss instead of attack.

I know that's not very likely. But less likely is the man of great integrity. It's now officially dead.

Mike Breen's New Book

Mike Breen's new book, Multiplying Missional Leaders, makes the case that most churches don't have leaders at all, they have managers: people carrying out the vision of the top leadership. Under this pov, leaders are people that receive their own vision from the Lord, that they are uniquely tuned to receive, and they go about implementing it.

So under this scenario, to use a musical metaphor, leaders use original material and managers only do covers - other peoples' material. It's more nuanced than that: successful recording artists do occasionally cover other artists' songs, and your local cover band will sometimes do originals.

Maybe the work place example of the self-starter will be more helpful.

What's the big deal about a self-starter? Once she knows what the big picture goals of the group are, she naturally begins doing things that need doing, things that directly contribute to the fulfillment of those goals. You don't have to give her her every single task in order to get her to contribute to the success of the group.

This does not, and should not, mean that self-starters can't work effectively on assigned tasks. Our ideal person is versatile: he can work for others, with others, independently of others, and lead others.

This is what I believe Breen is talking about.

Mercy Triumphs

Mercy triumphs over justice, justice being equivalent to logic, all tied into a grace extended, turning an instant decision, that I should obey instantly but can't, into the process that eventually transforms me and delivers me beyond the wretched-man place and into the man-God-intended space, apparently molecule by molecule. Sufficient grace for the insufficient me. Not a pat answer, but an actual encounter, no off-the-rack provision, but a tailored response, designed and executed to work with, and in spite of, my Quasimodo uniqueness, that which can't be mentioned, now beginning to be healed in this, his ministry of reconciliation. O happy day!