100 Sermon Illustrations on Responsibility

A hungry, scantily clothed little boy was crying pathetically. "I'm cold, I'm hungry!" he whimpered. A stranger approached him and asked, "Do you believe that God can take care of you?" "Yes," replied the starving little boy with assurance. "Why, then does He not send someone to bring you warm clothing and some food?" "I know, sir, that He asked someone to do it, but I guess this somebody has forgotten it."

Excuse from. When Palamedes came to Ithaca to invite Ulysses to join in the expedition against Troy, the latter, unwilling to engage in the undertaking, betook himself to ploughing the sand, and sowing salt, on the pretence of being visited with insanity. There are unattitudes as insane as Ulysses, who betake themselves to works as insane, and all in the way of pretence to excuse themselves from the duties to which God calls them.

Behold the sad state of a disabled ship far out upon the sea!—dismasted, leaking badly, water gaining four to six inches an hour, pumps going, water increasing in the hold. A consultation of officers: result, that, by the most desperate efforts, the ship might be kept afloat a few hours, by which time relief might possibly come. But one of the officers objects, "If God foresees that we shall all go to the bottom, why, to the bottom we must go; if, by his foreknowledge, he perceives we shall be lost, then to be lost is our unavoidable doom: therefore there is no use whatever of struggling against God's foreknowledge. Besides, if he foresees we shall be saved, then saved we must be, whether we contribute any thing to it or not." Another replies, "We have nothing to do with God's foreknowledge, because we know nothing about it. Our business is, and our duty, to keep the vessel afloat as long as we can. How can we answer to that same God for the loss of our lives, if we sit down supinely, and let our ship go down under our feet? Let us fly to the pumps!" Behold them toiling hour after hour, while the "foreknowledge man" is lounging below, pronouncing them a parcel of fools in trying to change God's foreknowledge. When, lo! in the hour of extremity, a vessel appears on the horizon! On the wings of the winds, she is carried to their relief; and they are all saved from a watery grave. Had all been of the mind of the second officer, they would have undoubtedly gone to the bottom. Caughey.

Knowledge is power for good or bad, as it is applied. A horse under restraint is of use in carrying loads, and bearing burdens, &c.; but, if not restrained, he breaks his bridle, throws his rider, and dashes the carriage in pieces. The water of a large pond, conducted by trenches, or directed by a mill, is of use; but, if it breaks its banks, it sweeps every thing before it, and destroys, where, otherwise, it would be a blessing. When the ship is steered right, the sails help forward her onward course; but, if steered wrong, the more sail she carries, the worse.

As a nurse who takes a child to bring up, yet feeds it not, but lets it die of hunger, is a murderer; so is he a murderer of souls who allows them to starve under his ministry. Cawdray.

“Arrow,” in the _Christian Endeavor World_, reads this lesson to Christian voters:

“Well, I suppose it’s Alderman Smith to-day.”

“Alderman--nothing!”

“What? Do you mean to say Smith wasn’t elected?”

“Precisely. Lost it by forty-one votes.”

“Well, well, well! Why, I thought Smith was popular, such a nice, clean fellow; and smart, too.”

“He is popular.”

“And I thought his opponent was a scallawag.”

“He is. The rummies were all for him, and he celebrated his victory with a big free-for-all debauch. I guess our ward’ll be open enough now, all right.”

“But what was the matter? I suppose Smith lay back and took it easy.”

“No, sir! He got out and hustled for himself.”

“Then he probably had no machine to back him.”

“Ah, but he had; and some of the best politicians in the city worked for him. Why, nearly all the strongest men in the ward signed a paper in his interest, and every one got a copy a day before the election.”

“But they couldn’t have known the issue at stake--between decency and indecency, character and hoodlumism.”

“They did, if words could make it clear.”

“Then why, in the name of all that is reasonable, in that pious ward of yours, wasn’t Smith elected?”

“Just because about sixty of the pious men stayed at home or let their sons neglect to vote. We know the names of that many who didn’t vote. Tried to get them to come out, telephone and all that; but no good. Too busy. Or they ‘weren’t needed.’ And the other side got out every man.”

“Those pious men go to prayer-meeting?”

“Well, I don’t know what you think about it, but I’d rather have one X opposite Smith’s name on that ballot than ten years of prayer-meeting eloquence without it.”

“Yes, most of them; and my! but they shine when the topic is a patriotic one.”

“So’d I.” (Text.)

“Caleb Cobweb,” of the _Christian Endeavor World_, gives the following quaint advice:

Some workmen were repairing the Boston Elevated Railway. One of them took a red-hot bolt in his pincers and threw it up to another workman, who was to place it in the hole drilled for it. The second workman failed to catch it, and it fell to the street below. There it struck a truck-load of twenty bales of cotton, a thousand dollars’ worth, that was passing at the moment. The cotton instantly took fire, but the driver knew nothing of it. The flames had made considerable headway when the cries of the onlookers informed the driver of what was going on. He had only enough time to leap out of the way of the flames and save his horse. The Boston Fire Department was summoned and put out the fire.

This is a fair sample of what happens every time one of us workmen on the great edifice of human society misses a bolt that is thrown to him. They are many--these bolts--and they come thick and fast. They are red-hot, too, for they are duties that are in imperative need of getting done. If they are not at once stuck into the proper hole, and the top at once flattened out by sturdy blows, they grow cool and useless. They can not be put into the structure; or, if we go ahead and hammer them in, they are not tight and they may bring about disaster.

No, there is nothing for it but to catch the bolts on the fly. Let one fall, and some one gets hurt--or some thing, which in the end, means some one. No one knows what will be hit when a worker misses a red-hot duty that comes flying at him.

There is only one safety for the workman or for the rest of us: Catch them!

“I did the best I knew!” protested the dressmaker’s apprentice sullenly, when she was sharply reprimanded for a piece of ill-judged work that ruined a valuable dress and vexed a valuable customer. “I don’t see what she’s blaming me for!”

“I’m not blaming you for doing the best you knew how!” said the employer, overhearing and turning on her crisply; “I’m blaming you for not knowing any better! You ought to--you’ve been here long enough. You mean well, but good intentions aren’t enough to carry on the dressmaking business.”

They are not enough in any business. It is an old proverb that good intentions pave a place of very disreputable character. “He meant well” is about the poorest thing one can say of a person, short of actual detraction; unless we except that other phrase of mild apology: “He did the best he knew how.” Whenever you hear either of these you know at once that it is a case of failure on somebody’s part to do the right thing at the right moment, and usually, if you look closely enough, there was fault behind the failure. To do the best we know how is not enough when we might know any better.--_Kind Words._

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We may often accomplish more by putting responsibility on others rather than exercising it ourselves:

Daniel O’Connell had to defend a prisoner for a capital crime, and the defense was said by the attorney to be hopeless. Sergeant Lefroy happened to be acting for the judge, who had been suddenly indisposed, and being then young and his character known to O’Connell, the latter purposely put several inadmissible questions to the witness, which, of course, were objected to by the opposite counsel. The sergeant at last rather peremptorily stopt further questions of the same kind. O’Connell then, with great warmth, said, “As you refuse me permission to defend my client, I leave his fate in your hands--his blood be on your head if he be condemned.” He left the court at once with majestic stride, in a huff, and paced up and down outside the court for half an hour. At the end of that time his attorney rushed out of court, exclaiming, “He’s acquitted! he’s acquitted!” This stratagem was successful, and O’Connell with complacency told his friends that he had intended to throw the responsibility of the conviction on the judge. (Text.)--CROAKE JAMES, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

See DESIRES, INORDINATE.

RESPONSIBILITY AFFECTS JUDGMENT

Judge Collamore, who for many years was a distinguished United States Senator from Vermont, used to illustrate his troubles by this story:

He was sitting on the porch of his law office during a recess of Congress, when a farmer drove by and said, “Judge, my conscience troubles me so I can not sleep, about keeping four millions of fellow human beings with the same souls and the same Creator as ourselves in slavery. With all this wealth, I am sure that we, as a nation and as a people individually, will be curst unless slavery is abolished. Now, it is hardly fair to destroy the property of the South, who are not directly responsible, and so I think we ought to all bear our share and buy them out.”

Senator Collamore replied: “Well, in part I think you are right. Now, let’s see practically how it works out. The estimated price is four thousand millions of dollars. It would have to be raised by a direct tax proportioned among the States. Vermont’s share would be so many millions. This county, so many hundreds of thousands, this town so many tens of thousands.” Sitting in the same place the next afternoon, and greeting friends as they passed to and from the market, the old Puritan farmer reappeared. Reining up his horses, he shouted: “Judge, I have been thinking over that question. Crops are poor, taxes are high; I don’t think we need bother just at present about them infernal niggers.”

Does some Napoleon “wade through slaughter to a throne, and shut the gates of mercy on mankind,” and break the hearts of a million peasant women, and handicap the careers of ten millions of orphan children? Recently when I used Napoleon in an address as an illustration of unbridled and selfish ambition, and spoke of him as a man raised up to correct the abuses of the French Revolution, who ought to have imitated Washington and Jefferson, and as a man of patriotism all compact concluded his career without a mixture of meanness and sin, a score of people wrote protesting against judging Napoleon by the ordinary standards of morality. Does Goethe forget the law of marriage? For thirty years cast the reins loose on the neck of passion? Use a score of women as material and dynamic for literary work? It is said Goethe was too great to be held down to the ordinary petty rules that control the limited career of peasant souls. Does Byron forget the law of sobriety, and fling himself into wild excesses and lift the cup of flame to his lips? It is said that Byron is a child of genius, quite beyond the pale of convention. Does some Crœsus with the money-making gift get his hands on the reins of power use his secret knowledge to secure exemption from taxes and enjoy special privileges, freeing himself from economic duties that his competitors must bear, not only for themselves alone but for him? The excuse is that the moral laws that hold for those that buy and sell a few pounds of groceries are to be laid on the table and abrogated in the presence of the merchant princes owning uncounted millions.

The biographies of great men are filled with excuses for great generals who have been selfish, of poets who have been wild and lawless, apologies for statesmen who have been drunken, merchants who have been false. And the whole world has suffered through this misconception. As men go toward greatness they go toward responsibility and obligation. It is true that the great man with his gifts must not be judged by ordinary rules--he must be held to extraordinary rules and standards doubly severe. Selfishness can be pardoned in a peasant soldier, not in a great general.

— N. D. HILLIS

A young lady, in giving her reasons for preferring a particular church, remarked that she “liked it best because it allowed its members to dance.” She had been brought up to regard this as inconsistent for a professor of religion. She could not help feeling that it was running a risk to try to get to heaven and carry the world with her. But here was comfort. She had found a religious guide on which she could, as she fancied, shift off the responsibility. Instead of deciding for herself, in the light of Christ’s teachings, she chose to take a second-hand opinion of a mere man as a rule.

One is reminded of an incident related by Dr. Whately, of an old bridge which had long been thought unsafe even for foot passengers. People usually went a considerable distance around rather than venture upon it. But one evening a woman in great haste came up to the bridge before she reflected on its unsafe condition. It was late, and she had yet to dress for a party. She could not go all the way around, tho still afraid to venture. At last a happy thought seemed to strike her. She called for a sedan chair, and was carried over. Now the young lady who desired to follow the world and go to heaven too, was afraid to trust her own judgment on the subject of dancing. She feared the tottering arch might give way, and she be lost forever. To make all safe, she added to the weight of her own chance of error the additional chances of her human authority being wrong also.

Martin Luther, 500 years ago: "God wants nothing to do with the lazy, gluttonous bellies who are neither concerned nor busy; they act as if they just have to sit and wait for God to drop a roasted goose into their mouth."

Ministry of First Church of God in Joplin, Missouri, takes families to visit fathers in prison in Jefferson City. While in the van they are able to share Christ.

On Queen Elizabeth's "official birthday" some years back, when she conferred honors on a number of her subjects, one was a 60-year-old postman in northern Wales, a fellow with the unroyal name of Jones. Because Jones, who came from a family delivering Welsh mail for 150 years, had "not missed a day's service in 43 years and got the mail through despite snow, storms and floods," the Queen bestowed the British Empire Medal upon him, expressing the gratitude of the nation.

If an earthly majesty would bestow such a superlative honor on a man for faithfulness in so simple a task as delivering the mail, do you not think the Majesty of Heaven of Heaven will be even more diligent to make certain each of His subjects receives a proper and gracious award for faithful service? Of course He will! This review will be according to quality, not necessarily quantity; it will not be how much, but what kind.

When we fall into the trap of believing or, more accurately, hoping that technology will solve all our problems, we are actually abdicating the high touch of personal responsibility. Our technological fantasies illustrate the point. We are always awaiting the new magical pill that will enable us to eat all the fattening food we want, and not gain weight; burn all the gasoline we want, and not pollute the air; live as immoderately as we choose, and not contract either cancer or heart disease.

In our minds, at least, technology is always on the verge of liberating us from personal discipline and responsibility. Only it never does and it never will.

The more high technology around us, the more the need for human touch.

Sermon in Isaiah series. Being an instrument of God. Isaiah 10:5-20

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THE ROD OF GOD

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I. When you feel like God is beating on you.

II. God can use anyone to do His will. 7:20; 10:5

III. The results of your life do not indicate your relationship with God.

A. Many people have been mightily used by God, only to be rejected.

B. God can use anyone, good and evil, to be his instrument.

IV. How to interpret disasters.

V. Even "rods of God" must be accountable.

VI. God is sovereign. 10:15

A. Everything that happens, has a reason. Romans 8:28

B. Yet God is not compromised. James 1:13

VII. What matters is where you stand in the end. 10:20

#2572

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"Wrong" Must Be Explained

Lyle and Erik Menendez brutally killed their mother and father. The evidence is plain; no one denies it. So why is it so hard to find them guilt? Their defense attorneys argued persuasively that the brothers endured a nightmarish childhood of sexual and physical abuse, and that they were thus acting out of a kind of insanity that excuses them from first-degree murder charges. The arguments on both sides reduce to the same basic premise: wrong was committed.

The prosecution accused the brothers of murder and appealed to the public's sense that murder is evil. Likewise the brothers, in claiming they had been mistreated, appealed to a society that abhors child abuse. This was not a matter of arbitrary human laws being violated, it went much deeper. It was a matter of "right and wrong"-- a concept that is universal and unique to humanity.

No matter where people are found, they recognize that some things are wrong. Although human groups differ on what they prohibit, they all censor something. C. S. Lewis articulated this point well: "Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five. Men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to--whether it was only your own family; or your fellow countrymen, or everyone. But they have always agreed that you ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired. Men have differed as to whether you should have

one wife or four. But they have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked." (Mere Christianity, p. 5).

This is also personal. When I look inside myself I find this moral sense that I did not invent. I can find no explanation for it in the world--it must derive from beyond that realm. If there is nothing but matter in the Universe, and matter is the only eternal reality--then how do you explain this moral sense in humanity? Did it arise from rocks, trees, or animals? No, this moral sense is one of the clearest and most personal reminders that there is a God. --Brad T. Bromling, April 1994 Reason & Revelation--

(EDITORS' NOTE: Promise Keepers, the Colorado-based evangelical organization founded by former University of Colorado, Boulder, football coach Bill McCartney, has become an American cultural phenomenon. Almost 280,000 men attended Promise Keepers stadium rallies in 1994; the number is expected to more than double this year. The organization also sanctions smaller events such as the recent “Men of Integrity: Talking Man to Man” gathering, which took place at an industrial park in Poplar Bluff, Missouri.)

Talking man to men, Texas preacher Thomas Oglesby fired both barrels at a warehouse full of adult males in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. “If you piloted an airplane the way you take care of your family,” he said, “hundreds of people would die.” A sorrowful voice in the audience responded, “I know that's right.” If men did their jobs the way they take care of their families, Oglesby continued, they'd get fired. “Your family ought to be the cause for which you're willing to fight and give it all,” said Oglesby, pastor of South Jefferson Baptist Church, Mount Pleasant, Texas.

He told the men that many of their wives were at home praying, “God, get hold of his heart today. Make him come home a man!” Give up the bass boat, Oglesby exhorted. Give up the hunting, give up the sports and take care of the family. “There's bad stuff out there. You're the man -- you've got to lead them through it.”

Approximately 1,600 men from at least six states gathered in the cavernous warehouse to hear Oglesby and four other speakers in February give guidance and encouragement on standing up for God and for their families. The “Men of Integrity: Let's Talk Man to Man” conference was sparked by men from Poplar Bluff who attended Promise Keepers stadium rallies last year in Denton and Irving, Texas. One was David Groves, pastor of Living Word Baptist Church, Poplar Bluff.

After the second rally, Groves recalled, he and a colleague were pondering author Henry Blackaby's advice in the book, “Experiencing God.” Blackaby urges Christians to find out where God is working and join him. “We said, 'What does it take -- a truck to hit us? He's working with men!'“ Groves exclaimed. He and others began to plan a men's meeting in Poplar Bluff. Interest spread like an unquenchable fire and they quickly realized no local church was big enough to accommodate it.

Speaker Harry Walls III, pastor of Christian Fellowship Baptist Church, Wellston, Mo., remarked on the setting as he looked out on men of all ages camped on folding chairs, some watching him on video screens. “What do they call this -- the industrial tabernacle or something?” Not that he minded. “We need to fill a few warehouses -- amen?” Walls told of attending the first big Promise Keepers stadium rally in 1993 in Boulder, Colo. He said his wife used to be a weeper but now she's a reaper because he's a Promise Keeper.

But the focus of Promise Keepers is not on gathering by the tens of thousands, Walls noted. It is on each individual man. “If we get together like this and sing and shout and the walls stay up in our hearts, we're wasting our time.” Citing 1 Peter 1:13-16, Walls pointed out a godly man strives for purity in every aspect of his life, including sexual purity. “We all struggle with that, if we're going to be honest,” Walls said. “We're supposed to be talking man to man, right?”

Sexual impurity -- whether impure thoughts or temptations or actions -- is at epidemic proportions because our culture has lowered the standard of holiness, Walls argued. “We've been told so much is all right, we've bought into it.” But 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5 holds Christian men to a higher standard. “I do know God,” Walls said, “and I don't want to act like someone who doesn't.” God made women so attractive and then told men to be pure, Walls said ruefully.

But even though men are tempted they don't have to give in to sin. “The change agents are us. The way to make things better is to stop complaining and follow God.” He outlined an approach called P.A.G.E., with the letters signifying:

• PARTNERSHIPS IN PRAYER. A man needs another man to grow with him in prayer. Start praying for such a man, Walls advised, to take advantage of the promise of Proverbs 27:17, that iron sharpens iron.

• ACCEPTANCE AND ACCOUNTABILITY. “God loves us enough to accept us as we are,” Walls said. “He loves us too much to leave us that way.”

• GROWTH IN GODLINESS. All men have the promise that God has begun a good work in them, Walls noted, and the work will carry on until Christ returns.

• EXCITEMENT IN EVANGELISM. When a man knows he is becoming a better husband, father, pastor and his soul cries, “Hallelujah!” Walls said, he will realize, “I've got to tell somebody!”

Phil Hunter, pastor of West County Community Church in St. Louis, set the plain-speaking tone of the event in his opening sermon when he affirmed men coming together for worship and fellowship. “If you're trying to walk the Christian life alone, you're a fool!” he stated. “Life is full of heartaches,” Hunter pointed out. They either make a man bitter or better. He said he wouldn't trade for the heartaches he's endured -- they thrust him to the floor and made him cry out to God.

Using his young son's science book, Hunter reminded the men of the amazing system God put in place when making the universe. “God is awesome! To think that we struggle to put God in charge of our life!” Hunter predicted that many men would want to go home from the conference and tell their wives, “I've not been loving you as Christ loves me -- forgive me.” Men would want to confess to their children they had been provoking them to anger, and again ask forgiveness.

A man cannot live the Christian life without inviting Jesus in, Hunter concluded. “The way to have a Savior is to make him Lord.” From the podium, Groves instructed the men to break into groups of four and to give one-minute testimonies. Then Groves urged any man who realized he didn't have a testimony to stand up and go forward. “If you're a man and you need God, you ought to be man enough to stand up for him.” About a half-dozen men went forward and prayed to receive Christ.

The key to being a Promise Keeper, Phil Evans told the gathering, is to decide there is nothing more important than being a godly man. “God is our model as a Promise Keeper.” Evans, a layman from West County Community Church, is co-chairman of the Promise Keepers Task Force of St. Louis. He emphasized men need to reach across the barriers of race and denomination. “Do you love Jesus Christ? That's what's important.” Challenging the group at Poplar Bluff to set in motion a plan of action, Evans asked them to imagine millions of men praying, modeling godliness, instructing others. “MEN, TIME IS SHORT. LET'S ANSWER THE CALL.”

Pastor Bob AuBuchon was one of 18 men from Trinity Church, Willow Springs, to attend the meeting in Poplar Bluff. “My main goal is to have Christ exalted in the life of the men of my church,” he said. In turn, those men can influence their families and their communities. After four years of trying without success to get the men more involved, AuBuchon is excited that Promise Keepers has lit a fire in them. “It's been everything I've prayed for -- so far.”

David Hardin of Dexter, Mo., said he was saved six months ago. “I came in here feeling bad and I've got life in me now,” said Hardin, who attends Lighthouse Baptist Church. “You get so many people going in the same direction, you can't help it.” Promise Keepers calls itself a “catalytic ministry.” What effect it will have on America is only beginning to be seen. The 1,600 men who gathered that Saturday in the “industrial tabernacle” consumed sack lunches and received ample helpings of food for thought. No doubt many took an inventory of promises they have been failing to keep.

Copyright (c) 1995 Baptist Press RNbp533a.xolB5313e

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Not very long ago, I published an article called “Ethics Without Virtue” in which I criticized the way ethics is being taught in American colleges. I pointed out that there is an overemphasis on social policy questions, with little or no attention being paid to private morality. I noted that students taking college ethics are debating abortions, euthanasia, capital punishment, DNA research, and the ethics of transplant surgery while they learn almost nothing about private decency, honesty, personal responsibility, or honor. Topics such as hypocrisy, self-deception, cruelty, or selfishness rarely come up. I argued that the current style of ethics teaching which concentrated so much on social policy was giving students the wrong ideas about ethics. Social morality is only half of the moral life; the other half is private morality. I urged that we attend to both.

A colleague of mine did not like what I said. She told me that in her classroom she would continue to focus on issues of social injustice. She taught women’s oppression, corruption in big business, multinational corporations and their transgressions in the Third world — that sort of thing. She said to me, “You are not going to have moral people until you have moral institutions. You will not have moral citizens until you have a moral government.” She made it clear that I was wasting time and even doing harm by promoting bourgeois morality and bourgeois virtues instead of awaking the social conscience of my students.

At the end of the semester, she came into my office carrying a stack of exams and looking very upset. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “They cheated on their social justice take-home finals. They plagiarized!” More than half of the students in her ethics class had copied long passages from secondary literature. “What are you going to do?” I asked her. She gave me a self-mocking smile and said, “I’d like to borrow a copy of that article you wrote on ethics without virtue.”

Steve Arterburn is a spokesman for Minrith-Meier Clinics and is heard on national Christian radio stations. He attended Baylor University and then went on to seminary. Since he is a "personality" he was asked to speak at the Baylor University chapel. Instead of a safe and inspiring talk, he confessed his personal sin. When he had attended Baylor he had gotten his girlfriend pregnant. He saw his whole future at stake, and so paid for her to have an abortion. He didn't think much about it in the coming years, but began to have stress-related illnesses which he eventually attributed to guilt over the incident.

The former girlfriend called him and told him she had heard about his chapel talk. He stressed that he had not mentioned her by name but that wasn't her concern. She said he was not being completely honest. He hadn't just paid for the abortion, but had pressured her to kill the child she wanted to have. His pressure was subtle but effective - don't expect me to be there for you if you have this child.

God is a God of second chances, of restoration. Everything that happens has its reason, and God has a plan for us. Steve got married in California only to discover that he and his wife were an infertile couple. He felt abandoned by God. Some of his Christian friends suggested that this was God's punishment for his past sin. This angered him, but he does not see God as a vindictive punisher.

Later, Steve told his publisher about his situation and this man mentioned that he knew of a 16-year-old Christian couple who had gotten pregnant out of wedlock but refused to abort it. Instead they were looking for a Christian family to adopt it. It struck Steve that this couple was far more courageous than he had been. He and his wife received the child in a hotel room. The baby was put in his arms first. She is now a beautiful young girl. God had given him what he had destroyed years ago.

The most [needed] ability is responsibility. Nothing happens until someone steps forward and says, "You can count on me."

John Maxwell

Speaker and writer

Cited in BITS & PIECES

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"Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you." — Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), Clergyman and writer, Cited in BITS & PIECES

Someone once said that good leaders take a little more than their share of the blame and a little less than their share of the credit.

That’s clear in this Civil War story about Abraham Lincoln.

After the Battle of Gettysburg, General Robert E. Lee and his Confederate forces were withdrawing to Virginia, and Lincoln felt that they were vulnerable. Eager to get the agony of the war over with, President Lincoln sent word to General George Meade to attack. With his message, Lincoln also sent a personal note. “The order I enclose is not on record,” said the note. “If you succeed, you need not publish it. Then, if you succeed, you will have all the credit of the movement. If not, I’ll take the responsibility.”

[Holwick: Meade didn't even try...]

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #18660]

"The reason people blame things on previous generations is that there's only one other choice."

-- Doug Larson

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Instead of "previous" one could insert "other"--RKC

REMEMBERING HOW TO BLUSH: “They dress my people’s wounds without concern: ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, but there is no peace. They should be ashamed of their abominable deeds, But not they! They feel no shame, they have forgotten how to blush.” (Jeremiah 6:14-15, Jerusalem Bible)

A people who have forgotten how to blush are in big trouble. When our greatest embarrassment is over being embarrassed. When no word is too rude, no humor too degrading, no entertainment too low, to cause us to get red in the face any more. When we’ve seen so much outrageous and irresponsible behavior that we are numb to it. When we have lost the vital ability to feel shame, to experience pain for having committed a wrong.

In a recent Newsweek article (12/12/94) entitled, “The Name of the Game is Shame,” Jonathan Alter dares to suggest that it is morally wrong for unmarried women (specifically, teens) to bear children. Voices that protest, “You’re making them feel guilty. You’re blaming the victim. Who are you to judge someone else’s choices?” only reinforce a terrible reality: America has the highest percentage of out-of-wedlock births in the world (30.5%).

Jeremiah looked around Jerusalem and surrounding Judah in the late sixth century B.C., and said, incredulously, “You people aren’t ashamed of any immoral behavior any more, are you? You’ve forgotten how to blush! And what are your preachers preaching? ‘Everything’s just fine. We’re okay. Smile, God loves you,’ and in so doing put a bandaid on a cancer.”

It is right to lift guilt from the backs of sin-burdened people. Jesus did a lot of that (see John 8:1-11). It is right to be compassionate toward single mothers; social policy without compassion and concern, especially for the disenfranchised, is sub-Christian (see all the prophets). But removing all stigmas along with all moral absolutes is neither compassionate nor a solution to guilt. Sin buried beneath assurances of “There, there, it’s nobody’s (or everybody’s) fault” only grows more destructive.

Alter writes, “The challenge is to combine shame and empathy, to shape the parents without rendering the babies ‘illegitimate,’ to draw a line between right and wrong so bright it can be seen forever.” Amen. That is the challenge to the Church, to you and me, to keep our compassion and our consciences keen. Oh, and by the way, when Jeremiah was indicting the Israelites for their shamelessness, the subject wasn’t teenage pregnancy. It was greed.

— Ken Durham; Falls Church (VA)