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“Love your neighbor as yourself.”  – Matthew 22:39 

Loving America

On a recent road trip with one of our granddaughters we stopped in St. Louis to visit the Arch.  While there I found myself standing in line next to an elderly gentleman on a walker wearing a baseball cap bearing the Stars and Stripes.  In a gesture to be nice I remarked to the man, “I like your cap.” Smiling back at me, this was his reply.  “I still love America, don’t you?”  Ironically, when that occurred I happened to be in the midst of reading Eric Metaxas’ newly released book If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty which includes a chapter entitled “Loving America”.

Prior to these simultaneous experiences I’m not sure I had given much thought about loving my native America and what that means, especially in light of the widespread ideological polarization and negative political rhetoric we are exposed to today.  But Lincoln believed, according to Metaxas, “that love of country is necessary, that America cannot and will not survive without it.”  To do so, though, requires taking a realistic view of America as being both heroically great, yet also deeply flawed.  We should, for example, feel a healthy sense of pride for the “greatest generation” who saved our country and the world from tyranny in World War II; or the courageous responders to the 9/11 attacks.  By the same token America has made shameful blunders in its history, the most obvious and egregious being slavery and the racism that continues to infiltrate our culture.  As Metaxas points out, “Heroism and ignominy both are part of our history.  The only question is whether, having seen both, we can repent of the one and rejoice and be inspired by the other.”  Considering both, then, can we still love America?

But there’s another factor yet to be mentioned, which has to do with Jesus’ command to “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  America is blessed with good citizens from all over and from every walk who live out those words.  There may be scant mention of it in the media, but there is no need, for we can witness it first-hand anywhere we turn if we only take the time to notice.  Therein lies the true heartbeat of America and hope for its future.    And that’s why I still love America.  Happy July 4^th . . .  and may God bless America!

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.”

– Romans 12:20 

Do you hate to lose as much as I do?  To many I may appear to be a pretty laid-back guy, but deep down I’m actually fiercely competitive. Even playing cards and dominoes with my family I’m often accused of being an obnoxious winner and a pouty loser.  I hate to lose!  But there are actually times when losing creates a competitive advantage and leads to strategic advancement.  Consider, for instance, in baseball what is commonly known as a “sacrifice” where the batter gives up an out in order to advance one or more runners who are on base, a loss for the batter, but a strategic advancement for the team.

There’s a hilarious scene in the movie “Maverick” where Maverick (played by Mel Gibson) walks into a saloon and convinces a group of strangers to allow him to join their poker game by promising to lose for the first hour.  Sure enough, for an hour he meticulously loses every hand by throwing away good cards, folding potentially winning hands, and raising bets on bad ones.  But at the end of the hour the table turns, you might say, and he begins to rake in the chips.  By losing, you see, he had lulled his opponents into thinking he didn’t know what he was doing, a strategy that cost him a few bucks up front, but by the end of the night had him sitting on a pile of money.

During my corporate career it drove my staff crazy when at times I would cave in on minor disputes that arose with customers or counterparts in the firm.  “Why did you give in on that?” they would accuse, “We were right!”  Indeed, most of the time we WERE right, but it didn’t matter, for in considering the circumstances I generally concluded that the good will created by forfeiting often far outweighed the ill will it would cause by going to the mat to prove a point.  And over the long haul I’m convinced it paid off in building a stellar reputation, market share growth, business volume and profitability.

As someone once pointed out, the best way to get rid of enemies is to turn them into friends.  The Apostle Paul would agree, “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.” 

“Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it.”  – Genesis 1:28 

To believe the essence of the creation story as it is told in the book of Genesis is to accept that the universe and all life within it are the handiwork of God the Creator – regardless of the process of how things may have specifically come into being.  And to accept that much of the story one must also recognize that humankind was somehow created distinctly separate from the rest of nature – that we were given intelligence and reason beyond that of every other being within creation.  That is to say, although we too are created beings along with the rest of nature, we are also different from it.  We are the only form of nature created in the image of the Creator.

Writer Annie Dillard once spent an entire year living by a creek in the mountains of Virginia expecting to be inspired and refreshed by being close to nature over an extended period of time.  What she discovered instead was quite surprisingly to the contrary.  She came to realize that nature, rather than being peaceful and serene as we like to imagine, is actually ruled by violence of the strong against the weak.  That should not, however, diminish for us the beauty and majesty we see in nature, but instead serve as a reminder of the role we play within it; that in spite of our many human flaws – including our own tendency toward violence at times – we are the only creatures given the authority and specific instructions to subdue it.  We are given dominion over all creation by the Creator, and it is our sense of values born out of our unique capacity to care and to love that empowers us to act as stewards of both nature and mankind.

So, unlike the rest of nature which is ruled by the strong overpowering the weak as Annie Dillard discovered, mankind is ruled by a higher form of behavior, guiding principles we call values – values which are formed out of our intellect, ability to reason, and capacity for love, and influenced by such things as life experiences, social norms, and religious beliefs.  Everything we do, be it the decisions we make or the actions we take during the course of a day are based on our consciously or unconsciously held values.  Thus since our stewardship over the rest of creation is dependent upon the values by which we live, we must be ever striving to align them with the perfect values of our Creator.

“We have different gifts, according to the grace given us.”  – Romans 12:6 

A wise philosopher once noted that we should be who God made us to be, rather than someone we are not.  That takes me back to a favorite family story from our days living in Houston back in the mid 1980’s.  At that time one of the most popular lunch venues among the more genteel crowd was the Junior League Tea Room.  Nestled among the mansions within the highly exclusive River Oaks neighborhood, the tea room was a favorite spot for bankers and business executives to entertain their well-healed clients as well as being a luncheon respite for high-fashioned shoppers from the nearby exclusive Galleria mall.  Not only was the setting lovely and the food superb, but unlike other restaurants it was hosted and served by the fine volunteer ladies of the Junior League.

My wife, Tee, who happened to be one of those fine ladies of the Junior League, thought it a nice gesture one day to treat her family to lunch at the tea room.  So, we arrived with our two young sons – who, mind you, were twelve and eight at the time – all dressed up in their navy blazers, kaki paints and red ties, and were seated at a specially reserved table in the middle of the restaurant surrounded by some of Houston’s most distinguished citizens.  All went well until . . . well, boys will be boys.  With the first foible came a “shh!!” and stern look from their mother, but soon the giggles digressed into raucous laughter that eventually infected all four of us. So there we were in middle of River Oaks of all places when the whole façade of appearing to be a highly refined prim-and-proper family came tumbling down.  You had to be there to fully appreciate it.

Here’s the interesting part, though.  Our intention was to use this little outing as an opportunity to teach our two young sons some of the finer points of social graces.  Instead, it was they who taught us the greater lesson – to be who God made us to be rather than trying to be someone we are not.  By their little boyish antics, they cut right through the whole façade.  While the social graces we were trying to teach them are certainly important, as only kids can remind us, authenticity is even more important.  That’s the paradox of the story and what we really remember it for. “We [each] have different gifts, according to the grace given us.”

“From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”  – Luke 12:48

One of the many legendary stories about Fiorello LaGuardia, the beloved, colorful Depression era mayor of New York City, occurred on a cold January night in 1935 when he turned up at a night court that happened to serve the poorest ward of the city.  Dismissing the judge for the evening the mayor took over the bench himself.  Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread.  She told LaGuardia that her daughter’s husband had deserted her, her daughter was sick, and her two grandchildren were starving.  But the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges.  LaGuardia sighed.  He then turned to the woman and said, “I’ve got to punish you.  The law makes no exceptions – ten dollars or ten days in jail.  Simultaneously he reached into his own pocket producing the ten dollars to cover the fine.  “Here is the ten dollar fine which I now remit.  And furthermore I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat.”  The following day the newspapers reported that $47.50 had been collected and handed over to the bewildered old lady.

My first job in the financial business, the one that launched my career, was with a large regional bank in Fort Worth, Texas.  There’s an old story about that fine institution that defined its culture for years.  During the Great Depression when banks were failing and unemployment was rampant, rather than laying people off the decision was made that everyone would instead take a substantial pay cut.  That decision not only helped maintain the bank’s solvency, it also saved its employees’ families from starvation.

The right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness are among our nation’s core principles, but such personal rights also carry great responsibilities, such as being good citizens, including tending to the wellbeing of others.  “From everyone who has been given much will be demanded,” the scriptures remind us.  Mayor LaGuardia certainly made that loud and clear in his courtroom that cold January night, as did my old employer in the way it cared for the wellbeing of its employees during those dark days.