Crisis of Honor

We have a crisis in our country. (The US, not Guatemala, though I’m sure it’s a problem here too). I am not referring to the budget crisis or the economic crisis or the crisis of Demi and Ashton no longer being together. It’s not the war on drugs or the war on poverty or the war for better education. No, it’s something deeper, arguably at the root of all of these.

It’s a crisis of honor.

I recently read Culture of Honor by Danny Silk. It revolutionized the way I look at leadership, particularly in the Christian setting. Every person is made in the image of God, and every Christian has the Spirit of God living inside of them, so when we honor others we are ACTUALLY honoring God, and when we dishonor others, we are dishonoring God.

I know we’ve always said “Do unto others as you would have done unto you,” but really, this implies “Do unto others as you would do to GOD.”

So if we call each other names, if we defile our leaders, if we defile each other, we are actually doing it to God.

In our culture, though, defilement is second nature. Our media defiles our politicians at every turn. The left to the right, the right to the left, and the moderates just sit and watch both sides burn. We defile our celebrities—people we supposedly admire—every time we read the gossip in STAR or watch TZM. We tell one celebrity she’s too skinny and another she’s too fat. He’s too old, he’s too feminine, he’s too whatever.

We constantly criticize ourselves and those around us. Our bosses, our parents, our kids, our leaders, even our pastors. In our country where everyone is entitled to an opinion, everyone has one and will share it loudly, even if it tears other people down.

There’s a general lack of grace and honor with anyone put in a position of authority. Our country values equality so intensely that we just can’t wait to get everyone back on the same playing field, even if they were put in a place of authority by God. Obviously when assuming a leadership role, one should be prepared to be held to a high standard, but we aren’t perfect.

Failure is common; grace is not.

I’ve come to the conclusion we as Americans must be nearly impossible to lead. We probably look a lot like the Israelites in the desert with Moses, complaining about the manna and the water from a rock. God’s supernatural provision isn’t enough for the people who want everything.

There’s a verse in Hebrews  about having confidence in your leaders and submitting to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account. This is so their work will be a joy, not a burden, because if it’s a burden then it’s no benefit to you.

I’d say we generally don’t put a lot of confidence in our leadership. There’s a lot of fear in America that leaders tend to play into.

I used to think leadership, to a certain level, was about control. That’s how most of the world views it anyways. But it’s not. If we honor those we are leading and those we are following, if we empower those ahead of us to lead and those below us to go higher than we ever could, then it’s not about control, but about self-control.

It’s about empowering your people, not about controlling them. That’s the best kind of leadership. Unfortunately, it requires a heckuvalot of grace on both sides, which is a struggle. It requires people willing to be proactive and take responsibility for their own actions, something I’d say is a challenge for a lot of us—to readily accept our part in the mess and be willing to do something to make it better, instead of sitting in an ivory tower or a TV studio or a living room, railing on about all the problems but doing nothing for the solutions.

We can all see the problems, and we can all readily assess blame and responsibility to the “guilty” parties. We all know how to complain. I think the trick is do we know how to stop complaining?
I didn’t. I didn’t realize how much I struggled with complaining until leading. Even as a leader, it is tempting to place blame elsewhere, especially when it all seems to get thrown at you.

I just think about the examples of leadership I’ve had growing up. Not so much in my own family or anything, but in the government, in the media, in the church, and it doesn’t surprise me why it’s a struggle. Why leaders are plenty but good leaders are few. It is a nearly impossible task, and it is definitely impossible to do perfectly, though that’s what we tend to expect from our leaders. If they’re not perfect, replace them. We have elections every 2-6 years to do just that.

When people disappoint us, our instinct is to ditch them. Our friends, our family, our relationships, our politicians, our employees. When we are not happy, we keep seeking a new happy ending. Instead of having grace and trying to work things out, we just move on. So there are trails of broken hearts and broken lives running rampant in rabbit trails all around us, on this pursuit of “happiness.”

The pursuit and cultivation of honor is really hard. It’s much easier to keep going the way we’ve always gone, to pursue our own happy and criticize everything else that’s in the way, to place blame everywhere else and play the victim.

But we aren’t victims. We are people of love, and honor, and grace. We live in a country with an amazing legacy. Obviously we are not perfect and we’ve made way more mistakes than I’d care to recount, but there’s something special about the original core of the American spirit. A country that started something totally new and somehow has kept it going for nearly 250 years. There were bumps and hiccups, but it’s been worth it.

In this time, we can choose. We can choose to live in fear and criticism and blame and escapism, or we can choose to be a people of honor and grace, with our leaders, our family, our friends, and our government. 

It’ll be hard, but it’ll be good.