EXECUTIVE STYLE EXCUSES

The last few days, several television news personalities commented on the sharp words used by President Obama to condemn the executives of Wall Street for collecting billions of dollars in bonuses after receiving a prior multi-billion dollar bailout from the taxpayers. The commentators emphasized the fact that the anger expressed in the president’s strong language indicated his frustration over how out-of-touch the financial magnates were. The reality of our present recession and its devastating effect on the very taxpayers whose money had been thrown at Wall Street to save the major banks from collapse didn’t seem to phase the Scrooge McDucks as they counted their cash.

The most amazing thing about the outrage surrounding the bonus binge of the big banks is not so much the fact that they did what they did, but the response of the banks’ public relations spokesmen who faced the media in an attempt to explain and excuse their behavior. Ironically, as it turned out, the explanations only dug them deeper into the hole and reflected an even greater indication that “they really don’t get it.”

One of the spokesmen suggested, with a straight face, that in order to get and keep the quality of executives that it takes to operate effectively in the financial market, you have to pay them the huge sums that they require, thus the end justifies the means, even when the present crisis seems to cry out that it is not apropos. In the end, so they say, it is to everyone’s advantage that what appears to be greed is actually for the good.

What does this have to do with the subject of living the Christian life? If it is not apparent and obvious allow me to continue. The attempts that we make to justify out-of-touch attitudes and behaviors is all too often cosmetically enhanced with the rouge and powder of supposed benefit to all. The examples are many. I call attention to only a few.

When we compromise the clear statement of Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life and comply with the politically correct adjustment that there are other means to achieve salvation, the usual excuse for such a position is to make the Christian message adaptable to a wider range of acceptability in spite of the fact that it corrupts the efficacy of Christ.
When we emphasize the policy that even though all are technically welcome to worship with our congregation people would feel more at home in our church if they were at least middle-income, or racially consistent with the present make-up, or more educated, we justify that attitude by rationalizing it as encouraging folks to be more comfortable among their own.

When we are soft and easy on frequent divorce, co-habitation, and lax family values, and see the deterioration of the standards of Bible-based holiness in our churches we look the other way and give such things a pass in the supposed interest of being more open.

When we preach a different gospel that focuses on attaining prosperity as “the King’s kids” rather than the gospel of taking up the cross and following Christ we defend the approach of “planting seed to harvest a crop” by glorifying the benefits that can come to all who invest.

These are only a sample of the Wall Street-style attempts to mask self interest adapted to Christian attitudes and behavior. We should not indulge in such lame rationalizing of self-centered behavior that distorts the teaching of Christ. We ought to dread it as much as a market crash and rebuke it at least as candidly and emphatically as President Obama came down on the CEOs.

~Dan Light