Core Values
Values are what you hold dear. They are the core set of principles that direct your life. You hold them dear. You do not compromise them. You adjust them only after careful consideration and examination. They guide you, they are there in decision making, they are there in times of temptation, they curb your appetites, and they form your future.
Core values are like pillars that are referred to daily. They are the compass of our lives. They are the rudder of the journey.
To violate these core values is to violate our very souls. It is an act of violence that rips at our existence and questions our sanity.
To drift from our core values sets our life in a motion that has no destination or purpose. When someone abandons their core values, they become licentious, lawless, and unrestrained. It may manifest in all manners, not always in sinfulness, but sometimes in purposelessness or misguided actions.
This can happen to any of us. The drift can be so subtle that it is imperceptible. The airliner crash of several years ago in the Everglades happened by the trim tab being bumped by the captain as he tended to other things. It set the plane in a 100 ft. per minute descent that would be imperceptible to all on board, but ended in tragedy. We look at ministers and leaders who start with high standards and lofty vision who end in places that astound us. We ask, " How can a man of God end up bilking people for thousands or millions of dollars?" We ask "How could he leave his wife and have affairs with women in the church?" "How could women in the church become prey to such activities?" "How can people as a group drink poisoned cool aid, knowingly?" "How can a man have a child by his sister in law and he is the pastor and she the worship leader?" "Where does wife swapping come from in these cases?" It is a long road from lofty ideals to illegitimate children with your sister in law. How many small violations of core values were perpetrated over the course of years?
But year after year business leaders and church leaders fall from their purposes and their life goals. No one starts out to be the object of public ridicule. No one starts out to deceive people and misuse them. It seems to be a slow process of compromise. It is losing the vision of helping people and changing to seeing people as the means of gratifying personal desire. People change from worthy of help to objects of manipulation and deception. The road leads many times through the sense of entitlement that comes from position. The road leads through a sense of being special and above the rest of humanity. It is the "god complex" that emperors, doctors, politicians, and sadly, ministers have at times.
The movie "The Apostle," and the book, "Elmer Gantry," both revealed the duplicity of such characters. We have engendered by character failure a suspect of the ministry in the general populace.
What do we hold dear? What are the values that led us into ministry? But more than that, what are the values that you have been taught by your parents? If you do not have values given to you from the Bible, it is necessary to find them and build them into your character as you are fashioned into the image of Christ. We do need conversions. We need genuine conversions, not just "Jesus save me," but real internal change coming from a new birth not a new conviction. We are looking for disciples, not decisions.
People lose their way, churches lose their way, ministries lose their way. The Wesleys started a movement called Methodism with core values that are now totally sacrificed on the altar of convenience and modern thought. We all stand in danger of losing our way if we do not visit the monuments, the pillars of our faith. We must hold true to our core values and fight for them. We have to fight convention, compromise, and self.
December 2007
