Accountability

Good men are bound by conscience and liberated by accountability. Wes Fesler

It has occurred to me that human nature remains static from birth to death; it never grows up as we grow older. It begins in the infant as a survival instinct. Emotional maturity can, over time, take charge of human nature and overrule its self-preservation impulse but only with the will of conscious effort. Once our basic primitive disposition is under control we are then empowered to advance to higher civilized behaviors such as individual integrity, personal responsibility and unwavering accountability. No one, not even the most mature among us, enjoys dealing with the consequences of a bad choice so human nature instantly recoils at the concept of guilt. But it is the mature among us who are able to quickly set aside this inherent tendency and admit, “It’s my fault”, “I screwed up” , “I made a bad decision but I will work to correct it” and/or “I’m sorry.”

There’s been a distressing paradigm shift to the point of near reversal in recent years. Integrity, the act of doing the right thing even though no one is looking, used to be the jewel in the crown of modern civilization. Now integrity is redefined as the skillful spouting of rhetoric, platitudes and excuses that sound good and right but lack substance with no accompanying action necessary. Before the decline of their empire, the ancient Romans revered individual standards of character. So much so that when engineers constructed an arch, as the capstone was lifted into place, the engineer assumed accountability for his work by standing under the arch. And so it goes, as civilized values are kicked to the curb, base human nature snicks into auto-pilot, once again resuming control. The inevitable and historically oft repeated outcome is the demise of what is civil about civilization.

This is painful for me to witness this as it seeps in around me, spreading like spilled toxic waste into every little corner of life, not just politics. No one expects politicians to be accountable anymore, but how distressing it is to watch once noble professionals, such as teachers, judges, physicians and journalists decline into this newly revised model of behavior. I’m forced to see how far we have fallen from where we once were. Be assured, I’m not looking backward through rose-colored glasses. No doubt there certainly has always been a base, self-centered side to humanity weaving in and out and running along side the higher standards maintained by society, but not long ago, even in my lifetime, there was a high regard for general wholesomeness, and personal accountability that was stronger and ran the race in first place, if only slightly. But these values are now rapidly dying out and falling behind with the generation that revered them. Sometimes I wonder if those who believe that humans evolved from monkeys have ever considered or worried that godless evolution might possibly go backward one day.

If accountability is best measured by what we do and not what we say, in this era of much speaking, attributes that must be done and not merely spoken, like honor, trustworthiness, honesty, diligence, courage, endurance, and faithfulness, are quickly reverting to the base, raw instinct to survive. Unfortunately, do-before-it-is-done-to-you and any-means-to-justify-an-end mentality is the poisonous by-product of unchecked human nature. It is now more permissible to lie and throw up a verbal smokescreen to avoid accountability than it is to step up, admit guilt and just be responsible. This the bitter fruit of a culture in decline–permissive tolerance–that says, I’ll let you get away with it, you let me get away with it because you’re okay, I’m okay. Human nature is inherently lazy and rather than do the hard work of striving to overcome, indolent human nature prefers to grant others permission to ignore standards in order to be able to ignore them equally.

There is a devastating irony in this that human nature is its own worst enemy and cannot survive without the standards God established for us to desire to rise up to. It should be noted that He gave us these standards because these are the attributes that build up and sustain rather than destroy. The first difficult step is to realize we must see the value of prevailing over our natural instincts before we can take the next difficult step that requires that we actually do it. Those who do not believe in a sovereign God, to whom we are answerable, must look to the accepted mores of society for guidelines. The truths that are held self-evident by the society charged with upholding them are like the foundation of a building. If those truths are gradually replaced with something less, like substandard concrete, there is no hope the building can stand the test of time.

(2 Cor. 8:21) ... for we take thought for things honorable, not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men.