Grimacing While Running Life's Race, Finishing Life's Course, Wearing a Crown of Victory

It's been nineteen days since Herbert S. Estes died, late in the evening in his bed, with Ruth and two nurses present, on May 4, 2014.  He struggled a bit with his final breaths, fighting down to the end.  Was he feeling pain from his heart or his breathing?  We really don't know, but it would not be surprising if there was some pain.  Although he had not struggled with the same kind of pain that his daughter Everly did last year, as tumors did their damage to her backbone, liver, and other places, he had endured pain in his body as the brain, nerves, and muscles stopped working as they should.  His many years of heart and arterial disease had also given him pain, off and on.  It could have been a bit of angina that he felt in those closing minutes.  There was a grimace.  It's stuck in Ruthie's memory.  She hopes he was not hurting too bad as he left us.

But the grimace could also be the grimace of a competitor.  Herbie's decline was exacerbated by his loss of hearing and his loss of vision.  Both of these were indirectly related to his heart and artery disease, with other complicating factors.  Not seeing clearly, and not hearing very much, he was often confined to a world all his own, an inward looking life of memories and imagination.  Through the last year of his life, there were times most every day when he seemed to be in another place from where the others in the room were. 

Sometimes he felt the need to protect the family and himself from potential dangers.  In those cases, we were reminded of his athletic body, because he could grab one of our hands or arms and hold and pull with great strength.  He still had that grip strength even on May 4.  Other times, quite often in fact, he was at some kind of contest.  It seemed that it might be a track meet.  He would talk about running a race, and about trying to win.  This race, this competition, easily slipped over in our imaginations to be a kind of metaphor for his struggle to live and to come to the end of his life. 

The imagery that Paul the Apostle uses in his writings as he approached his death was present in our thinking.  In Corinthians he wrote about training to run, and running in a way that one can win.  In Galatians and Philippians he wrote about hoping that his running would not be in vain.  To friends in Ephesus, Acts tells us that he hoped to finish his course.  He urged Timothy to train, and in his last letter to Timothy announced that he had finished his race.  Everly's favorite verses come from Paul's letter to the Philippians, and they also contain this imagery of pressing on toward the mark.  We can't be sure that we knew everything going on in Herbie's mind, but we have strong belief that he was through memory and imagination running a race to win.

Running a race to win can mean trying to keep strong and keep going as long as possible.  So a grimace can be part of the evidence of a runner giving it all he's got to keep going and stay ahead of the competition.  Unless my imagination is way off track, I think it is at least partly true that Herbie's grimace, on many days, and on May 4, was the grimace of a competitor, a runner, striving to win a race. 

There is ambiguity in Paul's imagery about the race, and it is inherent in the concept of a race.  On one hand, there is the struggle and effort to be ahead.  Someone else is always running along behind, maybe closing the gap of the leader, pushing to get ahead.  Then there is the end of the race when the winner is decided.  Being ahead, winning, during the course of the race, is not yet a victory.  That's why there is a constant striving.

Who were Herbie's competitors?  I think of it as the various illnesses of his heart, arteries, brain, muscles, blood, etc.  He was struggling to stay ahead of their diabolical progress to consume and defeat him.  He was trying to keep himself present, out ahead of their threatening and damaging progress.  He was fighting the good fight. 

Sometimes Herbie did think he was in a fight.  It was heartbreaking for Ruth, Marie, and others who would be in the room with him when he mistook them for a threatening presence.  It was not all the time, but it was a regular thing that happened.  This fighting was to the family a sign of his suffering, his discomfort with the remains of his life.  Being so isolated by bodily weakness, lack of vision, and lack of hearing, he felt threatened.  We fear he even felt alone at times. 

Of course, that is not so different from anyone's struggle with terminal illness.  Everly only briefly struggled with that kind of mental isolation for a couple of weeks while she was in the hospital in April 2012.  The combination of advanced tumor growth, too strong a dose of chemotherapy drugs, and pain medications put her out of her usual consciousness.  But even after that short episode, the experience of her cancer often made her feel alone.  Inability to sleep, inability to work, struggling with maintaining a body under attack, always hurting somewhere, long nights awake--all of these were isolating experiences.  In that way, Herbie's acting out of his frustrations and isolation is part of what many people suffer as they approach the end of their days.  Herbie felt alone, but his family made Herculean efforts to reassure him of their presence and love, and he clearly knew that up until the very end.

Herbie, like Paul, could say,

As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing (2 Tim. 4:6-9, NRSV).

I mentioned it in my last post, but I want to close with quoting the full remarks of my niece, Emily Finkelstine, which are relevant to this point.

After Herbie’s worst stroke, I found myself wondering a lot why God would allow the end of his life to be so full of pain and confusion. My reasoning was that if God works for the good of those who love Him and God works for His glory to be seen in the world, then at least one of those things should be evident and visible in suffering, and I couldn’t see it. But eventually, I saw the glory. I saw it in the unbreakable bonds of familial love…in the way that Granny Ree and my mom and the whole family cared for him and watched over him, even on the hardest days. And most of all, I saw it in the way that even when Herbie knew nothing else, he still knew the name of Jesus and he sure still knew how to sing hymns, nice and loud and off-key and full of praise.

I used to pray for freedom for Herbie a lot, whether that meant miraculous healing, returning home to Jesus, or even just having the knowledge that his soul was free in Christ even as his mind and body were held relatively captive here. It wasn’t until I moved back into the house after my freshman year of college that I realized Herbie shared my prayer; he would often cry out for freedom and for victory. So, as difficult as it is to say goodbye, I know that he has those things now. I know that he is free and that he is reveling in the blessings of Christ’s victory over death. Hallelujah.

 

Herbert S. Estes, My Father-in-Law

Sunday we sat vigil as Herbie's heart raced to maintain his weakened body in the last stages of his struggle.  The signals he gave us were ambiguous.  We thought he might be about to die, but that thought has arisen across decades, only to have Herbie rise up to defeat the odds.  But this time was to be the last battle.  He clinched his fists throughout the day.  Now and then he pushed and pulled his arms when he felt the need to struggle.  Mostly he rested calmly.  He listened to the loving words of his family and the nurses who were caring for him.  He listened to hymns, and even seemed to join the song once or twice.  He heard the words of scripture read to him.  He lay peacefully as we gathered for prayer through the day.

Finally, he gritted his teeth one last time.  Ruth, his daughter, once again assured him that it was all right for him to go.  He had lived a good life.  He had loved his wife and children well.  They would look out for one another after he would be gone.  So it was all right for him to let go and enter into the arms of God.  He breathed his last breaths, and his pain and struggle ended.  With tears of grief and thanks, we offered praise to God for the gift of this good man and for the end of his frustrations and suffering.

I first met Herb Estes when I was 18, invited by Everly for a gathering of Baylor sudents in the Houston area during our winter break.  In the three-plus years that I was courting Everly at Baylor, I had many more opportunities to visit her family and get to know him.  One of the first things I that was obvious was his comfort and enjoyment at being around children and young people.

An odd thing to note is that Everly and her siblings, as well as all the kids who showed up at their house most every day, called him Herbie and called Everly's mom Ree, short for Marie.  Everly, Eric, and Ruth had picked it up from all the other kids.  Herb and Marie were strong supporters of the youth ministry at church and in the community, and they allowed the first name familiarity with those young people.  Since everyone else was calling them Ree and Herbie, their own children took up those names as well.  So have all the rest of us.

Herbie was an engineer, trained in mechanical engineering.  He was gifted at "figgerin'," at analyzing how things work.  As a boy, he liked to make up games involving thinking and math.  His father loved to talk about the games Herbie made up, and he always insisted they should have gotten them copyrighted so they could have sold them and made lots of money.  Herbie loved all kinds of games, but especially the ones that involved math or complicated strategy.  He would figure out a game fairly quickly.  Once he figured out the key elements of a game, the rest of us were pretty unlikely to ever win again.

Of course, many games have elements of chance built in to make sure that no single strategy can dominate.  For that reason, I could occasionally win a game of backgammon.  In some games, like Texas 42, I often insisted on certain "table rules" to try to handicap Herbie's capacity to find an exotic path to victory.  Usually, this did not help the rest of us have a chance.  I never learned to play bridge, but Herbie was a master of the game.  He played with other rocket scientists.  He played online and in local bridge clubs and leagues.  And he almost always ended up a champion.

Herbie loved sports, too.  He played guard in football, and was known for his speed as a pulling blocker.  Not only did he play in high school at Port Arthur Thomas Jefferson, he also played on the college team at Lamar.  Of course, football is not a lifelong sport.  Herbie played whatever sort of game he could, and for lifelong skill development and fitness he took up golf and tennis.

Tennis was the game of his brother-in-law, Henry Parrish, a champion at many age levels throughout his life.  Golf was the game Herbie tried to master, hoping eventually to play on the Senior Professional tour.  Back injuries and pain eventually took that game away from him.   When he was younger, he coached kids in Little League Baseball.  Everly remembers being on a team when she was very young.  He also tried to get her started in tennis.  But she was just not interested in playing sports.  Eric and Ruth both took up sports for enjoyment.

Not only was Herbie good at games and sports; he was also a fierce competitor.  Sometimes this made it hard in the family for playing games.  The kids remember feeling they did not have much of a chance of becoming good enough to compete with him.  He encouraged them to learn to play their best.  Herbie was hard-headed about many things, including about sports.  He was not popular with the umpires down at the Little League diamond, often pressing his disagreements through long arguments.  It was his passion for seeing the games played well and played right that drove him.

We all sometimes get carried away concerning things we care about.  Let there be no doubt that Herbie cared about kids, about the joy of athletic activity and achievement, and about doing one's best.  He did not have much interest in halfway doing things that he loved.  There was a time, after his own children were too old for Little League, that Herbie still could be found at the neighborhood kids' baseball games on many nights.  Rumors began to spread that Herb and Marie were having marital problems, since he was spending this time away from home in the evenings.  Of course, it was not true.  He simply loved young people and sports, and Marie had no such interest in going down to the ballpark night after night.  She had other things to work on and do.

Herbie started out studying at the prominent engineering school, Texas A&M, where he was required to be part of the military-style corps.  But Herbie had a powerful independent streak in him.  He liked to think for himself.  He liked to have good reasons for what he did.  He did not like anyone telling him he had to do anything.  As Everly told it to me, Herbie could not stand "playing army" in the corps.  So he left A&M, and soon he was drafted to serve in the army.

After two years of service, he returned home to start back to college, more serious and committed to his education.  He majored in mechanical engineering and mathematics.  During this time he courted and married Marie Weaver, a member of his home church who had been taken under wing by his mother.  They began building a marriage and started a home that lasted for over 58 years.  He became a bright young graduate and got recruited into the aerospace industry, into a new branch of engineering.

First he worked for Convair in Ft. Worth.  There, he and Marie met many of their lifelong friends, some of whom were seminary students preparing for ministry.  Everly was born during this time.  Soon he was hired away by Martin-Marietta in Denver.  Eric and Ruth were born during the Colorado sojourn.  One favorite family activity is pulling out the letters Marie exchanged with Herb's mother, Palmer, faithfully reporting on the young family that had moved so far away.

Eventually, Herbie got the opportunity to join NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.  The family settled in Sagemont, a new suburban housing development in southwest Houston.  There they stayed until his retirement, thirty years later.  They raised three wonderful children, and supported and served in the work of three different churches over the years.  Herbie worked on the Apollo project, focusing his mathematical calculations on how to get the spaceship to the Moon.  He said that once it got there, it was someone else's job to get it back home to Earth.

He was from the slide rule generation of engineers.  He had already been working for a long time before computer programming became an important part of his work.  He learned some basics of programming to be able to do his job, but during the last decade of his career he said that the new computer programming languages were changing so fast that the older engineers simply learned to depend on the newly hired computer science graduates to cover that part of their work.  That left Herb the job of solving the big problems that the crunched data helped him analyze.

He later was involved extensively in the design of the Space Shuttle.  During those years, he traveled regularly to southern California to work with partners at Rockwell who were building the spaceship.  One of his brightest bridge partners was an engineer from Rockwell named Fuk Ing.  No joke.  Everyone had that reaction, too.  But Herb and Fuk were unbeatable at bridge.  Once the Space Shuttle program got through its testing phases and started conducting space missions, Herb's work was done.

He spent the last few years of his career working on one of the most difficult problems still remaining for human space exploration and science near Earth:  the debris problem.  Finding, identifying, sizing, tracking, and predicting the movements of thousands of pieces of debris in orbit is a critical task to prevent damage to expensive equipment and priceless human beings working in space.  But Herb was happy to retire.  He loved doing his work, but he loved his time with family, playing golf, and getting to do things he had been to busy for before.

Herbie wanted to travel when he retired.  He was at first very ambitious, talking about buying an RV and simply going on a several-year adventure.  Marie did not share his enthusiasm for being thoroughly uprooted, so they settled in a retirement community in Pearland where he could play golf every day, play bridge, and stay in touch with friends.  During those years, they hosted their grandchildren for summer vacations, made several trips with tour groups and friends, and enjoyed visits from their children and their families whenever possible.

Herb had struggled with heart disease since he was young, having multiple bypass surgeries three times, beginning at age 43.  He was one of the star cases for the pioneering Houston based DeBakey cardiology practice, one of their longest surviving success stories.  Later, the artery blockages affected his hearing and eyesight, making life more difficult for Herb.  Not hearing and seeing well, he stayed busy with online bridge and backgammon tournaments and managing his retirement account and stock portfolio online.

From the time I met Herbie, he was always working on a system, an algorithm, a trick to beat the stock market.  He was convinced there was a way to win, and he was mostly very successful.  When he got very interested in technical analysis of stocks, I found myself not understanding more often than understanding what he was doing.  But it was one of our more enjoyable topics of conversation over the years, talking about what he was trying to do with his stocks.

Herbie drew me into his life in many ways.  We were always welcome at his home to eat, to visit, to stay, to watch a ball game, and to play games together.  He would take me, always a duffer, to play golf every time I would visit.  We would talk about the family and the work that each of us was doing.  We would talk about our churches.

Herbie was not one to take his faith at face value.  He intended to understand what he believed.  If he thought someone was teaching without careful thinking involved, he would not accept it.  As an engineer, he was probably tempted to try too hard to overcome mysteries and figure out God's inner workings.  He would rather have it all nailed down.  But even with that tendency, Herbie never seemed to me to close off considering another idea. 

When Everly and I were in our early 20s, we had moved to California for my seminary education and joined a church in the heart of San Francisco.  Not long after we joined the church, everything was thrown into uproar as the members began an argument, a process, a time of study on the church and homosexuality.  It was not a brand new question, but it was not yet widely discussed in 1980.  During the intensity of that period, Herbie came to visit us and went to church with us.  I might have feared he would have been aghast and condemnatory toward us for being in this situation.  Instead, he listened intently and raised reasonable questions, talking through the theological and biblical ideas that were floating around from the more traditional heritage and the more innovative reflections.

In this way, I felt that Herbie was always ready to consider theological ideas if I was ready to offer reasoned conversation about them.  Simply putting an idea out there as if there were no other possible conclusion would never fly with Herb.  But just because an idea was new or different from his previous thinking, that would not stop him from giving it honest consideration.  He always respected the learning I had, but he never assumed I was going to be right all the time.  When I was invited to preach at Everly's home church in Houston, I preached from Galatians about being set free in Christ.  I talked about a human longing for freedom.  Herb challenged me after the sermon, suggesting that it might be more accurate to say that humans long for security primarily, not freedom.  He wanted to know why I took the position I had taken.

In recent years, when I was deeply involved in theological reflection on the economy, he took a great interest in that as well.  Like many of his generation, he was influenced by conservative politics and their concomitant economics.  But he never dismissed my work.  He wanted to know why and how we came to take certain positions.  He was a good conversation partner on economics.  And he seemed often to come to agree with the proposals that I and my organizing partners were putting forward.

Whenever Herbie had been hospitalized for heart surgery or other reasons, he was not a good patient.  Remember I said that he was fiercely independent.  He did not like doctors and nurses telling him what he had to do.  He did not like being hooked up to machines and confined to a bed.  He would plot to gain his freedom.  He would jerk the breathing tube out of his own throat.  He would pressure his family to sneak him out of the hospital.  He may be the worst patient I've ever known.  And the key issue is that Herbie wanted to decide for himself what he was going to do.  He wanted to be independent, free.

Herb's health continued to decline for several years before he died.  There were Parkinson's-like symptoms, continuing arterial and heart issues, and a host of ailments.  As Herbie grew weaker, had a stroke, had trouble communicating, and was unable to do things for himself, he expressed his wish to not continue living under these conditions.  He was heartbroken to watch his oldest child, Everly, die before her time when he believed it should have been him to go first.  Yet he did continue to live, surviving crisis after crisis. 

He was very concerned that he had made provision for Marie and his children.  He wanted to be sure that he had done all that he should have done.  So you could say he lived with two drives.  One was that he wanted to make sure his family was taken care of.  The other was that he not have to continue living such a diminished life.  These two seemed to be in conflict with one another.  I sometimes wonder if another passion was at work--his competitiveness.  Was he simply not willing to let the sickness win the battle?  Was he fighting and unwilling to give up, even against his own expressed willingness to leave this life?  I can't say for sure.  But it does fit with his character in a way.

During the last months of his life, he was not always a good patient, in character with his past.  When he did not have the strength to get out of bed on his own, he would shout, "Freedom!" over and over again.  Other times he would shout, "Victory!"  He was fighting to win a contest, and he shouted out his desire.  We puzzled about it, but knew he hated not being able to get up and do what he wanted to do. 

His granddaughter Emily noted that he did not like being confined in a weak and uncooperative body, and that all his shouts of "Freedom!" and "Victory!" have finally found their fulfillment.  He is no longer limited by his declining health.  He has taken off the perishable and put on the imperishable.  Death is swallowed up in victory.  Free at last, he is no longer stuck in the bed unable to do what he wants.  He has been crucified with Christ; nevertheless, he lives.  He is united to Jesus in the resurrection.  There is no doubt that he, like the Lord Jesus, loved the ones God has given him, and he loved them until the end. 

Economic Recovery for All 8: Faith Perspectives, Pt 4

This entry completes the statement on the economy released on July 22, 2009, in Durham, NC. There are eight entries. For the full current list of endorsers as of this posting, see the first entry.

THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION ON THE ECONOMY
A Working Paper for North Carolina United Power
from an Interchange Among Theological Educators
July 2009

III. Faith Perspectives on Responding to the Crisis

B. Biblical, Theological, and Ethical Principles Guiding NCUP Actions and Campaigns in Response to the Economic Crisis

8. Shared economic risks and benefits

All societies become accustomed to doing things a certain way; however, there are many possibilities for organizing a flourishing economy. The predominant systems of investment and borrowing may be familiar, but that does not mean there might not be other, perhaps better, ways to invest, produce, and prosper. Rather than shifting almost all the economic risks toward the borrower, especially toward small borrowers, and the assured benefits primarily to the lender, there should be a way for risks and benefits to be shared more equitably.

Why should a family that has toiled for many years, paying bills and paying down a mortgage, be financially devastated by a change of fortune, when a financial institution prefers to write off their mortgage as a loss rather than work out a means of mutual and equitable benefit? As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "whoever plows should plow in hope and whoever threshes should thresh in hope of a share in the crop (1 Cor. 9:10). Martin Luther wrote, "If you would have interest in my profits, you must also have an interest in my losses. . . . The owners of income, who will not put up with that, are just as pious as robbers and murderers, and wrest from the poor man his property and his living" ("A Treatise on Usury").

C. Conclusions

Too often, people imagine that the economy is a competition over scarce resources. Yet while creation is finite there is no fixed limit on the prosperity that humanity can share. Unlimited acquisition and idiosyncratic use of possessions fall off of the path to human flourishing. Such hoarding of goods is theft, and it begs for divine judgment.

Rather than hoarding, sharing our blessings sets the tone of biblical economics. We are blessed that we might bless others. All that we have comes by God’s grace, and we must be gracious toward one another.

Without standards against usury, the massive transfer of wealth from the middle class workers to a wealthy elite will continue. As long as a powerful few have freedom to do as they please concerning the consumer credit of the many, the economic system will not serve the common good. No magical hidden hand will correct economic oppression.

To get out of the current mess, we will need an economic reform which acknowledges our mutual dependence and obligations and turns aside from the way of selfish individualism and competition for status and conspicuous wealth.

What kind of an economic recovery leaves giant banks standing while the average worker’s life gets harder and harder? It is not an economic recovery when billions can bail out executive jobs but nothing can bail out the rest of the jobs. There is not justice when everyone’s tax dollars can pay off banks’ bad debts, but the average taxpaying citizens are left on their own to drown in their debts. Debt relief for millionaires and homelessness for working people—that’s not the kind of economy we believe in.

Economic justice is not merely a fantasy or impossible ideal. There are practical ways to put it into practice. Communities of faith have demonstrated these possibilities in the past and present. Justice need not be limited to small economic experiments. Making real steps toward justice is fully compatible with rational and pragmatic economics. It is time for people of faith to speak this truth to power.

The Maker and Appraiser, part 1
Jeremiah 18:1-11

(This was the Men's Day message for the 8 am service at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church on September 9, 2007.)

Imagine yourself on the grade-school playground. Two or three children are playing together, climbing the jungle gym, and one proclaims, “I’m up higher than you are.” In response, another child says, “So what? I can jump off of here and land farther away than you can.” Soon the whole group has jumped down to the ground where they are comparing who jumped the farthest. Out of their arguing another voice says, “Big deal. I can run to the fence faster than you can.” And so on and so forth, the remainder of the school recess is filled with inventing contests to measure who can claim superiority over others in one way or another.

Our obsession with measuring our rank and status does not end in the competition of the playground. Those games, full of importance for the moment, are a rehearsal for more long-term, more expensive competitions in later life. Who is tallest? Who can sing lowest? Who can eat the most hot dogs? Who can whistle loudest? Who can throw a rock the farthest? Who can make a rock skip the most times across the surface of the lake? Who can catch the biggest fish? Who has the coolest sunglasses? Who has the fanciest car? Who has the most seniority? Who has the highest rank in the office? Who has the most expensive suit? Who is wearing the most outrageous tie? Who went to the most prestigious school? Whose favorite team won the championship? Who got a date with the most popular girl? Who makes the most money? Who has the biggest house? Who has the largest number of Christmas lights on his house? Who has the biggest collection of baseball autographs? Who has the most tools in his workshop?

It seems that we have an infinite capacity to invent ways of measuring our value. We seem driven to find some quantifiable way to be sure that we are worth something, or at least that we are worth more than that other guy over there. I may not be as rich as Oprah, but at least I’m doing better than my lazy cousin. I may not be the president, but at least people look up to me more than they do my stuck-up neighbor. I may not be as smart as Cornel West, but at least I read more books than old motor-mouth down at the coffee shop.

Most of us know, when we stop to think about it, that there is a problem with always making up new ways to compare, to measure, to compete with others in order to try to prove what we are worth. As soon as we start to depend on one of these self-construed ways of measuring our value, another kind of measurement comes along and sets aside our temporary imagined triumph. I may have lost the most weight, but someone else has done better in lowering his blood pressure. I may have accessorized my car with a global positioning system, a DVD player, and new hubcaps that don’t stop spinning when the car stops, but someone else just got a great big Harley-Davidson motorcycle. I may have just been on a long and impressive trip, but the other guy has twice as many frequent-flyer miles. I may have the best statistics for meeting my goals at work, but the other guy has the best relationship with the boss. I may have the most cable channels to watch basketball games, but the other guy has the biggest high-definition tv screen. It’s like a never-ending cycle of escalating standards. Trying to prove ourselves by creating contests is like walking on a treadmill. You keep on taking one step after another, but you never get anywhere. You can speed it up and walk faster, but you still are in the same place. And on top of that, the guy next to you has one of those fancy elliptical walkers that’s better than your treadmill.

I’m not giving you any breaking news. Anyone here who has stopped to think for a few seconds knows that the constant effort to set a standard to get ahead and prove our worth by comparing ourselves with others is a road that leads only to disappointment and frustration. Through the centuries, many people have reflected on our theme for men’s day, “the measure of a man.” When they have been honest and critical in their analysis, they have often arrived at valuable insights to help us know what it is that makes for a good life, a life that leads to fulfillment, a life that can be admired.

Sidney Poitier named his memoir The Measure of a Man. He undertook to write it because he was wanting to reflect on and evaluate his life. He said, “I wanted to find out, as I looked back at a long and complicated life, with many twists and turns, how well I’ve done at measuring up to the values I myself have set.” Those values have to do with his vocation as an actor and his integrity as a human being. His way of stating it was in terms of personal goals and commitments. Of course, he did not make these up out of thin air. They must also be related to those high standards of excellence which were passed on to him by his family, his teachers, and the community. He is right that he would not be able to take stock of how well he had done on his own goals unless at some point he had come to commit himself to those standards and long for their achievement.

In a less individualistic way of speaking, we might turn to the words of the Apostle Paul, who wrote to the Philippians, “I want to take hold of that for which I have been taken hold of.” Paul wants his achievement to be appraised by what God has called him to do. Paul helps us see that we cannot purely on our own claim to invent the standards for measuring the worth of our lives. Paul understood that the maker of the pot is also the appraiser. In fact, he spent some time reflecting on this very image of how to evaluate the worth of a person compared to a clay pot. He said to the Corinthians, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels,” in “clay pots,” in “jars of clay.” The true measure of the value of these clay pots is not in the dirt they are made from, but in the use they serve for the household. And it is God who is the one who appraises our service.

It is fascinating to see how other people through the ages have considered the measure of a man as not merely self-initiated, but socially and externally evaluated. I want to take a few minutes to look at three examples of statements about “the measure of a man” which have come down to us across many centuries. One is over two millennia old. Another is over two centuries old. And the other is about fifty years old.

Looking way back, the ancient Greek philosopher Plato is recorded as saying, “The measure of a man is what he does with power.” No doubt he had seen some people who seemed just fine when they were “one more Joe” on the street, doing their job, making their way. But when they got promoted or appointed or elected to a higher position, it seemed like they had lost their minds. Instead of building relationships of mutuality and reciprocation, now they start looking down on people, shouting orders, and taking revenge. Instead of making sure the benefits and privileges are shared, they start hogging all the good stuff for themselves. What does power do to people? It opens up the chance to get by with things you never would have tried when you knew someone could call you on it. That does not mean that if we get power we are forced to become abusers of that power. We have a choice. We can use power to serve the community’s good. When that is what we do, we have passed the test of what Plato has stated. We can be measured as exemplary, because we did not let power corrupt us.

Around the time of the founding of the United States, the English literary scholar of the late 1700s, Samuel Johnson, said, “The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.” Johnson seems to be drawing on the tradition of Christian teaching which urges us to do good to others regardless of whether they can repay our good deeds. Like Plato, he is pointing out that the power relations that exist between people can turn us into calculating, scheming self-promoters. This is the opposite of what we call good character. A person of good character holds to his convictions steadily, in all sorts of situations.

Who is it that I find myself facing here and now? Maybe that person I have to deal with at this moment appears to be many notches below me on the social register. Maybe the man I meet appears to be wearing and carrying all his worldly possessions on his body. Maybe the least influential person at work is the one who has come my way today. What will I do when I know I probably won’t get anything out of it? When I know it probably won’t help my career? When what I share can’t be restored to me? Here Johnson, like Plato, is helping us to see that the measure of a man is not something we can simply choose for ourselves and say, “I did it my way.” It also has to do with what is good for others, regardless of our own benefits. “Who is my neighbor?”, was the question asked of Jesus. And as the story unfolded, it was full of all sorts of unexpected answers. Clearly, for Jesus, the kinds of social, political, ethnic, economic, religious barriers that we put up around us have little to do with how we should respond to the people we meet along life’s way.

More recent, and better known to us is the iconic figure of Martin Luther King, Jr., who once said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” Maybe you have been there like I have. The newspaper has an article about something that gets under your skin. You hear about something the president, the mayor, the principal, the school teacher, or your boss has done. You start your next sentence, “If that happened to me, I would . . . .” Out of your mouth pour the most powerful oratory, full of catchy turns of phrase and plenty of “gotcha” points. You convince yourself, in the comfort of your armchair or the seclusion of your kitchen, that you will be courageous, heroic, unbending, and untiring in your opposition to all perceived wrongs.

What Dr. King wants us to realize is that those dress rehearsals are not the real test. Now it may be fine to have those dress rehearsals of what I would do or what I would say. But if they never lead to a performance in the face of a real challenge, when people are watching, when somebody might confront us and push back against us, they really don’t amount to much. Character is proven when it faces a real test. The measure that matters comes when we arrive at the big event. No matter how many times I run a sub-44 time in the 400 meters in my yard, Michael Johnson still has the world record. Until I run that time at an official meet up against Jeremy Wariner, Angelo Taylor, Darold Williamson, and LeShawn Merritt (the four members of the 2007 World Champion U. S. 4 x 400-meter relay team), then it doesn’t count. If I can’t do it then, then it does me no good to be bragging about how fast I am when I practice.

From these three estimable persons, we are led to ask the following questions about the measure of a man. What does he do with power? How does he treat those who can’t repay him? How does he act in the face of challenge and controversy? This question of what is the measure of a man has caught many people’s attention, not only the philosophers, literary critics, and theologians.

In part, the conversation is happening now because we live in a time when certain traditional ways of showing manliness have been called into question and challenged. Consequently, there are conflicting ideas of being a man. If I had only heard it one time it would have been enough, but I have far too often heard it said that the way to show you are a man is to put a woman in her place and show her, if necessary through violence, who is in charge. That is the measure of a brute or a tyrant, but not of a man as God has made us to be. Part of the reason we have to talk about the measure of a man is that false gods and false understandings of human nature have led people to false ways of trying to be a man. It’s not who has the biggest gun. It’s not who seduced the most sexual partners. It’s not who has the most explosive temper. There must be something deeper and more socially edifying that is the measure of manhood.

I was surprised to quickly find no less than five pop songs which take up the topic of defining “the measure of a man.” They range across a variety of musical genres, and even local pop star Clay Aiken named an album with the song title, “The Measure of a Man.” Now I’m not one to go first to pop music to find the answers to life, but that does not mean that I don’t sometimes find some insight and wisdom there. These pop songs talk about being willing to sacrifice for love, being steady in difficult times, working hard, being loyal, giving your time and possessions to others, standing up to injustice, standing by commitments made, passion for what is important, and what’s in the heart. This list of character traits and behaviors gives us plenty to chew on as we ask, “What is the measure of a man?” --continued--