April 11, 2012
Administering
While serving on City Council the biggest policy decision to be made is
approving the budget. The elected body ultimately determines how and where
taxpayer funds will be spent. In essence the City Council is spending money
that is not their own and it is their obligation to administer it properly. As
believers I’m not sure we realize what a huge responsibility it is to
administer the assets of others. “Each
one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully
administering God’s grace in its various forms.” (I Peter 4:10 NIV)
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----I don’t mean to diminish the importance of what you stated. Administering the assets of others is a big responsibility. But I believe we get stuck in that conceptual doorway of finance, never quite getting to the even bigger responsibilities on its other side. People have work to do, places to go, neighbors to see, fun to have, well, they have lives to live. And the fuller they live their lives, then not only the better for them, but also the better for everyone. A full life is a bright life, and intelligent life with a good supply of wisdom, understanding, and just plain old good emotions and civil decency. All of this greatly influences attitudes amongst each other.
-----Everything government does either interferes with community’s natural emergence and health, or it bolsters it. There is too much thought on the part of leaders concerning the making and shaping of community and community life. I think it comes from a human tendency of the type A personality to perceive his own pool of experiences and knowledge as the pool, and then commence to correct the conformity of everything else to it. Of course, it is the type A person who more asserts himself, and therefore makes up the predominant proportion of leadership in any kind of social group. Type A’s are useful. But that is no excuse not to outdo one another in showing honor. For example, what right does Barrack Obama have to fundamentally transform America? America is not his singularly. It is ours. Every social group belongs jointly to every member in that group. And the healthy group gives every member the dignity of being a shaping force upon the group.
-----This is the leader’s main responsibility. Especially in the church need rises high to guard the group from the misshaping occasioned by bad apples. Bad apples are undeniable, although we wish to escape the responsibility to discern them. But discerning bad apples and knowing the whereabouts of their effects is only part of that problem. The complexity of freedom and the human being precludes simply legislating away the bad apples. Systemic processes that rather naturally deal with the legal malfeasance of not only bad apples, but all the rest of us, too, must be facilitated, even though it can not be legislated. And much good that happens in a social group merely by the fact that good people run around doing good things has to have free course to flow without political tinkering and toying. Moreover, groups acquire shared senses that spread into their individuals who in turn perpetuate them in the group. So the government deeply engaged in deceit will have more deceitful citizens. The government more given to traffic controls at every corner will have citizens less competent to cross the street. Money is merely the tip of the iceberg of the leader’s responsibility. All the other intangible assets of community attitude, sense of well being, dignity, integrity, etc are far more important and just as easily squandered.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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