On a hot and muggy summer day in 1963 some 250,000 people gathered on the Mall in DC for the March on Washington to bring awareness to the civil and economic rights for people of color. America was in the throes of the Civil Rights Era, and the movement would reach a climax at this gathering. Ten keynote speakers, largely forgotten overtime, addressed the crowd prepping them for the final speaker who delivered the concluding keynote of the day: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And deliver, he did.
Historians rank King’s I Have a Dream speech as one of the greatest orations ever delivered. He waxed, but never wanned, as his words echoed through the crowds and throughout history. The imagery and rhetorical savvy was unprecedented. King walked a thin line by honoring the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence, and the US Constitution, while calling out the oppressive and abusive actions of America for over a hundred years. All along sowing seeds of hope.
Five times King declared that he had a dream, followed by a descriptive verse envisioning a time beyond the racism in America. The most quoted dream statement is likely the one involving King’s own children, believing that one day they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
Character. Who the person is on the inside matters. The admirable qualities driving a person’s decisions carry far more weight than their job, position of power, or wealth. Truth. Faithfulness. Courage. Perseverance. Humility. Kindness. Discipline. Respect. These, and other qualities, are the virtuous lenses that Martin Luther King, Jr. was hoping society might view one another. Hoping, by the way, is a virtuous quality in and of itself.
By the end of the 1980’s the general sentiment was that the moral and ethical behavior in students was not only declining but freefalling. Believing public schools had abandoned their post of teaching the importance and virtues of character, the Josephson Institution formed the Six Pillars of the Character Counts program.
The first Pillar was Trustworthiness: being honest without deceiving others, while having integrity and keeping promises. The second Pillar was Respect: following the golden rule and accepting difference of others, while being considerate of people’s feelings. The next Pillar was Responsibility: doing your best, being self-disciplined, and learning perseverance. The Fourth Pillar is Fairness: playing by the rules without taking advantage of others. Another Pillar was Caring: being kind and compassionate. The final Pillar was Citizenship: making your school and community a better place. This curriculum was taught in many schools exposing children to the importance of its premise: character really does count.
In 1989 Steven Covey wrote a run-away best-selling book entitled, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Seeing a trend that has metastasized today, he warned about the dangerous tendency of embracing personality ethic over character ethic. Noting, prior to World War II, most American leaders were chosen because they held certain qualities in their character. No, they weren’t perfect, but their lives held a balance by their pursuit of a high level of moral and ethical qualities. Since World War II the trend has been to choose leaders owning a personality ethic. Simply put, someone with a personality ethic holds charisma that draws people and crowds to them. They look good and sound good on stage, but they very well may be morally and ethically bankrupt. Covey raises the concern of what happens when businesses, schools, churches, and the government are led and fueled by people who are charismatic without character. For him, character doesn’t just count, it matters.
Paul may have foreshadowed the tension when he wrote 2 Corinthians. Charismatic leaders infiltrated the church in Corinth, and instead of serving the church they looked for ways to control, manipulate, dominate, and selfishly squeeze the church for everything it’s got. Like the smell of a new car, they looked good. Once you looked under the hood, they weren’t that new but refurbished as their inner corroded lives were exposed for all to see.
Oh, their stories of unlimited accomplishments were told at great lengths. Their preaching drew a crowd. They healed the sick. Visions and revelations were the norm. They boasted of God’s power working through them, while noting Paul’s stage presence was lacking. Paul was weak and soft.
Paul wasn’t, at least according to their standard. He healed people, even bringing someone back from the dead (Act. 20:10). Jesus spoke to him on more than one occasion, too (Act 9:4-5; 18:9-10; 23:11). More importantly, Paul experienced at least one vision, a powerful vision, where he saw and heard things he could not express or explain (2 Cor. 12:3-4). As overwhelming his experience was, he gives us very little detail, leaving much to the imagination. He does not even fully understand what happened. He does so for very good reasons.
First, he blunts his experience by speaking in the third person (12:2-4). He says, “I know a man who was caught up to the third heaven” (v. 2). Using third person language, Paul deflects attention off himself, even when needing to share his experience. With his own credibility on the line, Paul, talking about someone else’s vision, makes no sense for the argument before him. He’s willing to share what happened to him, but, unlike his distractors, Paul is not the center of his own universe.
Secondly, Paul tells us that this experience occurred fourteen years earlier (12:2). Those in the know tell us that this vision occurred sometime between his conversion in Acts 9 and his first mission trip in Acts 13. Two conclusions can be drawn by this date. For one, if Paul had to reach back fourteen years to recount this story, then this experience was the anomaly, not the norm. And another, this very well may be the first time the Corinthians heard about his experience, which means he’s not going around trumpeting his encounter. They are, but he’s not.
Thirdly, Paul is the walking wounded (12:7). Because he experienced such a vision, a thorn in the flesh was given to keep him humble. Whatever the thorn was, and we are not told, the need for it was a reminder for Paul to trust God’s grace and not his own strength. With a knowing wink, Paul may be saying, “If I’ve had such an experience which caused me to limp away, why is their gate fine?”
All of this leads to Paul’s statement that if he spoke about his visions, he would be telling the truth. He is only talking about events in his own life. But he won’t, because, in his own words, “But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say” (v. 6b). Paul will not allow people to put him up on a pedestal because God revealed something to him. Such a trait is called, “humility,” which reaches to his own core characteristic. Contrast Paul’s words to his antagonists spewing arrogant pride, constantly boasting of their experiences. For Paul, character counts, and without character what you say or do is like offering God a beautifully wrapped present. Yet, once unwrapped and opened, nothing is in it.
We live in an era where we are easily drawn to the power and prestige of celebrity leaders. We’re captivated and captured by their charisma even when such leaders are devoid of character. We’ve convinced ourselves that good things will happen by following the person whose words speak to our hearts instead of to our souls. We expect the world to push back on the virtues underscored in Scripture, and sometimes they do. But when we listen to our own Christian voices mocking the Fruit of the Spirit qualities as wimps, or ridiculing the Beatitudes’ virtues as being soft, or deriding the “turn the other cheek” as weak, then we are listening to the wrong voices. We’re being shaped by lyrics, languages, and lives foreign to the gospel Jesus brought and Paul preached. The truth is the saint(s) who have charmed and enchanted us are really venomous snake(s) ready to bite only to satisfy his/her own narcissistic needs.
The truth is our society is flooded with leaders with little to no character fiber in their bones. At best, they’ve sold-out for fame, for control, or for the path of least resistance. At worst, they’ve abused and profited from the people they are called to love and to lead, while demanding fealty. And you don’t have to look very far to see the fallout in churches, businesses, schools, social organizations, and our own government.
In a recent article by Christianity Today editor, Russell Moore, he may have summed it up best when he said,
If we are hated for attempted Christlikeness, let’s count it all joy. But if we are hated for our cruelty, our sexual hypocrisy, our quarrelsomeness, our hatefulness, and our vulgarity, then maybe we should ask what happened to our witness . . . Character matters. It is not the only thing that matters. But without character, nothing matters.*
Soli Deo Gloria!
(i.e., only God is glorified!)
* Russell Moore, “Why Character Doesn’t Matter Anymore,” Christianity Today, March 22, 2024 (an online article).