Barnabas File

Several years ago, the New Yorker magazine featured a cartoon with several people sitting around a board table with the chairperson standing and holding a telephone.     The caption read, “Miss Jones, will you please send someone in here who knows right from wrong?”     Sometimes a fresh perspective if needed when it comes to ethical conduct. When we are young, it seems so simple doesn’t it?  We know the right thing to do, even if we don’t actually follow through.  As we grow older, situations seem to become more complex and lines appear to become fuzzy.  We often settle for the acceptable rather than the best in our ethical decisions. Every three years, I am required by the International Coach Federation to renew my coaching credential.  One requirement is a course on Ethics.  This deals not only with appropriate relationships with clients, disclosure of session content, and contractual obligations, but a...

We live in interesting times when we split hairs over what is legal and what is moral.     One Presidential advisor responded to a question from an interviewer in this way: “Oh, now you want to discuss what is moral?  That’s a different matter entirely.” No matter what role we find ourselves in, we have a responsibility not only to obey the law but to be honest. My friend Jerry Gaither has passed but he provided some good advice about ethical decision making.  Jerry was a county superintendent of schools in Tennessee during a highly politicized and divisive period.  He shared with me what he called “an administrator’s ethics test.” Here are some key items in the list that Jerry wrote almost thirty years ago. Can I look in the mirror and feel good about myself? Will it make me proud? Will it stand the light of day--tomorrow as well as today? Would I feel good if my family knew about it? And, the supreme test--Could I kneel besi...

A university is our state is involved with a massive lawsuit that alleges the perpetuation of “a hostile environment for women” in its sports program.   The examples cited in the charges include sexual harassment of both female staff and students, sexual assault, covering up sexual assaults, and indifference to complaints.   Even in our supposedly enlightened times, it seems that some of us still need guidelines to explain right from wrong. When I was in an administrative role with a religious denomination several years ago, I received a call from one of our staff who was assigned as a minister to a particular college campus.  A student had come to him with a complaint that someone on campus was stalking her.  She had made contact with a couple of professors and one administrator, but they did not seem to take her concerns seriously.  She was both scared and angry.  She had approached this minister to seek his help as an outside party.   I d...

I was serving as interim pastor of a small congregation and working with their search committee as they sought a new pastor.   The committee asked me to make some contacts related to one particular candidate.   I made several phone calls and discovered a disturbing pattern.   The pastor in question had a reputation of borrowing money from lay leaders in a congregation and then moving on, failing to repay the indebtedness.   Although the candidate was an effective preacher and seemed to have pastoral ministry skills, this raised some red flags for me and the search committee when they received my report. This is one of those ethical areas that are rarely touched in seminary or when groups of ministers gather to talk.   There are certain boundary issues—such as money, relationships, and time management—that are often overlooked in ministerial training. Although some denominational groups have codes of ethics that address such concerns, Baptists—being co...