Krista and I have enjoyed watching Madam Secretary on Netflix lately. Tea Leoni -- Sam Malone's old girlfriend, remember that? -- stars as a former CIA analyst turned Secretary of State. She's smart, capable, an out-of-the-box thinker, and determined to make impactful decisions based as much on ethics as national interest. For purists, that can be a problem. I find it refreshing.
Last night I watched an old episode of House of Cards, the wildly popular show (once upon a time) about a president and his wife who make impactful decisions without any regard whatsoever to ethics or national interests. Their first and absolute priority is, you guessed it, them. More specifically, their drive to always stack the cards in their favor.
Both shows are lessons in culture and character, and both reveal -- more than we'd like to admit, perhaps -- our own struggles in making decisions.
In our sermon series, Road to Character, we'll be consistently turning to that question: How and why do I make the decisions I make? For most, there's not a single answer. We consider ethics, context, time, and "what's in it for me?" Martin Luther says that our ultimate responsibility is to probe the inner depths of our conscience, championing a whole new understanding of one's freedom. James Madison quoted Luther in his defense of the Bill of Rights as this country wrestled with a whole new understanding of liberty.
Ultimately, we are "bound by the dictates of our own conscience," Luther would say. But what informs our conscience? Is our conscience always our best guide? What if it is in error? What if we've been feeding it a bunch of junk? What then?
Those are the questions we wrestle with in our Road to Character -- a journey that invites us into an internal struggle for our own soul. I hope you'll join us.
In the meantime, thanks so much for what you do in this part of God's garden. Have a great week!
