Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the leaders notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. Dr. Rutland is a world renowned leadership expert. He is a New York Times best selling author and he has served as the president of two universities. The Leaders Notebook is brought to you by Global Servants. For more information about Global Servants, please Visit our website, globalservants.org Here is your host, Dr. Mark Rutland.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Just because a word is out of fashion doesn't mean it is unimportant.
Hello, I'm Mark. I'm Mark Rutland. Welcome to the Leader's Notebook.
I'm beginning today a whole new series on character, on the basic fundamental building blocks of character that shape and change and transform any culture.
I wrote a book some years ago called Character Matters.
And in celebration for our second anniversary of the Leader's Notebook, I want you to have that book.
Here's what I'm going to do. I want you to make a contribution to Global Servants, to our missions program, in any amount.
I hope that you will make it as generous as possible, but make it in any amount and I'll send you a copy of Character Matters free. I want you to have it. I'm going to be teaching an extended series now on character. And I want you to have this book in celebration for two years of the Leader's Notebook. And it's been a very successful two years. I'm very grateful to you as the listener and I want you to have this book and I want you to invest in the mission work of Global Servants, particularly our girls homes in Southeast Asia and West Africa. House of Grace.
You are helping us save little girls for big destinies. Stay tuned and at the end of this broadcast, you'll find out exactly how to make that contribution and to receive your copy of Character Matters.
Now let's talk character.
The English word character is derived from the Latin root which means engraved.
A life, like a block of granite, carved upon with care or hacked at with reckless disregard, will at the end be either a masterpiece or marred rubble.
Character, the composite of virtues and values etched in that living stone, the living stone of us as individuals and in the living stone of a culture, will define its true worth.
No cosmetic enhancement, no decorative drapery can make useless stone into enduring art.
Only character can do that. What is actually carved into the granite of a life or a culture?
A nation, having squandered its character, may well have so damaged itself that attempts at reclamation prove futile.
Long before the final collapse, however, redoubts can be built and buttressed against the invading armies of the night.
Virtues can be revisited. They can be rethought and retaught from the nation's pulpits and podia, in its businesses and on its forts.
A corporate voice calling for character may turn the tide before it's too late. And I pray that America will have just such a tidal shift.
Children can be taught courage.
Executives suckled on the milk of greed can be reminded of honesty and frugality.
Modesty can be learned and valued and lived where a nation will find its voice and teach it once again.
For now we are reaping a bitter harvest, and it is bitter indeed of character destruction. The character of America is being chipped away, but I do not believe it's too late.
Character, embraced, even popularized and freshly articulated in our literature, for example, or in movies, will produce leaders upon whose lives words like honesty and gratitude and courage have been engraved with faith and with hope.
It's not too late for character in America and for a resurgence of character in our national conscience.
We have the right as a free people to expect it, even to demand it of our leaders.
We have the responsibility to cultivate it in ourselves, to teach it in our schools, and to praise and ruin, reward it in others.
When we engrave the wrong thing on our corporate souls, the wrong result is absolutely inevitable. What we engrave or allow to be engraved upon us is what we must live with. And right now we are living with a collapse of American culture and character.
Talent, attractiveness and intellectual, too long overvalued, have proven incapable of refiring our national hope.
Our culture, the corporate culture, has so chipped away at our national values. And irreplaceable granite has been lost. There's no doubt about that now. We need more modest athletes, meeker leaders, honest executives, more diligent workers. We need the corporate character restored.
A new national character, new only in the sense and the narrowest historical view can be and must be re engraved.
The granite of us, worn and pocked as it is, can still receive the well guided stylus.
Character matters.
It really matters. It matters in the destiny of nations, and it will matter in the destiny of our nation.
The real question is how can character be added back into an American soul adrift on a Saragasso sea of postmodern relativism?
It's not that there have never been scandals.
From the Hamilton Bird duel to the Teapot Dome scandal to Watergate, the highway of American history is littered with trash.
In the past, however, scandal was at least, well, scandalous.
Now little, if anything, is fixed. Absolutely wrong or absolutely right.
Our ability as a people to be scandalized by anything is being frittered away.
Not the motives of our soul, not the way we think, not what we hold valuable can be lost without damage to us.
Not the movies, not the art or the music or the literature. But the character of a culture is its defining nexus, that which holds it all together and we are coming apart at the seams.
The place where it's all connected, the tissue of its soul is what makes a nation or a culture what it is.
When the character of any culture loses its grip on the essential virtues that hold the whole thing in place, scandals still happen, but the culture is no longer outraged.
Character, the inner moral strength of a people, is a factor of all that is loved, admired, despised and taught to its young.
A culture rests on its virtues, and virtues can be taught.
It is not too late for us to teach character again. Indeed, amidst the cacophonous jabberwocky that would mock the greatest virtues of our historical culture, I hear a faint but rising voice that says, character matters.
A number of years ago, the late Dr. Carl Meninger wrote a book entitled Whatever Became of Sin.
The book was a call to personal accountability.
Now, to be sure, Menninger did not believe that sin itself had disappeared.
He referred to the virtual disappearance of the concept and the word from our vocabulary. He meant whatever became of the idea of sin, not that we are short of it.
The very word virtue derives from the Latin word for strength.
The connotation is of straining, as the muscles of a man might strain the confines of a tight shirt.
In other words, virtue is restrained strength.
It actually implies manliness.
It is strength. It is that strength, that power by which one physical body affects another.
In medicine, for example, there is a classical use of the word virtue.
The virtue of a plant, for example, is that power inherent in it to produce medicine.
Virtue also relates to the medicine itself.
There is virtue in the medicine for healing mixture, adulteration, dilution or exposure may diminish the virtue. One might see on a bottle of medicine the phrase that says, keep refrigerated or this will lose its virtue.
In the eighth chapter of his Gospel, Luke used the word virtue to connote inner power.
A woman with an abnormal flow of blood came near to Jesus, struggling in the crowd, just to touch his garment.
Jesus announced to those around him that someone had touched him in the wild, unruly jostling. Such a comment seemed absurd, and Peter even mocked him. Lord, sayest thou, Somebody has touched me. The crowd do throng thee and press thee.
How could he tell one touch from another? Peter meant.
But Jesus explained It he said, I felt virtue flow out from me.
There is power in virtue and virtue in power.
Resident in the virtuous is inestimable power to impact others. For good character matters, and virtue is the strength of character.
Every society anchors its ideals in its virtues. If those virtues are good, it is ennobled. When those virtues are absent or perverted, there will be a downward spiral in the values, actions and character of its people.
The real danger is not the absence of virtue. There is absolutely no historical evidence of an entirely virtueless society.
The great danger is not the lack of virtue, it's the wrong virtues.
It is always tragic when people who understand virtue act in virtueless ways. But the greater danger is redefining virtue as evil and evil as virtue.
When that happens, the power that holds civilization intact is weakened.
In ancient Rome, for example, a preeminent virtue was bravery.
Roman bravery, misunderstood and untempered by Christian love, soon became brutal and callous.
Similarly, in communist Soviet Union for so many years, the zenith of all virtue was loyalty to the state.
That virtue was perverted into a lethal poison that pumped shattered lives into Siberian gulag archipelago. Like the pathetic waste of a socialist atheism, the Stalinist state expected its citizens to betray their own family members, even if it meant death or imprisonment for them.
Stalin professed that any lie, any act of treachery, any form of violence were acceptable, even virtuous in the cause of communism. Torture, deceit, murder were not seen as violations of virtue. Instead, they actually became the vehicles by which Stalin's preeminent virtue was celebrated.
As a society redefines its virtues, it in turn is redefined by those virtues.
Twisted virtue makes for twisted nations.
Suppose, for example, a certain society hates failure, ugliness, obesity and stupidity.
The premier virtues might then be success, beauty and intelligence. If, therefore, beauty is a virtue, then all is permissible. If I can achieve beauty, associate with beauty, or cause beauty to be the downward spiral, then will go something like this. First, beauty as an abstract descends as a social virtue. 2. If beauty is a virtue, ugliness is despicable.
[00:14:10] Speaker A: 3.
[00:14:11] Speaker B: If ugliness is despicable, ugly people are worth less than beautiful people. 4 then follows if beautiful people are worth more than ugly people, it is not as bad to murder the ugly as it might be to murder someone who is beautiful.
Fifth, the final step down murdering the ugly may at last even be seen as virtuous.
By just such a perverted spiral, a society might embrace even murder in the pursuit of beauty.
Some may object that such a scenario is bizarre and far fetched, it is, in fact, quite reasonable.
If society hopes to elevate or ennoble its character, it must carefully define its virtues.
The most basic values held by society dictate the kind of leaders it will produce.
If the premier values are hard work, perseverance, ingenuity, and discipline that society produces, men like George Washington Carver, on the other hand, if the preeminent virtue is wealth, no matter how you get it, then corporate monsters are the inevitable result.
I hope you've enjoyed this first teaching on character based on my book Character Matters. I hope you'll stay tuned now and find out how you can receive your copy of this book, Character Matters. We're celebrating in this entire series two years of the podcast the Leader's Notebook. I hope you've been listening the whole two years, but I hope you'll stay tuned for this whole series on Character Matters. Until we meet again, this has been the Leader's Notebook and I'm Mark Rutland.
[00:16:09] Speaker A: Wow. Another great episode of the Leader's Notebook. Hello, I'm Ronnie Brannan, the Chief of Staff at Global servants and as Dr. Rutland said, we want to send you your copy of his book Character Matters. You can receive your copy by contributing any amount to Global Servants through our Secure Give app on our website. Go to globalservants.org, click the Donate button and then click Give Online and then leave your contribution under the Podcast Gift tab. Next, please click Add a Message and include your name, email address, and the mailing address where you would like your book delivered. As soon as your donation is processed, we'll send you an email confirming the delivery address and we'll get your book in the mail to you by the next business day. Again, thank you for subscribing to the leaders notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland and helping make a difference for those around the world in helping save little girls for big destinies.
You've been listening to the Leaders Notebook book with Dr. Mark Rutland. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review today's podcast. You can follow Dr. Rutland on Twitter @Dr. MarkRutland or visit his website, DrMARKRutland.com. join us next week for another episode of the Leader's Notebook.
