Character

Living your inner character is a challenge. Isn’t it?

It would be nice to think that we live by the values we espouse all the time – but that would be somewhat illogical given the human propensity for failure in that regard. We say all the right things, we may even mean them, but consistently acting by them seems to be a challenge larger than human capacity.

We are – after all- human. We fail. We have times when we do not abide by what we say means the most to us. We have times that we give up on what we say are our values. We have times when we just can’t.

Is this ok? Society says yes. Scripture talks about forgiveness. But is it an excuse? Could we try harder, be better, expect more? What if we did? We can eat ourselves up with guilt because we caved knowing we could expect forgiveness, but really – could we have done better? Do we excuse the other readily because ultimately we don’t want to have to stand up to what we have said is who we are?

At what point do we stop striving for excellence in our values and actions and consistency between the two? Have we gone too far in our doctrine of human frailty to make humanity more flawed as an acceptable standard? Will we become less admirable as time goes on?

Have we arrived at a point where we excuse ourselves and judge others?

Every human has dignity and every human matters. But – at what point do we say that human dignity does not excuse laziness or fear?