This article was also published in the Peachland View

Although 2010 is well on its way, I’ve been thinking about what I want to personally focus on for the coming year.  I’ve always been big on resolutions or goals, although I’ve heard most made this year have already been broken by now.  For me, I see resolutions usually revolve around character issues: how do I become a better person, a better husband and father, and a better pastor in 2010.

Character is not the easiest thing to pinpoint.  Character is a set of traits that an individual has that others admire.  When we say we admire someone’s character it means we like what we see, and we find a sense of familiarity in the way that person chooses to live.   The more we see these traits in action, the more we trust the person.  We see them as reliable, which is also a trait that the general public tends to admire.  And trust goes beyond individuals; it’s often attached to what a person does for a living. 

The set of traits that we admire, however, often differs from person to person and from job to job.  We don’t always like defining character.  Character is a morality issue, and declarations of morality make us nervous.  Who is to say what makes someone good and what makes someone bad?  Well, like it or not, we do it all the time, and our character-bias is often betrayed by public opinion polls.

Polls are strange interpreters of character.  I did a Google search to see which vocation was the most trusted, hoping against hope that “clergy” would at least make the top 10.  It didn’t.  Reader’s Digest published a report last year that put firefighters at the top of the character or trustworthiness scale.  My apologies go out to lawyers, who didn’t fare quite as well.

Curiously, the report went on to mention which famous Canadians we trusted the most.  The list showed a bunch of well known characters in public life.  Practically speaking, it was a list full of strangers that the vast majority of us don’t know on a personal basis.  David Suzuki was deemed the most trustworthy.  Don Cherry made it to the 14^th spot, followed immediately by Ron Maclean.  Even William Shatner made it to the 40^th spot.

But how can we trust people we don’t even know?  How do we judge character through the many filters of media?  One professor interviewed about the poll suggested that we trust people that are passionate and “passion comes across as honesty.”  We also trust people who don’t have a conflict of interest, like journalists who “tell it like it is” (versus politicians who struggle with the decision between doing what is right with doing what is popular.  In this case, doing what is right might actually cause people to trust you less.  How can a politician win?).

Although I find it interesting which public figures we put our trust in, the poll betrays a shallow view of what we deem to be trustworthy.  It’s based on unrealistic views of what character is.  Character is not just about judging externals.  This only makes character a veneer, something we can paint with reckless abandon over public figures that we admire but don’t know.  In our society we like to build statues, brands of goodness, and then are shocked when the veneer flakes off revealing flesh and blood.  This is the tragedy of our relationship with Tiger Woods –not so much that he failed, but that we painted character on him far too thick, creating what we aspire to be rather than who he really was: an imperfect human being.  Like the rest of us.

The more redemptive approach to judging character is through engagement.  Judging character requires engagement, pure and simple.  It’s not just about judging externals; it’s about judging character by getting to know someone.

The poll noted that God didn’t rank very high on the list of trustworthiness.  Columnist Michael Coren suggested that this was because “Trust is a product of love and experience.  We trust friends, partners and parents because they have proven to us that we can rely on them.  To trust God requires that we love Him and that means we have to believe in Him and know Him.  Not easy.  The relationship demands effort...”

Which brings me back to our resolutions for 2010.  When it comes to becoming a better person, I want to develop character authentically, which takes more effort than just saying the right words and doing the right things, and I want to offer grace to others, by engaging them, getting to know them, and commending character wherever and whenever I see it.