God Calls the Church to Model God’s Nature as Trinity (eCrozier #179)

On May 24, 2013, in Holy Trinity, by bishopbenhase

Some thoughts on the Holy Trinity and its implications for the Church:

The Holy Trinity describes a God who is in perfect relationship. God is by nature relational, interdependent, and collaborative. Since God is Trinity as revealed to the Church, what do you think God desires the Church’s nature to be? It seems to me that God calls the Church to model God’s nature by also being relational, interdependent, and collaborative.

Have you ever wondered why God created the Church to bear the Gospel message? If God were better organized, then God would have used a satellite to beam the Gospel message directly into everybody’s home. We’d get the message without ever having to leave the comfort of our lazy boy recliners. We’d never have to be in relationship with anyone. Everybody could get the same message without ever having to be dependent on others, without ever having to collaborate with other people.

Now, why didn’t God think of that? It’s not that God didn’t think of it, it’s simply that it’s not in God’s nature to work that way. Instead of wave particles from a satellite, we have one another to bear God’s nature and love to the world. God has so ordered the creation and the Church that instead of being isolated individuals, we have to be in relationship with one another. Instead of being self-sufficient, we have to be dependent on one another. Instead of being isolated operators, we have to collaborate with one another.

The Church is the extension of God’s incarnation on the earth. The Church is God’s choice to take up permanent residence on the earth. The Church isn’t only a human organization even though it’s made up of human beings. The Church really isn’t an organization at all. Rather it’s an organism, a body, on which God has endowed God’s very nature. The Church isn’t a place to come for fellowship, although that occurs as a result of coming together. Rather, the Church is a people bearing the nature of God.

Now, that doesn’t mean that the Church is perfect. The Church will always be a divine and a human organism. God sires it, but it’s incubated in humanity. When Jesus rose from the dead and sent his Spirit to give birth to the Church, it wasn’t his intent to check out of life on earth, but rather to take up permanent residence on earth. The resurrection doesn’t tell us that Jesus is in heaven calling us to join him when we die. No, it tells us that Jesus is here with us now having begun that eternal relationship.

But we often get it backward. The Gospel isn’t that when we die we go home to Jesus, but rather the Gospel proclaims Jesus is risen, ascended, and comes home to us. The Good News of Jesus isn’t a promise, but rather it’s a presence of the risen and ascended Jesus incarnated in his Church. The Good News isn’t that we’ll live someday with Jesus, but that Jesus lives today with us. Why should we want to live with Jesus in heaven for eternity, if we’re not willing to live with him now on earth? Do we think we will love him more in heaven, if we do not love him now on earth?

+Scott

 
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A Salt Marsh as a Metaphor for the Benedictine Promise (eCrozier #178)

On May 17, 2013, in Benedictine, by bishopbenhase

“My promise is to seek the presence of Jesus Christ in the people, things, and circumstances of my life through stability, obedience, and conversion of life.”

This is my promise in the Benedictine order to which I belong. I’ve been reflecting on that promise this week and how it has continued to speak to my life for the 25 years I have lived by it. The interplay of stability, obedience, and conversion of life are the essential elements of the promise. One without the others will not hold.

Last night I watched the sun set behind the marsh near where I’m staying. A friend reminded me that the marsh itself is an example of the interdependency found in the Benedictine promise where the tidal waters work with the plants and animal life to mutually serve and support each other. The tidal waters nourish and feed the cord-grass of the marsh as it comes in and then it transports food and nutrients produced by the salt marsh to the sea as it goes out and feeds the animal life there.

This is an apt metaphor for the Benedictine promise. Practicing stability grounds us where we are and provides a hedge against our human inclination at times to run away from difficult things (or people). Steeped in the faith and practice of the Church we can rest in God and have the stability needed for perspective and reflection on our lives. But stability without obedience and conversion of life can make us rigid and can lead us to cut off from others and from the breath of the Holy Spirit leading us to a new place.

Practicing conversion of life gives us a stance in the world where we’re open to that new person, or thing, or circumstance where God just might be calling us. This openness allows us to experience conversion, a change of life, from the place where we are to the new place God is pulling us. This openness comes from the daily practice of repentance. But if our lives are one constant conversion experience, a daily change from one thing to the next, then we become spiritual butterflies flitting about. Practicing stability helps ensure our groundedness even as we experience conversion of life.

Obedience is like the tidal waters. In the constant ebb and flow of stability and conversion of life, the practice of listening to God’s voice in the Scriptures, the Church’s tradition, and in a good word from a sister or brother provides us with the spiritual nutrients we need as we seek Jesus in the people, things, and circumstances of our lives. Obedience, the discipline of deep listening to God, to others, and to the pulling of our hearts, gives us competence in our faith practice to discern the way forward. But obedience alone can make us passive; always listening, but never doing anything about what we’ve learned through our obedience. Conversion of life moves us from the places where we’re stuck reminding us that God is leading us to the New Jerusalem.

No metaphor is perfect, but I find the ocean, the tidal waters, and the salt marsh to be an apt visual, organic metaphor for how stability, obedience, conversion of life work in the Benedictine promise.

+Scott

 
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Happy Birthday Soren Kierkegaard! (eCrozier #177)

On May 10, 2013, in culture, by bishopbenhase

“Our age is essentially one of understanding and reflection, without passion, momentarily bursting into enthusiasm and shrewdly lapsing into repose.”- Soren Kierkegaard

To those of us who admire Soren Kierkegaard’s profound contribution to theology and philosophy, this past week held an important observance: his 200th birthday. The so-called “melancholy Dane” wasn’t, at least in my view, melancholy at all. He was an insightful observer and critic of what passed for Christianity in his time, but also what passed for a cultured life by those indifferent to, or critical of, the life of the Church.

His quote above could’ve been written today about our culture. By “passion,” I believe Kierkegaard meant seeing and living life holistically where both one’s inner life and outer actions have a fundamental congruency. His critique of “understanding and reflection” doesn’t mean those undertakings are, in themselves, problematic. It’s rather the skewed stance toward the world that they so often represent.

At one extreme, such a stance can represent a subjectivity that becomes nothing more than sentimentality where feelings become paramount. This isolates us leading us toward a creeping narcissism. Think people who can see only how an event affects them personally. At the other extreme, such “understanding and reflection” can increase the likelihood that we have a detached objectivity toward the world where we can observe and comment on the world without ever having to engage the world at any cost to us. Think people who see the world primarily through sarcasm and irony.

Kierkegaard called us to get past the bifurcating extremes of subjectivity and objectivity. Honesty and appropriate self-criticism can only come through engaging ourselves objectively. In other words, we need to see things clearly and not simply through our own often biased lenses. Likewise, we are subjects whose thoughts and feelings matter. Subjectivity is natural and not in itself a bad thing. Our personal convictions, beliefs, and passions give our lives meaning, purpose, and a sense of destiny. What’s needed is a balance that helps us live holistically avoiding the extremes.

This need for balance leads me to have, along with Kierkegaard, a high doctrine of the Church. For it’s in the Church where I’m called through the Scriptures and the Liturgy (always aided by my fellow disciples) to avoid the deadliness of the above extremes. In the Church, I can be myself (subjectivity) while also being called to see myself through both the eyes of God and my fellow disciples (objectivity). At our best, that’s a primary gift we ask the Holy Spirit to give us through our life together. In the Church’s narrative told through the Scriptures and the Liturgy I’m reminded again and again of God’s love for me all the while being confronted with the truth that the story of the Cosmos isn’t only about me. As Fr Alan Jones wrote: “I don’t want my friends to just accept me as I am; God Lord I hope they love me more than that. I hope they demand more of me.” Good Lord, do we ever need the Church!

+Scott

 
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On Divorce (eCrozier #176)

On May 3, 2013, in Divorce, by bishopbenhase

There’s probably no topic that I could write about in an eCrozier that would create greater reactivity than the topic of divorce. Across the theological or political spectrum, it doesn’t seem to matter: We all readily accept it and then change the subject when it comes up in the context of Jesus’ clear teaching. Politicians are trained to do such things. It’s called “bridging,” where you don’t address the question asked, but rather “bridge” to another subject you’d really prefer to talk about. I recall once being lectured by a vestryperson in the Diocese about my advocacy for the full inclusion of Gay & Lesbian Christians in the life of the Church. He said my position was an “abomination to the Lord.” I knew this vestryperson had been married four times and divorced three. I did not “bridge,” suggesting maybe his own abomination, but I was tempted.

Numerous reputable studies over the last decade have concluded that committed Christians have no significant difference in their divorce rates than do people with no religious convictions (both about 35%). The Barna Group, an evangelical research group, broke that down from within churches finding that Catholics were less likely than Protestants to get divorced (25% vs. 39%). Among Protestants, Pentecostals (44%) had the highest rate while Presbyterians (28%) had the lowest. The Barna Group found that a majority of committed Christians now didn’t even see divorce as being a sin (whether adultery was part of the equation or not).

One of the hardest tasks I have as a bishop is reviewing petitions to remarry in the Church after divorce. The Church, of course, allows it, provided the couple in question has done the necessary work and their priest affirms their readiness. And, while I recognize divorce’s reality and that sometimes it is the lesser of two evils, I still find myself anguishing over each petition. I usually sign it in my role as Bishop of Georgia, but Scott Benhase often has serious misgivings. My own inner-conflict on this subject clearly doesn’t reflect the larger Church’s practical indifference to this issue. It’s simply accepted without much thought or reflection.

What can be done? Well, we first must recognize that we aren’t going to change the larger culture on this issue. We can’t expect that people outside the Church will share our understanding of Holy Matrimony’s nature and purpose. Trying to impose it upon them won’t work. Our best chance of influencing the larger culture is to hold up for it many living examples of what faithful Holy Matrimony looks like.

The Church can also raise the bar on how we prepare people for Holy Matrimony. Title I, Canon 18 of our Church requires serious preparation for the couple by a priest. We do couples no favor by short shrifting such preparation. Priests need to be more intentional and, yes, discriminating in who can participate in this sacrament. We need to be willing to say “no” when there’s good cause to believe that the couple doesn’t appear to have the maturity or willingness to keep a life-long covenant. Of course, we can’t have certitude about their future. But the alternative is to continue down the path of looking no different than the larger culture. And that’s not acceptable (to me, at least).

+Scott

 
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James Brown, Social Media, and the Cape (Cope) of Conceit (eCrozier #175)

On April 26, 2013, in Conceit, Social Media, by bishopbenhase

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.” – Philippians 2:3

One of the highlights of my young adulthood was seeing the late James Brown in concert. If you never witnessed it, you missed something special. As the penultimate part of his act, Brown fell to his knees clutching the microphone in total exhaustion (after all, he was the “hardest working man in show business”). While on his knees, the show’s MC came over to him, gently placed Mr. Brown’s elaborate cape over his shoulders, and slowly helped him off stage. But before he exited, he threw off the cape, and returned to center stage for rousing finale. It was a magnificent display of conceit. One never knew if the conceit were real or just part of his act. I learned later that the professional “wrestler” Gorgeous George was the inspiration for this whole routine.

I retell this experience from my past knowing full well that as a bishop I now regularly wear similar elaborate capes (copes), just with different symbols on them (and minus the sequins). In the liturgy, those assisting me often will help me by placing the cope on my shoulders. They even hold the edges of my cope as I cense the altar. So I won’t engage in any criticism of the Godfather of Soul. He knew good liturgy when he saw it.

What has prompted this recollection is the new book by Nicco Mele, entitled, The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath. Mr. Mele is a lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He contends that the Internet and social media have leveled the playing field, so to speak, and given power to the “Davids” of the world and reduced that of the “Goliaths.” He rightly points out that this is not always a good thing. The Internet and social media are amoral. They can be used for both moral and immoral purposes. They have certainly allowed certain “Davids” of the world to behave no better than the “Goliaths” they have criticized.

For example, this week a hacker hijacked the AP Twitter feed putting out false information about a bombing at the White House. This caused a steep drop in the stock market representing over $100 Billion in losses, temporarily. Bloggers regularly engage in ad hominem attacks on others seemingly to elevate themselves over the people they attack. Social media allows any of us to wear the cape (cope) of conceit, counting ourselves better than others. Social media does not encourage humility. It tempts us to say: “Here I am! Look at me! I am great! (and isn’t this video of the kitten funny?)” It’s an outlet many “Davids” of the world have not had heretofore, so they are making up for lost time.

As T.S. Eliot wrote: “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” No one can know where all of this will take our culture. Wisdom, we must know, is found first in humility, a humility that reminds us that we aren’t better than others in God’s eyes, a humility that directs us to our knees before we are tempted to cast the first stone cloaked in the cape (cope) of conceit.

+Scott

 
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There is No Right to Be Unlimited (eCrozier #169)

On March 15, 2013, in culture, by bishopbenhase

“I need, no, I have the right to be unlimited.”

Advertisements in the media do not so much drive cultural forces as they reflect them. Those who develop advertisements tap into cultural trends and exploit them in order to entice consumers to buy their product or use their service. Such exploitation can quicken the pace of a cultural trend, but not create it. So, presented for your consideration: Sprint’s new TV ad for their services. It jumped out at me when I first saw it a few weeks ago. In the middle of the ad the narrator utters, I need, no, I have the right to be unlimited. As if to beat this into the viewer, the word “unlimited” flashes across the screen a couple of times after that.

The “unlimited” the ad’s creators were referring to, of course, had to do with the particular cellular service they were offering that gives the consumer unlimited minutes and data each month for a flat fee. But that piece of information alone is apparently not enough to move consumers to purchase that service. Sprint needed to make a larger metaphysical claim about the consumer’s right to be unlimited.

The language of rights has been with us for a long time. If one can frame any situation as an issue of a “right” to something, then there becomes an implied moral or legal warrant for having it. There follows the next logical claim: anyone who questions my right to this or that or anyone who might wish to prevent me from having the right has now fundamentally violated me. Codified rights we have are well enumerated in our laws, as they should be. I believe we are all thankful they are there. But when we begin equating the right to unlimited cell phone usage with such basic human rights like the right to vote, or the right to follow our religious practice, or the right to face our accusers in a court of law, then we have entered a whole new realm of individual expectation that is, well, unlimited.

And that is the other part of the ad that gives me the willies: the implication that we should have no limits. Of course in the Jewish and Christian narrative we know that limits enter the story from the very beginning when God says to Adam and Eve “y’all can eat whatever you want in the garden, even the eggplant if you’re that desperate, but y’all got to stay away from fruit on that tree in the middle of the garden” (translation mine).

Now, I may be making a mountain out of a molehill here. One may say: “It is only a TV ad. You are blowing this out of proportion.” But I don’t think I am. This advertisement reflects a larger cultural disease with which we all live and it is literally killing our souls.

This disease tells us that world exists (or at least should exist) to satisfy our limitless desires and preferences, which are now understood to be ours by right. The Gospel of Jesus is in direct contradiction to this claim, but it is also the remedy for it. The Gospel tells us what God has done and is doing in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ. That’s a tough sell to people who believe that their life should be selfishly unlimited.

+Scott

 
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Silence as Soul Food (eCrozier #168)

On March 8, 2013, in Lent, silence, Spiritual Disciplines, by bishopbenhase

The ego gets what it wants with words. The soul gets what it needs with silence.

– Richard Rohr

Talk, talk, talk, talk, ‘til you lose your patience

- Bruce Springsteen

There are times when silence is not called for. Silence when we see injustice; silence when we witness another person being abused; silence when a word of comfort or hope is needed. These are not occasions for silence. But there are so many other times when silence is exactly what we need. Silence gives us the chance to engage our brain before words come out of our mouths. It allows for the opportunity to listen to another person instead of interrupting them. Silence can thus keep us out of a whole lot of trouble.

This is particularly true in our prayer life. Because we are a people who love our Book of Common Prayer, we may mistakenly believe that all of our prayer life needs to be filled with words, and not just words, but the right words coming from the Book of Common Prayer. As much as I find indispensable the structure of our prayers in The Daily Office, I also know the need I have to just be quiet; to allow silence to engulf me. With all due respect to collard greens, silence is the best soul food for me.

The problem is: we are so accustomed to noise. The noise of the world becomes the norm. Sometimes I have trouble sleeping when I am on the road because it is often so quiet where I stay. I am used to living where there are shouting voices, car horns, and loud train whistles to rock me to sleep. I am used to the noise. It is my norm. Yet, it is in the silence where I am confronted with myself free of distraction and absent excuses. It is in the silence where God can get a word in edge wise. The noise of our lives distracts us. It allows us to avoid addressing the deeper issues of our lives that silence affords.

Some people do not welcome silence, in fact, they may well be afraid of it because of its capacity to confront. There are those who cannot fall asleep without the radio on or music playing. Others keep the television on in their homes even though they are not watching anything on it. It is a noisy, electronic companion. There was a CD released a few years back called Lonely No More. The CD, as I understand it, was intended for the user to play while being at home alone. The CD has tracks of the sound of a shower running, the sound of groceries being put away in kitchen cabinets, and the sound of a vacuum cleaner running.

If silence is not a regular part of your life, I encourage you make it a part of the rest of your Lenten discipline, sort of a test drive for the rest of your life. But please know you are playing with fire if you do. You may come to some epiphanies about yourself in the silence. In the silence, you may discover parts of your life that will call forth, even demand, repentance from you. Silence is exercise for the soul. We may not always like it, but it is crucial for the health of our soul.

+Scott

 
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Distinguishing the Gospel from the Religion of Me (eCrozier #167)

On March 1, 2013, in culture, gospel, by bishopbenhase

America has had a civil religion for all of her history. It’s the religion that’s invoked at government functions such as city council meetings and at other public or sporting events. This civil religion is now so ingrained in our culture that many people can’t differentiate it from the particular claims of Christianity. While this civil religion lacks overt doctrinal convictions (it needs such lacking to be so widely accepted), it does, in a kind of passive-aggressive way, make claims about God and humanity. Our civil religion claims:

  • God created and continues to order the world.
  • God is absent from the particulars of daily life unless God is needed to solve problems, provide solace to the grieving, or to win a sporting event.
  • God wants all people to be good, kind, and happy and that’s our goal in life.
  • Good, kind, and happy people go to heaven when they die.

As this civil religion continues to grow in its approbation, it shouldn’t surprise any of us in the Church why people say that they don’t need to be part of a Church or other religious community to have a relationship with God. In such a belief system, who needs the Church or a religious community as an external authority of the Divine? Each person can have a relationship with God unmoored from any particular tradition or practice. This is the logical distortion of the understanding of the “Priesthood of All Believers.” Or, as John Prine sang so eloquently, they “can all find Jesus on their own.”

In his book, Habits of the Heart, Robert Bellah described a woman named Sheila who practiced a religion she called “Sheilaism,” which she described as being good as she could possibly be to herself. If she treated herself well, she’d do the same to others. In some ways “Sheilaism” is the quintessential civil religion. It’s a worldview of total liberation for the individual from any authority other than his/her own judgment. Since there’s no authority that’s outside people’s judgment to guide them on their search for meaning, purpose, and destiny in their lives, then the individual is left to his/her own devices. Searching for God’s desires for one’s life then becomes a de facto search for oneself and the “baptizing” of one’s own worldview.

For those outside of the Church this appears to be exactly how they understand their freedom, particularly their religious freedom. And they see this as a positive thing. But in truth, it’s just another form of bondage. They simply become slaves to their own desires and worldviews. Or, as George Bernard Shaw said: “Hell is where you have to do what you want to do.” Or maybe as John Prine sang: “Your flag decal won’t get you into Heaven anymore.”

This is our evangelistic challenge for this generation: to persuade others that the particular claims of the Gospel of Christ are the truth; that they aren’t synonymous with our civil religion; and, that a distorted understanding of religious freedom only brings greater bondage. This won’t be easy as we are facing a civil religion that has built up a head of steam for some time now. Nevertheless, go and make disciples.

+Scott

 
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Self-Mercy Shows God’s Mercy (eCrozier #166)

On February 22, 2013, in grace, sin, by bishopbenhase

Henry Ward Beecher, the great 19th Century Protestant preacher was about to deliver a lecture series on preaching at Yale, but was unsure of what to say. Maybe the erupting scandal in his personal life was giving him writer’s (preacher’s?) block? In his hotel room on the morning of the lecture, his life came crashing down. He was confronted, looking in the mirror, with the shame, vanity, and hypocrisy of his life. Frederick Buechner describes the scene this way:

When he stood there looking into the hotel mirror with soap on his face and a razor in his hand, part of what he saw was his own shame and horror, the sight of his own folly, the judgment one can imagine he found even harder to bear than God’s, which was his own judgment on himself, because whereas God is merciful, we are none of us very good at showing mercy on ourselves.

Buechner’s insight is searing. Such awareness of our own self-judgment is necessary for a truthful and faithful relationship with God as revealed in Jesus. My seminary chaplain, the Reverend Churchill Gibson, was full of wit and wisdom. He always preached the same sermon, entitled: “God Loves You!” About halfway through the sermon right before he’d get to the Gospel medicine that cures us, he inevitably offered the following words: “Well, sin being what sin is…” That was his way of getting to an admission of our lives as they truly are.

The Prayer of Manasseh tells us the truth: “I have sinned, O Lord, I have sinned, and I know my wickedness only too well” (BCP p. 91). OK, I get it. While I need reminding (daily) of my sin, I also need reminding (hourly) of God’s mercy given in Jesus. My self-judgment, which can be harsher than anything or anyone, can become a real roadblock to my discipleship. It can lead me to become a person who is hard and rigid, unforgiving and merciless to myself. And that, of course, leads me to share that “gift” with others.

I know people who appear to me as merciless. Maybe they’re not that way always, but it is how they show themselves to me. They seem angry all the time. They seem to have contempt for other people’s sins and believe that those bad people just get what they deserve. My hunch is that such merciless people are full of self-contempt. They seem unable to love their neighbors, or to show mercy to them, because they’re unable to love or show mercy to their closest neighbor, themselves. Their merciless judgment on others comes from their own merciless judgment on themselves. They have little compassion for others because they have little compassion for themselves.

The Good News of Jesus begins with the truth that I’m a sinner; that, as the Bible says, I’m “evil in the imagination of my heart.” Or as Buechner writes: When I look in the mirror what I see is at least in part “a chicken, a phony, and a slob.” But the Good News of Jesus is also, to be sure, that I am “loved anyway, cherished, forgiven, bleeding to be sure, but also bled for.” That’s the whole truth and without it we will never be people of love, compassion, and mercy.

+Scott

 
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Disrespecting Justice: HSBC’s Get-out-of-jail-almost-free card (eCrozier #165)

On February 15, 2013, in Justice, by bishopbenhase

In 1983, as a just-graduated seminarian from Virginia Theological Seminary, I spent time in a District of Columbia jail for staying too long in the Capitol Rotunda praying for peace and singing hymns. I mention that, not to raise the issues that led me there, but to point out it is more jail time than anyone from the British bank HSBC will ever spend from their wrong-doing. HSBC recently admitted to laundering billions of dollars for Latin American drug cartels and breaking other U.S. laws such as The Trading With the Enemy Act.

HSBC’s $1.9 Billion settlement with the U.S. Justice Department happened during this past Christmas shopping season, so you may have missed it. The $1.9 Billion fine, by the way, only represents about 5 weeks of revenue for HSBC. So, we should be clear here, a bank that knowingly laundered drug cartel money, money gained from countless murderous acts, has no one going to jail thanks to the decision made by the Obama Justice Department. The New York Times editorialized that HSBC was not only “too big to fail,” it was also apparently, “too big to indict” out of concern that bank executives going to jail might upset the international banking system.

Until now, I always had concluded that I deserved my jail time. I knew what I was doing in my civil disobedience; that one possible outcome might be jail time. But now I need to reconsider whether I (or others who spend time in jail) actually deserve to be there. If one can knowingly launder drug cartel money, money coated in murderous blood, and not go to jail, then how can anyone representing any sense of justice tell me my time in jail (or anybody else’s) was deserved?

I know, as my Daddy used to say: two wrongs don’t make a right. The fact that HSBC bank executives will not spend even one night in jail does not justify my crime and make it right. But this conveys a message that if one is wealthy and connected enough, then one can really get away with murder, or at least accessory to it. Remember, no one is merely “alleging” these things were done; the five-weeks-of-revenue-plea-agreement is an admission they were done.

I don’t believe in the death penalty for anyone or any crime (Jesus said it, I believe it, and that’s that). The rationale people give for the death penalty is that it deters heinous crimes. But most death sentences are handed out to murderers who commit their crimes in the heat of passion (or drug/alcohol-induced passion). In the act, deterrence isn’t a rational consideration for them. For those who buy the deterrence argument, then these HSBC executives would be prime candidates. It takes rational planning and thought to set up these schemes to launder billions in drug cartel money. If bank executives thought that they might be executed for such crimes (a Guillotine on Wall Street comes to mind), it would clean up the banking system quickly.

The larger moral challenge for us is how we explain this to our children so they will have respect for justice. Right now, I’m at a loss for an explanation.

+Scott

 
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