Character Matters: Nine Essential Traits You Need to Succeed

By Mark Rutland

Restore the cornerstone of this country! Character Matters You are best remembered for your character! The virtues you value are the ones that leave a mark for the whole world to see. Character matters... It’s the evidence of God at work in your life! What can you do to restore character in your neighborhood, community or country?  Character matters… America’s core convictions have been chipped away, but now it’s time for rebuilding. Step away from that “so what” mentality and restore those unfulfilled dreams.  Character matters… Mark Rutland discusses nine specific qualities that everyone needs. You’ll learn what godly character looks and acts like, and how character undergirds and redeems every aspect of society. You cannot live long or well without it! You need character in your life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charisma House
• Release date: Oct 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9781599798356

Book preview

CHARACTER

MATTERS

NINE ESSENTIAL TRAITS

YOU NEED to SUCCEED

MARK RUTLAND

CHARACTER MATTERS by Mark Rutland

Published by Charisma House

Charisma Media/Charisma House Book Group

600 Rinehart Road

Lake Mary, Florida 32746

www.charismahouse.com

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked ASV are from the American Standard Version of the Bible. Public domain.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are from the Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, International Bible Society. Used by permission.

Cover design by The Office of Bill Chiaravalle | www.officeofbc.com

Cover photo by Photodisc

Copyright © 2003 by Mark Rutland

All rights reserved

            Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rutland, Mark.

   Character matters / Mark Rutland.

       p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

   ISBN 1-59185-232-3 (Hardback)

   1. Character. 2. Conduct of life. 3. Christian life. I. Title.

   BJ1531.R88 2003

   179'.9--dc21

2003014550

ISBN-13: 978-1-59185-232-2

E-book ISBN: 978-1-59979-835-6

Dedicated

to

the students and alumni

of

Southeastern University

Lakeland, Florida

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Behind every successful man there is a surprised mother-in-law. Likewise, behind every published book there are a multiplicity of eyes and hands and minds, other than the author’s, whose contributions were indispensable. Though my name alone appears on the jacket, and, indeed, I wrote every word of it, I feel it is only fitting that they who assisted should have to share the blame.

My wife, my Alison, who patiently lets me read to her what I write, whose editorial suggestions are invaluable, must be thanked first. I am as sane as I am, or perhaps I should say, I am no more insane than I am, because her beauty, balance and brains keep me from drifting out to sea. My high school sweetheart, the smartest woman I know, and the love of my life, she is in and behind every word.

Because I remain, in this cyber age, a belligerent Neanderthal, unable to type, let alone use a computer, my undying gratitude belongs to Dr. Gordon Miller and Mrs. Glenna Rakes for their help in editing and preparing the manuscript. I take a salacious delight in watching an empty page fill up with my handwritten words, but their ability to decipher the meaning of that scrawl is nothing short of miraculous.

Barbara Dycus and all her colleagues at Charisma House do not escape responsibility. They also contributed greatly to this effort and did so deliberately with grace and good humor. So that Barbara cannot later deny involvement, her name is also recorded here with my thanks.

CONTENTS

1  Character: The Engraver’s Art

2  Courage: Character in Crisis

3  Loyalty: Character in Community

4  Diligence: Character in Action

5  Modesty: Character As Simplicit

6  Frugality: Character and Prosperity

7  Honesty: Character and Truth

8  Meekness: Character and Power

9  Reverence: Character and the Sacred

10 Gratitude: Character in Celebration

 Notes

CHAPTER 1

CHARACTER:

THE ENGRAVER’S ART

A man’s character is his fate.

—HERACLITUS

THE ENGLISH WORD CHARACTER IS from a Latin root that 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, will define its true worth. No cosmetic enhancement, no decorative drapery can make useless stone into enduring art. Only character can do that.

A nation having squandered its character may well have so damaged itself that attempts at reclamation prove futile. Long before that final collapse, however, redoubts can be built and buttressed against the invading armies of the night. Virtues can be revisited, rethought and retaught. From a nation’s pulpits and podia, in its businesses and on its forts, a corporate voice calling for character may turn the tide.

Children can be taught courage. Executives, suckled on the milk of Gordon Gecko’s greed, can be reminded of honesty and frugality. Modesty can be learned, valued and lived where a nation will find its voice and teach it once again. For now we are reaping the bitter harvest of character destruction, but it is not too late.

Character embraced, even popularized and freshly articulated in our literature and movies, will produce leaders upon whose lives words like honesty, gratitude and courage have been engraved with faith and hope. It is not too late for character. We have the right as a free people to expect it, even demand it, in our leaders. We have the responsibility to cultivate it in ourselves, to teach it in our schools and to praise and reward it in others.

What we engrave or allow to be engraved upon us is what we must live with. Talent, attractiveness and intellect, too long overvalued, have proven incapable of re-firing our national hope. The Bill Clintons of this society have chipped away valuable and irreplaceable granite. Now we need more modest athletes, meeker leaders, honest executives and more diligent workers.

A new national character, new only in the narrowest of historical views, can be, and must be, engraved. The granite of us, worn and pocked as it is, can still receive the well-guided stylus. Character matters, and now is the time.

Why Enron? Why the whole Clinton-Lewinsky quagmire? Why any of it?

The problem is, those are actually the wrong questions, both wrong and easy to answer. Scandal, crime and wickedness in high and low places are in the fallenness of us. Sin is. That is the simple and terrifying answer to both the murderous mayhem in our streets and the shocking deceptions in our board rooms.

The real question is, How can character be added back into an American soul adrift on a Sargasso Sea of postmodern relativism? It is not that there have never before been scandals. From the Hamilton-Burr duel to the Teapot Dome 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 movies, not the art or the music or the literature, but the character of a culture is its defining nexus, that which holds it together, the place where all its dots connect and make it what it is. When the character of any culture loses its grip on the essential virtues that hold the whole thing in place, the scandals still happen, but the culture is no longer outraged.

Indeed, in the Clinton-Lewinsky debacle, the background music of the president’s defense was that his ability as a president combined with a good economy made perjury and adultery non-issues. Likewise, when the Enron disaster burst open, we could hardly bring ourselves to even speak of the greed and dissembling. The greater issue was perceived to be the financial loss to employees and investors.

In other words, the inescapable conclusion is that when there is no substantial financial loss, it is not a real scandal. This was even stated by one speaker who said, The real sin is not the president’s sexual habits, but the money Ken Starr spent on the prosecution.

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 rising voice that says, Character matters.

A number of years ago Dr. Karl Menninger wrote Whatever Became of Sin? The book was a call to personal accountability. 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.¹

With this book I am asking another question: Whatever became of character? The whole concept of virtuous living has become so alien to Western culture that until—and unless—we recapture it, our society will remain unengraved with character.

Far too long now our society has tended to think of virtue as a quality desirable only for women. We are led to think that women should be virginal and good, at least the ones men marry, but men are to be somehow above such sissy notions. Such thinking may be convenient for men, but it reveals a tragic misunderstanding of true virtue.

The very word virtue derives from the Latin word for strength. The connotation is of straining, as the muscles of a man might strain at the confines of a tight shirt. In other words, virtue is restrained strength. It actually implies manliness. It is that strength, that power by which one physical body affects another. In medicine 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.

In the eighth chapter of his Gospel, Luke used the word virtue to connote 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 statement seemed absurd. How could He tell one touch from another? Jesus explained that He felt virtue flow out of Him.

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.

THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL

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 no historical evidence of an utterly virtueless society. The great danger is not the lack of any virtue. It is wrong virtues! It is always tragic when men 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 a preeminent virtue was bravery. Roman bravery, misunderstood and untempered by Christian love, soon became brutal and callous. Similarly, in communist Russia, for 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 Siberia like the pathetic waste of socialistic atheism. The Stalinist state expected its citizens to betray family members even if it meant death or imprisonment. Stalin professed that any lie, any act of treachery, any form of violence was acceptable—even virtuous—in the cause of communism. Torture, deceit and 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 defines its virtues, it in turn is defined by those virtues. Twisted virtue means twisted culture. 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 itself is a virtue, then all is permissible if I can achieve beauty, associate with beauty or cause beauty to be.

The downward spiral might go something like this:

1. Beauty as an abstract ascends as a societal virtue.

2. If beauty is a virtue, ugliness is despicable.

3. If ugliness is despicable, ugly people are worth less than beautiful people.

4. If beautiful people are worth more than ugly people, it is not as bad to murder the ugly.

5. Finally, murdering ugly people may, at last, 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