Guest Post: The Character Question in this year’s campaign
Scott Lohse, pastor of St. Martin’s United Church of Christ in Dittmer, Mo., won our “Five Minutes with a Candidate” contest and will guest blog here through the election.
My congregation just had a golf tournament last weekend to raise funds to support church camps. It was a fabulous event and a terrific success but that’s another story. I am absolutely not a golfer, but they put me in charge of watching one of the holes in order to keep the contestants honest about whether they made a hole-in-one.
I struck up a conversation with one of the tournament organizers about my hole-watching job and we found ourselves talking, before long, about the issue of character. There must have been some need for concern about character, by the way, if someone had to watch the hole to keep the scorekeepers honest!
I talked to Jim Crandall, a friend who owns several companies and also is a consultant for several others such as Above All Personnel, whose CEO is Sue Huber.
My question to Jim: “You must know an awful lot of practical stuff about judging a person’s character since you have so many employees and since you have made a profession of human resources management. How do you judge somebody’s character?”
We talked for a long time and our conversation was interspersed with moments when he also tried to help me understand all about ‘birdies’ and ‘bogies’ and other golf terms which are fairly obscure to me. Here is a fair summary of some of what Jim said that I thought was unique, profound, or otherwise worth reporting:
“My best advice,” he said, “Is to first find yourself, and then just be yourself. That’s a pretty good definition of character.” He went on, “When you are making a judgment about someone else’s character, a lot of things come into play like non-verbal cues but also a person’s attitude. If you are talking to someone whose comments are always negative, then you don’t have to be a genius to make a judgment about whether that is a negative person.”
Then is when Jim said something else that really gave me cause to think a bit.
He said, “One more thing that folks don’t often consider is that in order to be a good judge of somebody else’s character, you have to be able to do an adequate job of understanding your own attitudes and preferences objectively.”
Jim said a whole lot more, including his opinion that the kind of president we need right now would be someone who had the character to be able to quell our fears about our economy with integrity instead of raising our anxiety.
So here is what wonder as this election races toward its culmination, recalling Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of a day when people are judged by “the content of their character”: How do you do that?
How do you make judgments about the content of someone else’s character? Personally, I “Googled” character quotes and my favorite bit of wisdom which I mined was from Dear Abbey who wrote, “The best index to a person’s character is (a) how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can’t fight back.”
By the way, nobody got a hole-in-one at our golf tournament but several people did tease me about actually reporting that they did. I guess they were poor judges of my character.
Guest blogger Scott Lohse is the winner of our "Five Minutes with a candidate" contest and will post guest blogs through the election.
He is the pastor of St. Martin's United Church of Christ in Dittmer, Mo. He has also served United Methodist Churches in Eastern Missouri towns over the past 30 years including Kennett, Bonne Terre, Jackson, Creve Coeur and Manchester. Scott has also worked as a hospice chaplain and a radio broadcaster. He is also an amateur magician.
Scott has been married for 30 years to his wife Lin. They have three children. He is an avid reader, a news junkie, and he spends more time online than he cares to admit. 
Fine article by Rev. Lohse;
Character takes a lifetime to form..We live most of our lives going at 90 miles per hour with the confidents that only youth can give us. But it is a life not based on experience
My life was filled with meeting new people every day for over 50 years.
I value a mans years. His understanding of what he is takes these years…and gives him the knowledge to be a self confident person in what he is.It gives him the true understanding of why his is on this earth. Love others as you love your self…love God…help others.
Great article. One of the things that I can’t understand about Obama’s character is that he is making promises that he has to be unsure of. That’s what has scared me away from him all together. I conceder myself to be Republican, but being fed up with the Bush years. I took a liking to Obama up front. However it was his character that has ran me off. You can’t promise health care to someone that badly needs it if you are not sure you can keep your promise. Obama does this daily. Obama started a rally the other day with the phrase, isn’t this a wonderful day the lord has made. He went on to say something about seeing the mountain tops from the valleys. I don’t know if he was trying to express Martin Luther King’s character or advance his own.
Thanks to Bob, you ARE a character if you know what I mean. ‘First tom’ I attended a meeting today about my own insurance coverages and learned a lot which I think you will find interesting. I hope to make a post about insurance soon because both candidates have made a lot of promises haven’t they.
This is an interesting question. How do you make judgments about the content of someone else’s character? All my life I have been told by family and friends that I’m “Quite a Character”! I also have been told by many, (including my wife), that I could talk to a fencepost, tell the best lame jokes and children’s stories, and that I tend to see the lemonade glass as half full, (then I drink it slowly and fill-er up again). Ok, I admit that I like and respect people, young, old, white and non-white, faithful and non-believers. I think that maybe I got those traits by modeling other characters such as my parents, grandparents, neighbors, leaders, and even a few losers.
This question is above my pay grade but I will offer a few observations, for what they are worth, about judging someone else’s character:
1. I like and trust people that are truthful and follow through on their promises or commitments. Many politicians promise more than they can deliver. Sometimes it just speaks to their hopes.
2. I have observed that very young and very old people tend to be more honest and less corrupted and exhibit pretty good character traits. (Does this mean that both candidates are disqualified?)
3. I think people who want only things out of life tend to step on others to get those things and stepping on others is not a positive character trait, in my humble opinion.
I own one house, one car, one truck, prefer to have a full time job so that my family can eat and we can pay the bills, and I don’t even mind giving someone else a helping hand once in a while. So I believe that every person on this blue floating marble called Earth deserves a chance to find some happiness during their short visit, and maybe get a cold glass of lemonade once in a while.
You are cool “Jack”. I love your observation about the very young and the very old.
Something that didn’t make the original post is that I believe we all judge the character every day in a hundred ways. How else do you decide who to trust (or not)?
Some good thoughts both from Scott and the other commenters. Over on the ‘civil religion’ blog I made a comment about leadership, that I think fits into a conversation about character as well.
Two words spell ‘character’ to me: Humility and Service.
If a person comes with an attitude of humility (I don’t know all the answers and I’m willing to listen to your take) and Service (what can I do to help out?), then I see a whole lot of positive character in there. Unfortunately, those traits do not seem to be terribly welcome in political life these days.
What a thoughtful post ‘hs’ it is exactly what I hoped to see. So, my next question is - why not? Why are such traits not welcome in our political system?
Unfortunately, in our culture, humility is frequently seen as a flaw, not a virtue. We celebrate the hard-nosed, the type A personality, ‘nice guys finish last’. The person who is willing to listen, who is willing to admit weakness, who is willing to acknowledge that he doesn’t have all the answers, is seen as weak.
Even in our churches, humility is downplayed. Certainty is celebrated. Questioning is shouted down.
And yet, the tremendous POWER of humility is visible, if we’ll only look. Here are some names of people who I think show their humility every time they speak and act…and then consider what they accomplished in their lives:
Nelson Mandela
Mother Teresa
The Dalai Lama
Ghandi
Sorry it’s such a short list: one of the major traits of humility is that the humble don’t make headlines…until they DO, and then they usually shake the foundations of their society.
“in order to be a good judge of somebody else’s character, you have to be able to do an adequate job of understanding your own attitudes and preferences objectively.”
I really liked this statement from your friend Jim. I think to go a step further is to say that our judging of character is slanted based on our own views. Many may say it can’t be so “shades of grey”. However I would point out that someone giving tax cuts to the rich might be seen as heartless to the poor by one and a champion of the economy to another.
Or, to take a recent example, some have said Obama’s loose association with Ayers on an educational foundation’s board shows a lack of a character. I would assume they would think that each person one comes in contact with must be fully vetted, especially if one ever considers a future in government. On the other hand, if one did full vet every person they came in contact they would quickly be discounted as unduly suspicious and having a “paranoid character”.
That said, the “character debate” has been bastardized by the political process. Politicians routinely use “character” to point out philosophical differences between candidates. Not to truly address character of people we see for 30 second advertisements or 5 minute interviews.
Dear ‘hs’ I wonder if you remember the old Country Western song that went, “Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way!” I am sure that running for public office makes humility hard because you have to emphasize your own credentials in order to get an upper hand. There is nothing wrong with that but tearing the other person down in order to build yourself up - that seems to be a ‘character flaw’ to me.
Regarding churches not valuing humility - this may be a valid critique but at my church we just read from the New Testament in Philippians chapter 2 where the word ’slave’ is even used as a prescription for a Christlike attitude. AND regarding the politicians, well we still call them ‘public servants’ afterall.
Dear suzyjax - what an interesting notion of ‘vetting’ all of our friends and associates. I wonder if we don’t already do that on some subconscious level all the time. This may all be getting too philisophical to be pragmatic - what if a person’s ‘character’ just meant what you or I judged to be ‘characteristic’ of that persion. That is to say your character is what I have come to assume that I may rely upon you for be it good or bad?…