Ethics in the code of governance conduct
WITHIN the third broad facet of our set of personal duties---the facet which relates us to the external environment---is the personal relationship we strike up with God. With the exception of those who claim to be an agnostic or a sceptic, for many individuals the personal duties we have towards God is natural. It is par for the course. Fortunately, in our time and place, these individuals are still the majority, and indeed most enterprises in our country do include among their core values “love of God and of country.”
Any individual’s personal relationship with God can have enormous influence on becoming a governance warrior, and in forming a governance character. Such an influence can be seen in:
• Sustaining and carrying on the fight to become a governance asset. The challenge of discharging one’s day-to-day duties at work calls for a continuing battle. It has its successes and failures. It can easily lead to discouragement and the temptation to give up almost at every difficult turn. This is where one’s personal relationship with God comes in: we can look at God as the source of moral force (of courage and of personal order as well as discipline) to keep going, no matter the odds, until we firmly stay on the side of “right,” develop good governance habits, and eventually mark our personal character with good governance.
• Providing help from on high such that our daily battle is marked with more successes than failures. The basic personal relationship we strike up with God is that of “father and son.” We can go to Him for any help at any time on anything we might need: he is father to us; and if he is God, then he is an all-powerful and all-loving father. He can and he would help us at every turn. We therefore should be able to count on our own efforts and diligence (we throw in everything we have and the very best of what we can do); but in addition, we can count on what a provident father can throw as a life-line to us. We should always remember what God tells us: with you, alone, you can do nothing; but with me (God), you can do everything.
• Drawing a clear line between what is morally and ethically good and what is not. The world we live in is not ours; it is God’s creation. And God as creator has clear guidelines on what is acceptable and pleasing behaviour to him and what is not. He has issued decrees on moral conduct. The “Ten Commandments” have been written on stone; they have also been inscribed into every person’s heart. For those who accept God as creator, therefore, there are clear ethical norms and standards: stay on one side of those norms, and you do good (and avoid evil); straying to the other side of those norms, and we transgress (we do evil).
The supernatural facet of our life calls for us to have a room for God in our life. It is up to each of us---with full respect for our personal freedom---how big a room we are willing to reserve for God. There may well be a few who have decided they can make no room whatsoever for God. Fortunately, there are many others who are more than willing and open to reserve at least some room for him (e.g. they go to prayer services or Mass at opportune times). There is an even higher challenge for governance warriors, and it is to put God at the very center of their life such that their personal relationship with God inspires and suffuses all the other facets to a point that it (the relationship with God) provides the unifying force for all of life’s facets.
This can be of great importance to governance warriors: our personal relationship with God can provide the moral force by which we carry on our governance fight; it gives us a clear pathway towards the source of help, which can bring us to deliver more than our natural talents can produce; and it can transform our code of governance conduct not only into a code, with integrity as its cornerstone, but also one with ethics as drawing the moral dividing line between what is good and what is not so good.
In this light, the code of governance conduct in essence is a code of integrity and ethics.