Failure to plan
The Boy Scout motto was “Be prepared.” Grandma said, “A stitch in time saves nine.” Grandpa said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” My boss said, “Plan your work and work your plan.”
W. Edwards Deming, the Total Quality Management guru said, “If you don’t know where you’re going any road will take you there.”
When we are children we want to depend on our parents to know what they’re doing and to keep us safe. If they do know what they’re doing we learn to trust and feel secure. If they don’t we become anxious and put a wall up around us.
We we are adults we want to believe that the people who have authority over the various aspects of our lives know what they are doing and working in behalf of our and the community’s best interest.
Leaders, whether they are the heads of households, supervisors at work, pastors, teachers, and professionals we depend on to provide ethical.effective and efficient services, have a moral responsibility to take their duties to others seriously and to do their best when performing them.
Incompetence is one thing, but failure to perform because of a lack of planning, discipline or will is immoral behavior.
.“I couldn’t help it.” It wasn’t my fault, it was theirs,” “What about them?” “The devil made me do it.” “Mistakes were made.” “It could have been far worse…” So many excuses, so many minimizations, so much responsibility avoiding, and responsibility shifting, and dereliction of duty. The resulting suffering, grief, injury, destruction, and death are enormous.
We live in a society of responsibility avoiders. Our legal system is based on it. Everyone is innocent until they can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be guilty. The system is rigged and people with power, money, and status usually escape culpability. They hire good attorneys, public relations reputation control specialists. They find self books and counselors who will find their past, trauma, family history, or some other factor to blame to get them off the hook.
The moral person takes responsibility, admits their mistakes, is willing to assess the harm and make amends. The moral person assesses the situation and when taking responsibility looks ahead to see to it that things will be satisfying, fulfilling, and safe.
There is nothing in Unitarian Universalism that gives the hope of redemption because Unitarian Universalism does not recognize and acknowledge sin. The Universalist view is that God loves humans unconditionally and so sin, mistakes, irresponsibility is ignored. The eschewing of evil is another of Unitarian Univeralism’s major sins which preclude offering human beings the hope of redemption. This is another reason that the Unitarian Universalist ideological story makes no intuitive sense to most people and its denomination will remain small and irrelevant.
With no sin and immoral behavior there can be no redemption and virtue. With nothing lost there is nothing gained. With no moral compass, plans are hard to make because who’s to say what is desirable and not desirable and with no frame of reference who can feel that their ideas and well being are safe?
Planning in Unitarian Universalism whether at the Association level or the congregational level is very poor. It is tantamount to irresponsibility when those in authority fail to provide a plan that is in line with the ideological story of the reason for the denomination to exist. What is UUs function in the world? What is its mission? What is its vision? How can it achieve success?
The failure of Unitarian Universalist leaders to plan makes the children insecure and anxiously attached. The membership numbers show it.
