I lived with my Quaker grandmother the first 5 years of my life. I am now 70 years old and that single blessing seems to me to be the most important element in the formation of my character, my thoughts and my beliefs. My younger brothers did not share that same experience and they look at life a little differently than I do. No matter how I research an article or opinion piece, my grandmother’s words always serve as a predicate for my chain of reasoning. “Who made you?”—God. “Why did God make you?” To love and be loved and to serve HIM. You can read all the apologetics, or commentaries on scripture—there is no substitute for scripture, “Pray and follow the voice within”. In the end it all comes down to that.
Another lesson she taught me has both religious and sectarian implications. She taught me to always be careful of your thoughts because thoughts turn into words—sometimes words are written down which you need to be more careful about, and words turn into actions, and actions turn into habits, and habits define a life. The invisible barriers that should exist between thoughts, words and actions can become blurred and when they are circumvented they can lead to the destruction of a reputation, career or relationship.
Another lesson that events of the past few weeks have reminded me of is the idea that like us, everybody walks around with burdens—actually the burden of sin, and we all are wounded personally by these burdens—everybody. No matter who you see or where you see them, people should be approached with respect because in their hearts they are dealing with burdens just like you are—and that is part of what connects all of us.
As I try to unravel the tragedy that has happened to John Gruden—but we see this repeatedly when people’s private lives are exposed by willing people in the media who have no motive associated with compassion or mercy, I am again reminded of my grandmother’s words about the connection between thoughts and habits. When the veil of the expectation of privacy is pierced—for example, the veil between thought and words, should the person responsible for the unveiling—who also harbors gremlins in their own closets, be held to a similar account. And what about those who take action based on an unseemly exposure of the involved individual who is now being held to account. Is the expectation for such exposure only to mean that the government is held to a specific standard of respecting an individual’s “zone of privacy”? One definition of a zone of privacy looks like this:
Legal Definition of zone of privacy: an area or aspect of life that is held to be protected from intrusion by a specific constitutional guarantee (as of the right to be secure in one’s person, house, papers, or effects against unreasonable searches or seizures) or is the object of an expectation of privacy allowed disclosure of medical records, records which were deemed to fall within a zone of privacy, upon a showing of proper government interest— Stenger v. Lehigh Valley Hosp. Ctr., 609 A.2d 796 (1992)— compare EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY, PENUMBRA sense 2
Should private E-Mails on one’s personal computer be part of the zone of privacy? Who right now today is invading your zone of privacy? Does the “specific constitutional guarantee (as the right to be secure in one’s person, house, papers, or effects against unreasonable searches or seizures)” apply to private companies, individuals, reporters, and the government? I am not a lawyer, but I am sure there are specific rights and implied rights, and situational ethics could be applied in the name of “legal equity” that would render all forms of the expectation of privacy irrelevant—just like in Stalin’s Soviet State and Hitler’s Fascist Germany.
I never liked John Gruden or his brother, but logic would tell us that to be around and coaching NFL teams for a combined 30 plus years and in the intimacy of an NFL locker room, if they were racist, they would have been identified and extricated from their teams which are today 70% Black or minority— years ago. One does not hide deep racist tendencies under the veil between thoughts and words. If we do, and I personally am aware of my own shortcomings (we must all look to the log in our own eyes before we address the splinter in another’s) in this area, then everyday through prayer and thought and action we should fight those thoughts, and words, and actions. It is a personal battle to be fought in one’s own heart and conscience. An overt act of racism is a different matter altogether.
My feeling is that in the name of forgiveness, redemption, and reconciliation the act of firing someone over an e-mail post from over 10 years ago should either be reconsidered, or all of us should expect to have the same intrusions into our private lives become commonplace.
Here is an idea, if we are concerned about “fairness”—there is no such thing as fairness on earth. Every NFL owner, coach, GM, and player should open all their private E-mails over the past 10 years to the press who should also open up their own private e-mails. If you are going to expose one individual to scrutiny based on an invasion of privacy, then you should be willing to open yourself up to similar scrutiny and a similar standard. And heck. Let’s do the same thing for all our politicians, and CEOs of companies, and teachers and college professors, and professionals in all fields. If there is no longer the expectation of a “zone of privacy”, then we should all be playing by the same rules.
Remember George Orwell’s warning in 1984:
The thought police would get him just the same. He had committed – would have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper – the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.
– George Orwell
Maybe we are just closer to 1984 than we think. “MIGA” Make Idaho Great Again “Fight Like Hell”
