Bernie Madoff and You

Steve Fishman a reporter for New York Magazine got a strange call the other day.  Collect from Bernard Madoff.  Apparently Mr. Madoff--who was convicted of running the largest ponzi scheme EVER and bilking hundreds of clients and charity organizations for BILLIONS of dollars, wants the world to believe he is a good guy.  Here is a quote from the New York Magazine article:

And so, sitting alone with his therapist, in the prison khakis he irons himself, he seeks reassurance. “Everybody on the outside kept claiming I was a sociopath,” Madoff told her one day. “I asked her, ‘Am I a sociopath?’ ” He waited expectantly, his eyelids squeezing open and shut, that famous tic. “She said, ‘You’re absolutely not a sociopath. You have morals. You have remorse.’ ” Madoff paused as he related this. His voice settled. He said to me, “I am a good person.”

I must admit, even in the annuals of self delusion, this seems a little over the top. 

Or does it?

I find it a fascinating study in how far mankind will go to cover their wrong doing.  To avoid the emotional or moral consequences of devastating personal sin.

And psychology is right along there with them.  Validating, minimizing and justifying their actions.

The irony is that Mr. Madoff seems to recognize his own inherent wickedness.  He wonders if he is a sociopath.  Apparently he has even expressed remorse. Remorse!

But his claim of goodness seems generated from someone else. 

Make no mistake; I am sure that he desperately wants to believe it, but who wouldn’t?  With such a swatch of devastation left in his wake, how can the average man live with this?

The truth is, he can’t.

And here we sit at the cross roads of moral dilemma.

What to do about sin that slaps us in the face and defies us to ignore it.

One option might be to forget about it and pretend it does not and perhaps never did exist. But Mr. Madoff cannot forget what he did, because no one will let it him.

Blaming someone else is also a handy solution.  Apparently Mr. Madoff did at least some of this, accusing his clients of greed, and saying that government regulations are a joke.

Or one could attempt to assuage their conscience by trying to pay back the wrong that they have committed.  But sometimes as in Mr. Madoff’s case the debt is too big. 

Lastly, if all else fails, try to find someone who makes you feel better.

Lucky for Bernie, there is a prison therapist who will tell him that deep down he really is a good guy.

One could say in defense of therapists everywhere, that prison counselors are sure to be substandard, and no therapist in his right mind would tell Bernie Madoff that he is a good man.

But I don’t think that’s true.

The reason is that such thinking comes not from a single therapist, but from the flawed philosophical/theological foundation they stand on.

Namely that there is no right or wrong.  Only the ever-present situational ethic. 

Do what seems right at the time, and you can’t go wrong.

Bernie Madoff tried to do right, he kept the scheme up as long as he could, paid who he could, but in the end was a victim of the greed of others, and the pressure to out perform the market.  Right?

No, I don’t believe it either.

Jeremiah 17:9 says that the heart of man is desperately wicked. 

Not just wicked or desperate, but desperately wicked.  Combine the two, and you’ve got quite a fireworks display of evil.

The scary part is that this passage is not just talking about people like Bernie Madoff, it’s talking about you and me.

We are all little potential Bernie Madoff’s.

Hard to believe I know.  But our response to sin is often the same.

Maybe just not on that scale.  So we tend to minimize it.

Yet to God, our sin is far more egregious than we realize.  Whether we are a ponzi schemer, adulterer, liar, thief or closet luster.

We are not good people.  In fact according to Mark 10:18 no one is good but our Father in heaven. 

To tell people otherwise is to cover their sin in a very inadequate way. 

It is also to suppress the good news that God provided a way out. 

He died for our sin, and paid the debt that we rightly owe.

We are capable of being forgiven, cleaned and made right without all the mental gymnastics it otherwise takes.   

People have adopted this whole “I’m really a good person” mindset even when it flies in the face of incontrovertible evidence.

It may seem hard to believe, but if Bernie Madoff can do it, so can you.