Can't Decide If 60 Minutes is Brilliant or a Piece of Trash

It's too bad that the same people responsible for Andy Rooney are the same people who bring fantastic profiles of the world's best and worst. 60 Minutes is one of those shows I find myself getting super excited about and then hating. I can't decide where I land.

Over the past two weeks, the television news magazine has compiled two very opposing, brilliant stories. The first is about the winningest coach in high school basketball, Bob Hurley, and his rejection of college jobs, money, and play at the next level. He is content with coaching St. Anthony's, a small Catholic school in New Jersey. He is involved because he loves the city and loves the kids - even if it makes him $9,000 a year.

This past week, 60 Minutes single-handedly took down Greg Mortenson, best-selling author and acclaimed "humanitarian." The crew of journalists traveled all of the world, getting comment after comment and story after story that proved Mortenson's heart-wrenching stories of helping Middle Eastern countries build schools to be fabricated and false. Turns out for all the good he has done, many of his memoirs are untrue and many of his school buildings are either wildly underfunded or empty. Furthermore, his non-profit has been bankrolling a lot of Mortenson's speaking gigs: spending 1.7 million on book-related expenses and 1.3 million on building schools. Sounds a bit uneven. The publishers are now reviewing his books.

Yikes. Two very different profiles, huh? And both reported by Steve Kroft! Nice!

But what's going on here? These are both fascinating stories for different reasons: in the first, we have a noble dude doing something small, but great, something he is recognized for but makes little money or notoriety for. In the second, we have a world famous humanitarian who's doing it all wrong.

The difference is in the details. Both guys are on 60 minutes, both guys are seen in the public eye in one way or another, but they both got to that program's airwaves in very different ways.

Americans desire to accomplish something amazing: a new wakeboarding record, a better company, a bigger church. We all value great things and huge successes, but is this what God honors?

I like that the God of the Bible doesn't really care if you're famous and successful by other people's standards or not, he just cares if you're faithful. The wisdom books of the Scriptures tell us to seek "righteousness," which we sometimes view translated as "unattainably perfect behavior." But "righteousness" could be translated as "right living." This is a word that is about the process of our accomplishments and how we go about attaining what we attain. We do not value the process, do we? We value the ends, not the means.

The Christian life is about embracing all that Christ is in order to achieve this righteousness because he is righteousness. He didn't just live rightly, he lived perfectly - and in our place. He is not just the means and not just the end, but he is both, described by a Greek-culture as the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

These stories show us that while what you accomplish is quite important, how you go about accomplishing it matters more than you know.