{"id":42759,"date":"2013-08-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-12T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/us-governments-encyclopedia-of-ethical-failure\/"},"modified":"2013-08-12T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-08-12T00:00:00","slug":"us-governments-encyclopedia-of-ethical-failure","status":"publish","type":"sermon-illustrations","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/us-governments-encyclopedia-of-ethical-failure\/","title":{"rendered":"The U.S. Government&#8217;s Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Every few years the U.S. Department of Defense publishes a short book that contains amazing stories about real crime, cheating scientists, drug dealers, and rogue real-estate agents. It&#39;s called <em class=\"citation\">The Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure<\/em>. The book is filled with true case studies of government employees acting badly. It&#39;s used to train new government workers how <em>not<\/em> to behave on the job.<\/p>\n\n<p>For example, one case study focuses on a federal employee who backed up his van to the office door at night and stole all of his department&#39;s computer equipment. A short time later he was arrested for trying to sell the equipment at his yard sale. He wasn&#39;t hard to catch: the computers were still plastered with barcodes and stickers that read &quot;Property of the U.S Government.&quot;<\/p>\n\n<p>Or there&#39;s this story: For several years two government executives apparently had <em>never<\/em> taken vacation time. But investigators noticed that they had taken lots of &quot;religious compensatory time.&quot; Curiously, though, those days never fell on a religious holiday from any known religion. Instead, they happened to coincide with the employees&#39; golf outings. When asked if golf tournaments should be considered a religious holiday, one of the employees replied, &quot;They could be for some people.&quot;<\/p>\n\n<p>Why do seemingly decent people do such dumb things? The current editor of <em class=\"citation\">The Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure<\/em> offered this explanation:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>I found it didn&#39;t relate to grade, or rank, or gender. The [main] issue was that at the moment they didn&#39;t think of the ramifications. In most cases when you would sit down with these folks afterwards and say, <em>What were you thinking?<\/em> They would be banging their heads on the table and saying, <em>You&#39;re right; I wasn&#39;t thinking.<\/em><\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[405,406,411],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[446],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3559,3677,3858,3889,3999,4164,4264,4296,4491,4999,5001,5076,5215,5226,5293],"tax_ctp_topics":[],"class_list":["post-42759","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-character","tax_ctp_tags-consequences-of-sin","tax_ctp_tags-employee","tax_ctp_tags-ethics","tax_ctp_tags-folly","tax_ctp_tags-honesty","tax_ctp_tags-integrity","tax_ctp_tags-jobs","tax_ctp_tags-morality","tax_ctp_tags-sloth","tax_ctp_tags-sluggards","tax_ctp_tags-stealing","tax_ctp_tags-unjust-gain","tax_ctp_tags-values","tax_ctp_tags-work"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The U.S. Government&#039;s Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/us-governments-encyclopedia-of-ethical-failure\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The U.S. Government&#039;s Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Every few years the U.S. Department of Defense publishes a short book that contains amazing stories about real crime, cheating scientists, drug dealers, and rogue real-estate agents. 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