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One of the features in common between the phone hacking scandal, the various banking scams and the latest row, over the failure of G4S, is that the men at the top claim not to have known what was going on. OK, you can't expect the top person to know all the details of what their subordinates are up to. So what can we expect? I'd suggest two things.
电话窃听丑闻、各种形式的银行诈骗以及最近关于杰富士（G4S，国际安全解决方案供应商）安保失败的争论有一个共同的特点：上头的当权者都声明，自己并不知道到底发生了什么。当然，我们也不能期望这些当权者知道下属做事的所有细枝末节。既然这样，我们能期望的是什么呢？我认为，有两点。
The first responsibility of a leader, whether it's in business, the church or in politics is to appoint people they can trust to be honest and competent. Secondly, given the fact that there are bound to be some human failures, to ensure that the fail safe mechanisms for detecting honesty and competence are firmly in place and ready to detect something going wrong at an early stage. It's quite possible for a person at the top not to know personally about a particular failure, but still to regard themselves as rightly responsible. So we can have such a thing as an honourable resignation and I think of the resignation of Lord Carrington in 1982 over the invasion of the Falklands.
首先，无论在商业界、神学界还是政治界，一个领导者的第一责任在于任命其认为诚实、有能力的人士。第二，考虑到这一过程中总会有些人为的因素导致任人不当，那就要确保那些无法察觉出人员不诚实和无能的失灵的安全机制能够稳步得到改善、运行顺畅，并能在早期阶段就能检测出异样。对于当权者而言，他们自己本身很有可能不知道具体是哪里出了问题，但他们也应该对失误负起责任。所以，也就有了引咎辞职的做法，而我认为1982年卡林顿勋爵因英国入侵福克兰群岛而辞职就属于这种情况。
Accountability is a key concept not just for people in business or politics but for everyone. There is a powerful statement of Jesus which goes"To whom much is given, much will be expected". And he made it quite clear that every human being is ultimately accountable on this basis. Which is a rather scary idea. Certainly the church in the past rammed this home in an unpleasantly threatening manner.So I find it more helpful to think of this accountability in terms of a story about our life which we each have to tell or can tell to someone whose judgement we deeply respect. Each one of us has a unique story, which only we can recount. Some are conscious that life has dealt them a very good hand indeed. For example, in his recent memoirs, the former editor of The Times, William Rees Mogg says that his earliest memory is of his third birthday standing on a hill overlooking his parents' house and feeling"I'm very much myself, am William Rees Mogg and this is a good thing to be". For others the experience's been very different.
“问责”也是一个重要的观念，这不仅是对商界或政界而言的，对每个人来说都是如此。耶稣有一句非常有力的警句：“凡得多者须多付出，别人多他的期望也高”。在这一点上，他非常清楚明了的表明，每一个人都必须负起责任。这是一个相当可怕的想法。当然，过去的教会总是充斥着这种威胁性的方式，令人不悦。 我们会因公正的判断而十分尊重一些人，而我发现，如果把“问责”作为我们人生中的一个故事来向这些人讲述，就会更有帮助。我们每个人都会有一个独一无二的故事，只能由我们自己来讲述。有些人会觉得，人生对他们不错。例如，《时代》周刊前主编威廉•李斯-莫格在他最新的回忆录中说道，他最早的记忆是在三岁时，当时他站在山上俯瞰自家的房子，感慨着“我就是我自己，就是威廉•李斯-莫格，这是再好不过的事情了”。而对于另外一些人而言，他们的人生经历大为不同。
A man suddenly started to turn up to services at the church where I was serving and when I got to know him he told me his history. He'd been abandoned by his parents and brought up by his grandparents who were addicts. His earliest memory is of them crawling around the floor. For years he did this and that including being a male prostitute. Then, when he told me all this he exclaimed"Out of this mess has come me." Wherever we've come from, what we end up with is a me with a story, what's made us happy and what's sad, where we feel we've made a contribution and where we might have failed. It's our tale, our account of ourselves, which we can tell, if not to a friend, at least to ourselves.
有一个人突然出现在我所在的教堂进行服务，当我去认识他时，他跟我讲述了他的故事。他自小被父母遗弃，是由吸毒的祖父母抚养成人的。他最早的记忆便是他们因毒瘾发作、一起在地上痛苦爬着的情景。许多年来一直如此，他还成了一名男妓。他告诉我这一切时大声的说道，“我就是来自这么一个糟糕的环境”。无论我们来自什么地方，最终，我们都是一个带有自己人生故事的人，这故事可能有喜有悲，我们会觉得自己做出了贡献或者失败的一塌糊涂。但这就是我们的故事，由自己讲述的故事，如果不能讲给朋友听，至少可以说给自己听。
