Integrity
A substantial number of people outside the four walls of the church will eagerly embrace the faith of believers who model the honesty and integrity for which they long.
Disciplines of a Godly Man, by R. Kent Hughes
From a survey taken almost 35 years ago, likely worse today: only 13 percent of Americans said they find all Ten Commandments binding; ninety-one percent say they lie regularly – a large portion to parents and family; most workers admit to goofing off at least seven hours per week.
For $10 million dollars: twenty three percent would become a prostitute for a week, twenty-five percent would abandon their families, and seven percent would kill a stranger.
As for top executives: eighty percent say they have driven when drunk, compared to one-third of the general public; thirty-five percent cheat on their taxes; seventy-five percent take home company supplies for personal use, compared to forty percent of the general population.
Hughes offers many more statistics and surveys, but you get the idea. We are a nation without integrity (yeah, you knew that already). But the surveys indicate that there is almost no difference in responses from those who identify as Christian vs. those who do not!
Christians are almost as likely to falsify their income taxes, commit plagiarism, bribe to obtain a building permit, ignore construction specs, steal time. As society has accepted – even enforced – a moral relativism and subjectivist ethics…well, we all swim in the same mud, Christian and non-Christian alike (or at least how Christians behave).
More fundamentally, humans are fallen. Call it original sin, call it our natural condition after eating the fruit, call it whatever: no one can claim to live the life for which we were created by God. We are dishonest, we lie, we use our tongues to deceive.
Yet, as Christians, this is harmful to the Church:
…the church cannot prosper with deception among its members…
The Church requires integrity by those who claim to be in it – not merely avoiding blatant lying, but also avoiding hypocrisy. We are to speak the truth, but we are to speak it in love. Yet we lie to hide what we have done; we lie for the sake of a false peace.
A truthful spirit draws people to it, and this truthful spirit in the church will draw people to the church. We are to act based on principle, not on the expediency of the moment; we stand on our convictions even when it comes at a cost.
In other words, we are to live a life of integrity:
It is essential that we understand that the biblical idea of integrity has the root idea of completeness, that a person of integrity is whole.
The Latin “integritas” means wholeness, entireness, completeness. Integrity characterizes the entire person – both in his outer actions, but also inside. We see this from Jesus’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount: not merely our actions, but our thoughts.
Living a life of integrity produces character. It isn’t the other way around. As they say, practice makes perfect. Living such a life keeps us in clear conscience, allowing us to stand firm in all storms, to not be swayed. It contributes to a deeper intimacy with God, elevating the life of the believer – and also those around him.
We can hardly overstate the importance of integrity to a generation of believers that is so much like the world in its ethical conduct. The world is dying for us to have integrity!
I will modify that last sentence: the world is dying because too many Christians do not live a life of integrity and do not display it no matter the cost.
Conclusion
G.K. Chesterton said, “Morality, like art, consists in drawing a line somewhere.” We must let God’s Word draw the line, not culture.
Truth can become a habit if we discipline ourselves to it.
I have made up my mind
Something better awaits
Worth all you'll leave behind
Draw the line
- The Similitude of a Dream, Neal Morse