Integrity

A false balance is abomination to the Lord: but a just weight is his delight.
Proverbs 11:1

….no good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly. (In integrity)
Psalm 84:11


Last night Juda & I watched “Flags of our fathers” a relatively new movie that was a collaborative effort of Clint Eastwood & Stephen Spielberg. I’d have to say this one isn’t for the faint of heart. Rarely have I seen such intense war scenes or graphic bloody images. I’m sure however the movie didn’t scratch the surface of what the reality of that battle was really like.

The film is about the battle for the small island of Iwo Jima, one of the most intense of the 2nd World War. It was a hot bubbling volcanic atoll that to this day still has active sulfur vents. During February & March 1945 in a 36 day campaign to take the island, a Marine fell to Japanese fire every two minutes. For 36 days every two minutes a Marine was killed or wounded.

Iwo Jima was the only battle in the history of the Corps. where the Marines suffered more casualties than the enemy. One of the “take-away” truths in this story was that when the men got into the heat of battle, there were only two types; “those who could be counted on and those who could not.” If a soldier was struck down, would those fighting with him have compassion & could they be counted on not to leave him where he fell? Would a man think only of saving his own skin? In a word, the quality they most treasured when death was staring them in the face was integrity, & you see it in spades in this movie.

By definition, integrity means, “soundness of moral principle and character, complete honesty and uprightness with no masking of intent.” Its opposite is hypocrisy.

Integrity demands that a person put on no false front, that he wear no artificial mask and that he play no deceptive role. It means that a person must be openly honest making certain that he conveys no false claims either in word or example.

Integrity excludes lying, stealing, cheating and every form of deception. It’s a broad umbrella word referring to one of the deepest and most cherished qualities of a worthy life. Integrity describes an individual who is worthy of complete trust.

It seems to me that integrity is a quality that everyone appreciates whether they be saint or sinner. A person with integrity will simply live each day as if it were their last, be peace-loving, stable, gentle and of good cheer, yet not oblivious to the gravity of life.

No amount of money can compensate for the lack of integrity. After all, what are we as human beings without integrity? Without it a man loses respect for himself, & at some point in his life will start to believe himself worthless. Integrity is a necessary trait in order to have lasting success in this world. Without it, we’re a house built on the sand that’s destined to sink.

Think about it; if a person’s word means nothing, how can they continue to function in relationships & how can they be expected to do business in this life in a meaningful way? Answer; they can’t. The cut of a broken promise or word goes so profoundly deep that it generally means the collapse of trust & ultimately the relationship.

One of the reasons integrity is such a powerful force is it removes most of the fear, tension & guilt from a life. A person of integrity will have nothing to hide & can achieve success in the true sense of the word.

I heard a story about two men during the depression that reminds me a lot of our world today. These men were so desperate for money they hired on with the Circus. One day their boss told them the Lion was sick so he needed them to get into a fake-Lion’s outfit & walk around the ring so the kids wouldn’t be disappointed.

The two men were extremely hesitant to do it but they needed the money so they suited up as a Lion. I guess one was in the front & the other in the back.

As they walked around masquerading as a Lion, all at once the steel door opened & a huge Gorilla walked in, hollering to the top of his voice & pounding his chest. This wasn’t supposed to happen. The boss said nothing about exposing them to a large, mean dangerous Gorilla. The men in the Lion suit started screaming to the top of their voices & it was apparent they were about the blow the whole act. So the big Gorilla swung onto the trapeze & came down right in front of the “Lions” face & said, “Shut up you idiots or we’ll all lose our jobs.” I’m sure you’ve met people like that; going through a charade as someone other than who they really are. I know I have.

We insist on integrity especially in areas of ultimate importance. We want our leaders to have impeccable character, we want corporations, and government, and schools, and the church to be institutions that are beyond reproach.

We demand complete integrity in the foods and other products we buy each day, in the way they are processed, packaged & distributed, and rightly so. We drive on highways and cross bridges every day with hardly a thought as to their safety, expecting them to be built with integrity. Recently a section of a bridge fell through in Minneapolis & it made World News programs. We expect such reliability in our man-made structures that when one fails taking several lives; it should be so unusual as to be freakish.

When we board a ship for a cruise we expect the ship to be watertight. Think about a submarine diving deep into the sea with hundreds of men on board that wasn’t built with integrity. Without integrity built into the vessel it risks sinking & that would simply be unthinkable.

I’m always comforted when I fly because I’ve read a lot about how the passenger planes are tested in wind tunnels & subjected to more pressure than they’d ever experience in the air unless hit by a tornado head-on.

Think of the integrity we require in our banks and financial intuitions. They are expected to be accurate with our accounts right down to the penny.

Sadly in America in the last few years we’ve seen a decline in integrity. Periodically a T.V show such as 60 minutes or 20/20 will highlight the dishonesty that is becoming common and how various businesses will take advantage of unwary costumers. When you stop to think about it, have you even heard the word integrity used much lately, and whatever happened to the old saying, “His word is as good as his bond?” I am convinced that we need to spend more time talking and thinking about the importance of integrity in America.

Remember these lines; “I did not have sex with that women!” Or, “Read my lips, no new taxes!” The truest words I can remember a politician speaking in the last few years was, ‘Folks, if we continue these policies, pretty soon that giant sucking-sound you hear in the south will be our best jobs heading to Mexico.”


Hype and exaggeration are routinely used to sell products. If you’re reading this you have a computer and are probably aware of how much you spend to have your P.C repaired. The price for repair is so excessive that we’ve learned to repair or own computer. Let me back up & say, we’re learning.

The scripture has much to say about integrity, actually using the word itself, --but more often the idea is referred to without using the word.

In the Bible there are many striking examples of the lack of integrity. One of the starkest is the story of Joseph in the Old Testament. His brothers were jealous of him because he was their father’s favorite so they basically kidnapped him & sold him to a caravan going to Egypt. Next, look what these boys do; they hatch-up a grand scheme to fool their father using animal blood on Joseph’s coat to make it look real.

Then these boys proceeded to convince their grieving father that his favorite son had been eaten by a wild animal. The low point, at least to me was when Jacob mourned many days all his sons and daughters went in to comfort him. Gen: 37-31-35. It’s difficult to imagine these brothers of young Joseph hypocritically acting like they are trying to comfort their father when all the time it was their act, and then their lie that caused his grief. This is deception at its lowest.

In the Matthew the 22nd chapter there’s an incident when the Pharisees showed a shocking lack of integrity. Verse 15 says,--Then went the Pharisees and took council how they might entangle Him in his talk…speaking of Jesus. Notice they were right up-front about their ugly motives & intentions which were to lead Jesus into saying something which would put Him in a catch-22; if He spoke up for paying taxes, the people would turn against Him & if he spoke negatively about taxes the Roman overlords would be on His back.

You probably remember the magnificent way Jesus threw that back into their laps by saying, Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s. Matt.22:21

In Acts 4:16-17 there’s another example of outright hypocrisy following the healing of the lame man at the gate of the temple. The religious leaders admitted that the miracle was great and notable and they couldn’t deny it. However not wanting the reality of the miracle to get too much publicity, they commanded the apostles to speak no more in Christ’s name. These selfish rascals tried to minimize the impact of what God was doing knowing all the time it was an authentic evidence of God’s power. Here we have zero integrity at work.


WHERE INTEGRITY TRIUMPHED

One of my favorite stories where integrity came to the fore is the story of Job. Job was a man who lived in a country called Uz. We don’t know where Uz was but we know Uz was. He was a man who had ten children, large herds and flocks and many possessions. One day his wall of protection was removed and calamity struck Job. He lost his ten children in one day. Can you imagine going to ten funerals in one day, funerals of your children? Pillage and destruction hit all his possessions & all at once he was no more than a pauper sitting in the streets.

Job’s wife said to him, - “Do you still maintain your integrity? Curse God & die.” At the end of it all Job didn’t charge God foolishly, maintained his integrity though the strongest persecution & the Bible records,…..And God gave Job twice as much as he had before.-Job 42:10

In the mid-seventies I was honored to be called to pastor a great church in Montgomery Alabama. I was also blessed while there to be able to lead the church in building a thousand- seat auditorium on the edge of the city on a five acre parcel of land.

When it was time to set the beams for the roof, we were considering whether to go with steel or wooden beams. Some thought steel was the best because it would be stronger than wood & surely it would be able to withstand fire better if, God forbid, we ever had a fire.

Our builder mentioned that fire-treated wood could better withstand a fire than steel, which was hard for we who were inexperienced to believe. He brought some pictures of two schools that had been destroyed by fire; one had steel beams, the other fire-treated wooden beams. Sure enough the pictures showed the steel beams, when exposed to fire had warped & twisted so much you could hardly recognize they’d ever been roof beams. But the treated wooden beams, though charred by the fire, were as straight as they were day they were put in place.

I learned a lesson from that experience. When the beams were set & bolted into the walls of the building then covered with roofing materials, they gave the building its integrity, its strength. You couldn’t look at the church after it was completed & tell how much integrity it had but we who had been there everyday of the building program, knew what it was made of.

This is a good illustration of the way we are as people. To be frank, some of the people in my experience who’ve shocked me the most with their behavior have been the ones I had deemed to have much more inner integrity than they actually possessed. Others whom I didn’t particularly feel were all that strong, when the pressure was on, they came through like champs. In other words, in matters of integrity, “what you see isn’t always what you get.”


Let’s sum it up.

People of integrity will do what they say they’ll do & there’ll be no deception & no subterfuge.

People of integrity will tell the truth with sensitivity & in an appropriate way.

People of integrity will be scrupulous & avoid falsehoods & exaggerations.

People of integrity will do right when no one is looking.

People of integrity will be open & honest, ashamed of nothing, hiding nothing.

People of integrity will have no false fronts & no mask.

People of integrity will fit the pieces of their lives together seamlessly, naturally & smoothly so that who they appear to be & who they actually are are the same.

They may hurt. They may suffer. They may have their moments but they will remain morally intact because they have nailed their lives to the cross.


John