Integrity - To Understand and Live It

Integrity. You’ve heard that “Integrity is doing the right when nobody’s watching.” It’s not about being a crowd pleaser, or working to get some sort of edge. It’s not agenda driven, other than we do the right thing for no other reason than it’s the right thing…and that’s not an agenda. That’s a conviction. It’s not about the cost of doing the right thing, or the long-term effects, or the short-term effects, or whether it will be popular or not so popular. It’s not about the response of a person, or an organization, or a certain cultural group, or some philosophical leaning, or anything like that at all. It’s doing the right thing for no other reason than it’s the right thing. That’s it.

Now, a lot of people ask what the right thing is. And in our culture, the right thing is too often based on the wrong criteria (or at least a terribly skewed one). In the culture today, the right thing is typically based on its level of acceptance, whether that’s in our social group, or among our co-workers, or in some organization that we’ve aligned ourselves with, or it fits the current cultural climate. Is it politically-correct, or tolerant, or does it embrace diversity (whatever that might be at any given moment). Often it’s these criteria that define something as the right thing. But the right thing is never defined by whether it adheres to an agenda or not, and it’s not driven by whether it happens to be popular or vogue or trendy. The right thing will always be bigger than any of that, and it will never succumb to any of our puny definitions and our fleeting agendas.

So, what is the right thing anyway? Well, here’s an idea that’s probably not all that popular or vogue or trendy. But here’s an idea. Jesus put it this way. He said, “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Now, maybe you’re not a religious person, or maybe you’re not really a people person, or maybe you’re not either of these. However, the principle is basically the same…am I acting out of love? Love is not tolerance. Love is not permissive. Love is not about diversity. It’s not about embracing some cultural ethic because it liberates people to chase what (in the end) is going to destroy them. It’s not about liberty defined as permission to indulge in behaviors that will do nothing but indulge us to our own demise. Love isn’t about any of that.

It’s about understanding that there are an immovable set of ethics, morals and values that in the current culture have been labeled as constraining, antiquated, irrelevant, out-moded, or any other number of other definitions that have been assigned to them. And love understands that we can incessantly label these ethics, morals and values in these ways, but those labels won’t change the fact that what these ethics, morals and values are trying to protect us from remains unchanged. Love will not give ourselves permission to destroy ourselves, even though we give ourselves permission to do that. Love understands that in the scope of this existence there are principles that if ignored or defied will send us to our own destruction. And while our culture would ignore such truths, love with not. And it is this stubborn refusal to ignore these truths, and to commit to abide by them regardless of the cost that are the hallmarks of this thing that we call ‘integrity.’ Integrity is the refusal not to love, despite whatever that might cost us. Be advised, being a person of integrity comes a great price. But the price of not being a person of integrity is infinitely greater.

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