Integrity

I've had the privilege to be on the teaching side of a 6-week study on ethics (Doing the Right Thing by the Colson Foundation) with the college group at our church.  One of the principles we've frequently encountered over the course of the last month has been the idea of integrity.  I was reminded as we dove into the discussion that there is more to possessing integrity than simply having good moral quality, a positive reputation, or even honesty.  Integrity more than just a moral compass, more than just the intersection of belief and action -- though it is certainly not less than that.

Integrity is wholeness.

It's the secondary definition in Merriam-Webster, but it's ironically the more applicable when it comes to ethics.  If a boat's hull has lost integrity, it is full of holes.  If an argument has no integrity, it is structurally flawed.  By definition, integrity is completeness, soundness, stability.  It means being unified, unimpaired, of sound construction.  Waterproof.

James discusses this idea thoroughly in his epistle to the scattered believers in persecution.  In fact, spiritual integrity -- wholeheartedness -- is the main thrust of his entire argument.  Don't be double-minded, he says (1.8).  Don't separate faith and works into two separate entities, he pleads, because they are two sides of the same coin (2.26).  Don't doubt when you make a request of the Lord, he argues, but have faith that the One you are petitioning not only has the power to assist but also the desire to do so (1.6, 17-18).  Don't yield curses and blessings from the same mouth, he insists, because the practice of slandering is perhaps the quickest way to undermine a testimony of righteousness (3.10).

Don't be subdivided.  Be wholehearted.

There is no room for a Christian to have divided allegiances, even in the midst of such extenuating circumstances as the early church was enduring.  To serve two masters, to devote ourselves to Christ in word alone while our deeds are devoted to serving self, is to have no integrity.  To have no integrity means more than just a breakdown of moral responsibility: it's the inability to live righteously.  When society makes integrity more about the conscience or the ability to do good things, it becomes easy to bifurcate spirituality into religious components, but believers shouldn't separate civil service from the obligation that drives it.

Integrity, wholeness, is a crucial element to Christian living because it informs our hearts, not just our moral behavior.

"Like a tree..."

This (now ancient) song perfectly captures where I want my heart to be all of the time.
"We bow our hearts because we are free," the singer says.  What a concept: to bow in submission simply because of the fact that freedom has pronounced itself, simply because the One who freed us is deserving of our wholehearted worship.  Instead of inspiring wanton abandon, the freedom which God gives draws us to service.
"We lift our eyes to the cloud and the flame," the singer says, pondering God's faithfulness in the past, as well as his on-going promise to "guide our steps and restore us again" out of His limitless fountain of mercy.
"We delight in the law of Your Word."
Ah.  The heart of the matter.  Every other thought in this song hinges on this statement.
It reminds me of something a former youth leader told me when I was just entering my teen years.  I can't remember the context of the conversation, but it was during a routine Bible study that he looked at me and simply said, "I see in you a love for God's Word."
I remember the way that statement rocked me, then gradually settled into the fissure it had created, because it was so true.  God had blessed me with a passion for studying the Bible that my peers didn't seem to share.  It was His doing - I certainly had nothing to do with it.  That love I possessed was something I'd thought quiet and internal; in fact, I'd not truly identified it myself.  Yet it was something that couldn't help but express itself.
That hasn't always the case, of course.  There have been - and continue to be - times where reading the Word is a chore, the last thing on my list.  But if I could, I would harness that desire that my youth leader once discerned within me, that hunger for God's Word - so that it would become the perpetual sentiment of my heart.  When you find yourself in that state, everything else seems stale by comparison.

As the Psalmist wrote, "Blessed is the man who does not walk in the council of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers.  But his delight is the law of the Lord, and on His law, he mediates day and night.  In this way, he shall become like a tree planted beside streams of water, which yields its fruit and season, whose leaf does not wither."  The promise here is not comfort or wealth.  The promise is a nourishing, rich, and fulfilling understanding of God's Word: a love for His precepts that is self-compounding.  A love that produces righteousness.
"We delight in the law of Your Word."
Father, may it always be so.