Integrity

Most people drift through life unsure what the purpose of their life is. Most think there are no real answers to such questions. It is not surprising

General Dean was captured by the Chinese communists during the Korean War. He was told that he was going to be shot within the hour but he could write one letter. He wrote to his son, saying,

“Son, remember the word is integrity.”

He could have said,

“Son, get all the education you can for today’s world belongs to the educated person.”

Alternatively he could have said,

“Son, get all the pleasure you can because you only live once,” or “Son, go and make a fortune because money can buy power and happiness.”

But he chose to emphasise integrity for good reason.

Michael Ramsden is often asked to speak to groups of businessmen and government bodies. The most common subject he is given is ‘The Need for Integrity’. Approximately a quarter of people in the United Kingdom will experience a mental health problem each year. In England, a sixth of people report experiencing problems such as anxiety and depression in any given week. Most people now consider we are here by chance and this means there can be no real meaning to life.

“The Diary of Antoine Roquentin’ is a book describing the battles of an isolated young man who was wrestling with the question, ‘Why am I here?” He ponders a chestnut tree and then declares,

“I have discovered the key to existence!”

He concludes that the world of reason and ethics is simply an intellectual construct in people’s heads and in contrast we must just accept the world as it is, a world with no reason, justice, meaning or rationale. He concluded that experience and reason could not fit together; it is trying to impose of the world of experience something that isn’t really there. However this conclusion made him feel sick, sick at heart and even more isolated from those around him. When this book was published in English it was given the title, ‘Nausea’. The author was the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre.

A major problem with this amoral approach is that it does not ring true to our experience. We instinctively feel that there is right and wrong, that ethics are real, that life has a purpose, that the need for community and friendships are part of our makeup. Beauty is real, truth is real. It is no coincidence that when the FLN (National Liberation Front) in Algeria was fighting for independence from France (1954-1962) many horrendous atrocities were committed. Sartre instinctively felt this was wrong and spoke out publicly against such things. However such statements were contrary to his philosophy of meaningless and no right and wrong. He never wrote a significant existential book after this!

If there is no meaning there is no basis for right behaviour. Coercion may be used to keep people in line but that line will be the wishes of the person in charge which may have little to do with what is right.

The fact is that when people cease to behave with integrity others soon notice and there is a loss of trust. All relationships, whether in business or in families depend on trust. To destroy trust is very serious, whether this is by my individual actions or by saying what we think others are doing wrong. It is too easy for relationships to be destroyed by whistle blowers who pretend they are acting for the public good. Societies can be destroyed by secret police1

The instinct for good

When discussing issues of right and wrong with any group of young people there is nearly always an altruism in their thoughts. They want what is right and best for people. The problem comes when we try to live this way. We have the ideals but pressures on us mean that as years go by we increasingly find we have compromised with our ideals to satisfy ourselves. This occurs not only in sexual and financial areas of our life but also in relationships. We put ourselves at the centre to the detriment of ourselves, our families and our society.

Few people have realised what the opposite of integrity is. It is ‘disintegrity’ or ‘disintegration’. When people stop doing what is right before God their own life, their family life and eventually their societies life will begin to disintegrate. There is a strong link between the two.

Guilt occurs when people behave against this instinct to do right and it can be so destructive. One person wrote,

“I feel I don’t deserve to be here because I let everyone down. I just want to slink into a corner and keep my eyes on the floor . . . Or maybe just quit and go home? I even feel guilty about feeling guilty.”

All of us, if we are honest, will admit to being a moral failure. Another person wrote,

“But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge. I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?”

When this was read to a group of senior business men they all empathised with the writer who was clearly so perceptive about the problems they all faced. They knew what they should do but just couldn’t do it. In Greek Mythology Sisyphus was a selfish, deceitful king and founder of ancient Ephyra, that later became Corinth. He was punished in Tartarus (hell) to an eternity of rolling a boulder up a hill and then watching it roll down to the bottom again.

When a person realises that their integrity has failed they need someone to talk to who can help them and give them hope of relief.

It is this realisation that we are not people of integrity that can bring about a radical change. We cannot undo what we have done, but it is possible to be forgiven. That is the Christian message, yet how few understand this. The above quote was in fact written by the apostle Paul who summarised the human dilemma. Paul went on to describe where he found the answer.

“The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.” Romans 7:25 (The Message)

Marghanita Laski was a well known humanist broadcaster and journalist. In a televison discussion with a Christian she made a very candid admission saying,

“What I envy most about you Christians is your forgiveness. I have no-one to forgive me.”

Her conclusion was not true of course. God did enter this world as a human being to do just that, to die to take responsibility for all we have done wrong and to rise again so we could have the power to live a new sort of life. The condition God demands is that we acknowledge our guilt. This is harder than it sounds. We naturally hate acknowledging that we are wrong. Just ask a child to say sorry to their sister they have wronged and see how he squirms and looks away. We can feel sorry for the effect wrongdoing has had and say ‘I’m sorry you’re upset’ but that is not an apology. An apology is to say “I am sorry, I was wrong.” When we have acknowledged our guilt before God he expects us to start a new life, living for Him. The more deeply we understand how much we have been forgiven, the more we want to follow our Saviour.

To have my mind set on being a man of integrity will result in my becoming much more integrated as a person and with my family. Real happiness is to be found in living as God wants but how easy it is to be distracted to seek temporary pleasures. The French mathematician and philosopher, Blaise Pascal wrote,

“All men seek happiness”,

but the problem is that we are far too easily pleased.

The English writer, C.S.Lewis said in his remarkable sermon, ‘The Weight of Glory’,

“If we consider the unblemished promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the gospels, it would seem our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak. We are half hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday by the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

How easy it is to miss out on the glory God wants us to experience, both now and in eternity because we have failed to value what he values more than anything else.

BVP