On integrity

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On integrity

Def. Integrity. The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.

Syn. honesty, probity, rectitude, honor, good character, principle(s), ethics, morals, righteousness, morality, virtue, decency, fairness, scrupulousness, sincerity, truthfulness, trustworthiness

There is a gigantic difference between people in regard to integrity. Some people can be counted on to do the right thing, to treat other people right, to act right. They are honest. It is just their nature to do the right thing. They know intuitively how they should act and they act as they should. And then there are other people who appear to be completely lacking in something. They seem totally void of integrity. They have no principles. Their god is money and for money they will do anything. They are selfish. They care about absolutely no one but themselves. They will deceive, lie, cheat, and manipulate for money. They will walk on others. They just don’t care about right or wrong. They are greedy, grasping. At least on matters of money, they are blind to right and wrong. (Unfortunately there are a lot of these later kinds who own businesses and where cleverly stripping people of their money is a highly developed art. For them, customers are not people — they are prey.)

Carmelia is the owner of a beauty shop. She has owned it for nearly 20 years. It is a very nice shop in an excellent location. She typically has six or seven people working for her and the shop gets a lot of walk-ins. But Camelia has a longstanding problem with keeping hairdressers. She complains that she hires someone, trains them, and then they, in their great ingratitude, leave taking a number of clients with them. There is a long, long list of hairdressers who have come, worked for a while at the shop, and then left. It has been going on for many, many years. What is going on? The problem is in herself. She doesn’t act as she ought in the management of the shop. When problems arise she doesn’t deal with them properly. She is not careful about what is right and fair in dealing with other people. And she may be somewhat ignorant and dumb and that may be part of the problem. As a consequence, her help, feeling they haven’t been dealt with fairly, quickly come to lose respect for her, dislike her, despise her. At bottom, she is selfish, cares about nothing except the bottom line — money. She doesn’t care about others, what is right, doing the right thing. Her own work is often careless, poor, sloppy, and sometimes bad. (Her personal standards are low. Doing poor work apparently doesn’t bother her. If she really cared she would take care to do better work or let another hairdresser do jobs she didn’t know how to do.) And she selfishly grabs the best, most expensive jobs for herself instead of sharing them with the other hairdressers. In addition, in the past she has shown a complete unwillingness to deal with an aggressive hairdresser who, by her aggressive ways and tricks, is bringing a lot of money into the shop. (She will allow them to get away with aggressively grabbing all the walk-ins instead of sharing them with the other hairdressers as they ought to do — while the other hairdressers are sitting around all upset.) Carmelia expects her hairstylists to work ten hour days, from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM, but doesn’t treat them as she should. If you hire someone, you have some moral obligations toward them. You need to treat your help justly and fairly. Camelia is lacking something very important — integrity. As a consequence of all this, people who come to work for her quickly see the situation, become upset and angry, and finally leave.

I have seen a number of cases of people who go to church, are active in the church, even go on church mission trips, whom I know to be highly dishonest people, people revealing a real lack of integrity. Often they are people lacking grossly in sexual morals. People who regard fornication, adultery, and homosexuality as minor, unimportant peccadilloes. People who just don’t appear to know right from wrong. How do you understand such a phenomenon? True Christianity is about living right, acting right, treating other people right; it is about upright, just, moral living. What is a person’s concept of what constitutes Christianity, if it is not living right? What kind of message is the preacher in their church preaching? Perhaps the problem is that the people have completely lost their moral compass to the extent that they no longer know what right and wrong are. They have perhaps become so morally depraved that they no longer know what virtue and goodness is. Maybe they think that being a Christian is only a matter of going through some religious ritual to qualify and then faithfully going to church. Their concept of God is perhaps just a very lenient, forgiving being who just doesn’t demand much.

I Cor 6:9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, 10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.

Deu 10:12 And now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, 13 To keep the commandments of the Lord, and his statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good?

Apr 2018