MARKERS OF INTEGRITY

Whoever walks in integrity walks securely. —Proverbs 10:9

I grew up with a simple view of integrity. It involved a kind of Boy Scout, well-scrubbed notion of doing the right thing and not telling a lie. It was a start.

Integrity is much more than not telling a lie—it's not lying to myself. It's more than telling the truth—it's being true to who I am. To be a person of integrity is to strive to be true to the person I was created to be. It is to strive to be that person consistently across the whole of my life—in my spiritual life, in my marriage, in my family, in my vocation, in picking up the laundry, in buying the groceries, in playing a round of golf. It is to be who God formed me to be at my finest and most authentic.

If you know who you are, you'll know what to do.

Integrity involves wholeness and authenticity. It is living a life consistent with who I am within. It is living a life that requires my thoughts, my feelings, and my actions to be congruent, to be the union of who I am within—what I believe, who I understand myself to be, and how I live my life. Integrity gives rise to the clichés of "getting it together" and "having it all together." This understanding of integrity is in the same spirit as Mahatma Gandhi's words, "Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."

Integrity involves taking the personality that is mine from birth and integrating the values, virtues, and wisdom with which I identify and have come to claim. It always involves character, referred to in my dictionary as "moral excellence." I love that.

Integrity is a word with universal appeal. It is used in a variety of professions and arenas—yet always with that same understanding of wholeness and fidelity to principle.

At the other extreme of the idea of integrity is a word Jesus used so scathingly: hypocrisy. It comes from the Greek word hupokrites, once used to refer to actors—those who are pretending to be what they are not—those who are divided from their true selves.

Integrity means "whole, complete." Hypocrisy means "divided, acting." Hypocrisy is pretending to be something in my heart and soul that I am not.

Here's what's spooky: the actor often doesn't know he's acting. No, we don't, do we? The actor may be living out his social role, doing it the way it's always been done, the way he was taught—never engaging in his own discernment, never hearing his soul's voice, the call of God, the yearning of his own integrity.

He may be living a fine, upstanding life, making a significant contribution to his community, but the renewing vitality that comes from tapping into the wellspring of his soul is absent. He has a winsome smile, a hearty handshake, but as an actor living out a role, albeit unaware, much of his life's potential is left on the table. I won't quite say that the unexamined life is not worth living, but I will say the unexamined life is lessened and diminished in worth.

I have always loved how the church I attend encourages each of us to stay alive spiritually and theologically. We are challenged to think for ourselves. This church does not slam a theological stance down our throats. It encourages us to think, to discern, and to discover who God is in each of our lives. I suppose it might be easier if someone were to tell me who God is in my life, but it would have so much less meaning—and, without the struggle of discernment, less integrity.

One way of developing discernment at our church is a program called the DISCIPLE Bible study. This excellent study does not tell us who God is for us, but it helps us discover God in a way that is profoundly personal and meaningful.

I shall always remember the phone call received by an assistant pastor teaching DISCIPLE. The call was from a minister of another denomination asking about the study and requesting some materials on it. The pastor was glad to send them. A few days later the minister phoned again. He was extremely complimentary about the quality of the study, saying that the materials were beautifully presented and that the questions in each section were so clear and on point. There was only one problem, he said: "You forgot to send me the answer book."

The answer book to many of life's most vital questions can be found only on the journey to the depth of one's own heart and soul.

I think of the parable of the younger son who left his father and his home with his inheritance (see Luke 15:11-32). It's as familiar as parables get. Perhaps it's familiar not just because we've heard it so often, but because we've lived it so often.

With fresh eyes, let's look at him, this "prodigal son" as he often is called, and let's agree not to be too tough on him. He simply wanted to experience life. Did he intend to crash and burn? Of course not. Just like the rest of us, he was a kid trying to grow up—experiencing life, trying things out, discovering who he was. And in so doing, he made some mistakes; some were serious mistakes. He went for what felt good, what he thought would make him happy.

In trying to discover who he was, he became disconnected from what he was. Through a brilliant use of irony and humor, to show how truly disconnected this fine Jewish boy had become, Jesus puts him in a field feeding pigs—hardly a rung on his intended vocational career ladder.

I've certainly been there. Fortunately, no pigs were involved. I began with the best of intentions, launching into some new venture only to discover that it wasn't me. It may have been a fine path for someone else, but not for me. I didn't fit. I didn't belong. It didn't have integrity—for me.

So there this young man in the parable sat, perhaps on a fence, overlooking a field of pigs, staring down at a handful of corn he was about to throw—about as lost a soul as you will ever find, about as disconnected from himself as anyone you will ever see. And there, Jesus said, he "came to himself" (verse 17). Suddenly it wasn't corn the young man was seeing; it was a mirror. He looked into his heart of hearts and remembered who he was.

He came to himself. He went from being divided to being connected. It was a moment of integrity. He got up, dropped the corn on the ground, and walked straight into the life he had been created to live.

If you know who you are, you'll know what to do.

This younger son is going to have to share some room on that fence with each of us from time to time. Sometimes we get lost. Sometimes badly. We forget who God created us to be. Sometimes not so badly. It just feels like we have missed a turn.

Into my office walks a middle-aged woman. A wonderful person in so many ways, but if you look carefully into her eyes you can see her emptiness. How does that saying go? The lights are on, but nobody's home. It's called depression. She started out with so many dreams and so much hope ... but something happened.

Maybe she got too caught up in letting society define her, or perhaps her husband leaned on her and pressured her to be who he wanted her to be. Somehow her spirit broke or her priorities shifted, and she has found herself sitting on that same fence alongside the prodigal, wondering what happened, wondering where she went awry.

The fellow on the fence went awry looking for a shortcut to feeling good. Often that's the wrong turn we all make. The question in faithful living isn't "Does it feel good?" but "Does it feel right?" Now, those times when what feels good is the same thing as what feels right, we've got it made. But when they are two distinct choices and we've got to choose one or the other, then integrity says to go with what feels right. Paul could not have put it more clearly: "Do not be weary in doing what is right" (2 Thessalonians 3:13). When you are faced with such choices, you have to ask yourself, Does it have integrity? Is it based on a life lived with character?

Jesus underscores the importance of this young man's self-discovery, as he has the father saying to his other son, "This brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found" (Luke 15:32). So much of life and its vitality and meaning are dead when that precious connection with heart and soul is lost.

So integrity means my life is whole and is congruent. But what is involved in achieving that authenticity? Clearly there are no quick-and-easy steps. There is no shortcut. Yet I believe there are some markers each of us will find along the way. There are some tasks required in order to be successful in engaging this journey.

Integrity requires that

I discover who I am.

I claim who I am.

I live who I am.

I DISCOVER WHO I AM

Integrity—living with character—first requires discovering, discerning who you are, asking yourself:

What do I value?

What do I believe?

What is important?

What is precious?

What is sacred to me?

Integrity involves discerning who you are, and then where— and to what—you feel called at this moment in your life. Integrity implies that I have a core, a spiritual center in which I am grounded and from which I live out my life. It often means to pause in the quiet, with everything electronic turned off, to listen, to discern, to "be still, and know" (Psalm 46:10), believing there is a voice of wisdom to be heard.

If you know who you are ...

I wish issues of integrity involved only choices of right versus wrong. Those are relatively easy. Or at least they are clear. It's when life is lived in the gray—as most of life is—that it gets complicated. The choices are more subtle. The choices are between "right" and what is "right for me." They require reflection, self-knowledge, and prayerful self-examination. I must pause and listen, ready to learn, to receive. Educator and author Parker Palmer said it well: "Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you."

I was once asked to speak to a group of high-school girls who were mostly older teens, soon to go to college. The topic was sexual ethics. The most important idea I wanted to tell them was, "Know who you are. You alone can discern that. Know who you are before your date rings the doorbell. Don't make it up after a few beers and the hormones are raging. Take the time to get to know you and your values. Listen to your heart and discover what you really believe. Know who you are before you answer the door."

The word authentic frequently is used, sometimes almost synonymously, with the word integrity. It is interesting that its origin is from the Greek word authentikos, which means "one who acts on his own authority" (emphasis added). I cannot successfully define myself from outside myself. That definition is between God and me. Those outside me can inform me and even inspire me but never define me. I must discern that role for myself.

I believe this is what Jesus meant when he said, "A man shall leave his father and mother" (Mark 10:7). Men and women, having reached their own adulthood, should no longer be looking outside themselves for authority figures to direct their lives—no longer living out of the expectations of others. They will have moved beyond peer pressure influencing them into some herd mentality. They will have matured and claimed their own sense of authority within as they continually discover who God created them to be and about what God calls them to be.

It's not unusual for a concerned parent to stop me in the hall before church, as this man does. He tells me that over the Thanksgiving break he and his wife have learned that their daughter, a college freshman, has not been to church a single time during her entire first semester.

I ask him, "Okay, Bob, now what's your problem?" "My problem is she hasn't been to a single church— Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, or otherwise." With a slight smile I say to my friend, "I understand that, but what's your problem?" About that time he says, "I thought you were a minister!"

I reply, "I am, Bob, and you don't have a problem. She's a freshman in college. She's not 'supposed' to go to church. (I think it's in the unofficial college student's handbook somewhere.) But don't worry. I know Susie, and she'll be back. It may be next month or next year or after she gets married or has her baby baptized. But she'll be back. And when she does, there will be an important difference. She'll be coming to church not as a girl who is supposed to, but as a woman who chooses to."

The apostle Paul wrote, "When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways" (1 Corinthians 13:11). I am who I am as an adult because that is who I have discovered myself to be, feel called to be, and have chosen to be.

Sometimes that discovery is easy. It slaps us in the face with its clarity. Other times, God is so frustrating with that "still small voice" (1 Kings 19:12 RSV).

Discernment: that's our first task.

I CLAIM WHO I AM

Having engaged in this discovery of who I am, I must then intentionally claim what I have discovered to be important, precious, and sacred for my life. These are the values I choose to be "about" in my life. It is one thing to know them; it is another thing to commit myself to them. If I am to live with integrity, I must choose to be defined by what I believe to be true for me.

Many values I hold are those I was taught, those shared by my community. Yet the fact that they are deemed by those whom I respect to be worthy and important simply isn't enough. These values had to become my values. They are mine only when I claim them as mine. Lynne McFall puts it well: "One must speak 'in the first person,' (to) make one's principles, conventional or otherwise, one's own."

I must make clear, conscious choices in defining who I am. Often we hear of the debate between nature and nurture, the question of which is the most important determinant in who we become as persons. I have always felt there is a third factor that has been left out of the debate: choice. I am both blessed and limited by my genetic wiring and my upbringing, but then I have great freedom in what I choose to do with these raw materials nature and nurture have given me. That choice is crucial.

Knowing who I am is the key to the first step, but it is not enough. Jesus spoke with those who knew who they were called to be, but instead of claiming it, some "went away grieving" (Matthew 19:22). Knowing is not enough. I must be intentional in committing to be the person in my heart of hearts I know I am at my deepest and finest. This takes an awareness and makes it into a decision.

I LIVE WHO I AM

Having discerned who I am and having claimed intentionally what I believe to be true for me, it is time for me to act—it's time to give traction to what I have discovered. Stephen Carter says that integrity begins with, first, "discerning what is right and what is wrong" and then "acting on what you have discerned, even at personal cost."

I was sitting in the Atlanta airport, waiting at Gate 32 to board a plane. Zones 1 and 2 were called. I stood, picked up my briefcase, and walked toward the line that was forming. As I passed a row of seats I heard a girl ask her mother, "Do I stand up now?"

Something about the girl's voice got my attention. She was developmentally disabled. I kept walking, got in line, and boarded the plane.

I took my place in seat 7C. After I settled in, I looked up. There was the girl, coming down the aisle by herself. I was surprised to see that she was a teenager—she was so petite that she appeared almost frail. The seat in front of mine was hers.

Then "Animal House" boarded. A group of college students came down the aisle and took several rows of seats across from us. They were laughing, joking with one another, and having a great time. But above all else, they were being cool. Cool, you understand, was imperative.

Finally, the plane was pushed back and began taxiing. Ten minutes later the pilot announced that we were cleared for takeoff. He made the final turn onto the runway.

I looked up and saw that little head with the brunette hair lean partway across the aisle. I heard the girl say to the college student across from her, "I get real nervous when we take off. Would you hold my hand?"

My eyes were riveted on the young man to see what he would do. Holding a stranger's hand is not cool. After an initial nervous blush, he began to smile, and halfway across the aisle came that kid's big ol' hand. The girl's tiny hand grabbed it and squeezed.

There they held hands, across the aisle, as our Delta jet was airborne.

There they held hands as all his friends sat in disbelief. There they held hands as I stared, also in disbelief, and memorized that sacred moment. I knew I was witnessing a sacrament.

The plane's wheels clunked into place beneath us. She let go of his hand and said something to him. The engines were now so loud, I couldn't hear.

For the next hour and a half he read his Harry Potter book. She listened to her iPod.

Then the plane descended as we approached Shreveport. In those few moments, as we anticipated the jolt of the runway, this young man turned to the girl and—as I read his lips—asked, "Do you need to hold my hand?"

Apparently she said, "No." He smiled and nodded.

Having discerned who we are, it is then time to act. It may not be cool for a young man in college to hold hands with a girl who is disabled, but he was responding to a voice within him, the voice of his integrity. Living with integrity requires clarity of purpose, commitment to values, and then courage—the courage to live what we believe even at personal cost.