INTEGRITY

[Society for Ethics in Nigeria]

Dear Members,

I ran across this article written by a baptist minister on the
Internet which I believe will be useful to members on the issue of
Integrity. I have taken the liberty though to edit it for brevity.
Please read on:

INTEGRITY - THE ESSENCE OF A WHOLE PERSON
Integrity - the word rings a bell deep within our soul. We long for
and indeed ache for persons of integrity. We live in an age that is
desperately in need of integrity. We live in a world that knows too
little of integrity. We succumb to summit fever - we wish to get to
the top - and we do so by whatever means necessary without regard for
the people we trample upon or the values we disintegrate along the
way.
It seems as if in our age we have become so busy enjoying life - or
trying to escape life - that we have failed to realize that we are
building our life. Our character -- who we are, what we are about,
and what we believe in and value -- is not automatically given to
us. Our character is forged in the fire of trial and then shaped on
the anvil of life as we are molded into the image of Christ.
Integrity demands that our actions meet our words, our lives match our
professions and affirmations. Integrity requires that we live up to
what we know and affirm to be true - no matter what the cost. We must
be people of integrity or nothing else matters.

1
To be a person of integrity means that we live up to the oath that all
witnesses are required to make when testifying in a courtroom. They
pledge to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Can we imagine what our world would be like if each of us were bound
to tell the truth in everyday life or face severe consequences? Why
is it so difficult for us to tell the truth? We are persons with
different loyalties and these loyalties sometimes come into
competition with one another. A businessperson is told to lie and
they do not wish to lie but they want to keep their job, they need to
keep their job, and without that job their family will suffer. So
they lie, blaming it on others and upon their need to be a "company
person," or a "team player."
Recently I ran across the following in Slate an internet news
magazine.

"The New York Times reported that one-fourth of public relations
professionals surveyed by PR Week admitted they have lied on the job.
Also, more than 60 percent said they had been "compromised in their
job" because a client had lied to them and they had presumably passed
the bad information along.

Integrity would demand that we tell the truth at all times because we
cannot live together in a world where we cannot trust each other. If
we cannot believe the press releases of businesses then how can we
judge them and their products fairly so as to invest in them? If we
cannot believe our political leaders then how can we trust them? If
we cannot believe our religious leaders then how can we trust them?
We cannot survive without integrity.

In our Matthew text Jesus is speaking to the issue of oaths. Oaths
were very serious and even sacred business to the Jews. The depth of
one's sincerity could be seen in what they swore by. If they invoked
the name of Yahweh then it was a very serious oath. Jesus said that
there was no need for oaths. Simply tell the truth. "Let your yes be
yes and your no be no." If we will mean what we say and say what we
mean then we will have no need for oaths of any kind.
Integrity is key to who we are as individuals, as a society, and
especially as Christians. There is an old joke about the IRS calling
a pastor and asking him if so and so in his church gave $10,000 the
year before. The pastor's reply, "I do not have the records before me
but if you will call back tomorrow the answer will be yes." We laugh
at that and yet as a pastor I have had individuals ask me to lie about
their giving when audited by the IRS.

We must be people of integrity or nothing else matters.

2
We must also tell the whole truth, i.e., tell all that we know of the
truth. This caveat in the oath guards against someone telling only
part of the truth and leaving out those details which would change the
way a particular testimony is interpreted. For instance, suppose I am
a witness in a murder trial and testify that Joe shot Jim. However,
if I leave out that Jim threatened Joe and indeed was advancing upon
him with an axe to split his skull then I have not told the whole
truth. I have omitted some very important details which could lead to
Joe being found innocent.
Integrity requires that we tell the whole truth without twisting the
story to my own particular way of thinking. Often as preachers we
will tell wonderful stories from the pulpit - stories which we share
and borrow from others. There is nothing wrong with this and in fact
it is very helpful to congregations and has improved greatly the
quality of preaching in our churches. The violation of integrity
comes when we tell a story first-hand, as if it happened to us, when
it did not. I have heard more than one preacher tell the same story
as if it were theirs when I knew good and well it was not. From that
moment on, no matter how gifted or wonderful that preacher may have
been, I could not listen to them. Why? In my book they lied - and
lying goes completely against the grain of all that we are trying to
do as ministers. If we do not have integrity as ministers, if you
cannot believe that we are honest in all that we say and do, then we
are in deep trouble as a church.

There is a story that came to me from a fairly reliable source which
illustrates the problem of integrity in ministry. One of our more
well known "big-pulpit" preachers in the SBC once came back into town
on a Saturday from doing a series of meetings. He was tired and so
called a fellow preacher and asked him to borrow a sermon for the next
day. The minister replied that he had just finished a series on
prayer and would be glad to share that. About two years later he was
stunned to pick up a book on prayer by the "big-pulpit" minister and
discover that his material had been made into a book. He confronted
the preacher and was told that he had forgotten that he had borrowed
that material. Two weeks later he received an expensive sport coat in
the mail as a gift from the man who had stolen his sermons. I hope he
returned it - surely his integrity was worth more than that!

Dr. Roger Lovette tells the story of worshipping at Princeton one
evening during their Theological Institute and hearing a minister
preach one of his sermons word for word. After the service he
confronted the minister who admitted that he had indeed stolen the
sermon. He agreed that he would have the tape erased from the library
and would write a letter of explanation and apology to the President
of the Princeton Theological Seminary.
Why could these not tell the whole truth before they were caught? Why
could they not have stated that so and so inspired the sermon I am to
preach today? None of us is a perfect repository of new ideas. All
of us borrow from each other - and that is good. However, when we
start to take credit for what belongs to others so that our star will
burn brighter then we have moved beyond the realm of truth. We must
be people of integrity or nothing else matters.
3
We must also tell nothing but the truth. This admonition insures that
when we tell the truth we do not add in our own little perspective as
if it were the truth when it really was not. When we tell the truth
but mix it in with lies then we denigrate the truth and make it
impossible for anyone to know the difference. As ministers of the
gospel, if we deliberately lie or mix the truth and lie together, then
how will anyone ever believe us? I have seen people lie with
sincerity on their lips and tears in their eyes. The old caricature
of Elmer Gantry as a preacher who lived one thing on the surface but
another behind the scenes is far more prevalent than we could ever
imagine.
A few years ago I had a very close friend in the ministry. We ate
lunch together just about every week and shared our lives intimately
or so I thought. He began to have problems in his church and I
defended him to the hilt against what seemed to me to be incredible
accusations concerning his integrity. His church became deeply
divided and he and all the staff eventually left. After he left I had
some conversations with persons who had been in his church and
discovered that most if not all of these accusations were accurate.
He did not have the degrees he claimed and indeed had lied to me as
well as others. I felt like I had been the victim of soul
infidelity. For the first time in my life I could imagine what a
spouse felt like when they discovered that their spouse was having an
affair. This person I trusted possessed great gifts and talents, but
little or no integrity.

Please hear me carefully. Most ministers are persons of utmost
integrity. I have used ministers as examples because I am one and
know the price we pay for our integrity. If we are going to restore
integrity in our world then it must begin with we who call Jesus
Lord. We must speak the truth in love to each other as Paul
admonishes in Ephesians and respect those who speak the truth back to
us, even when it is a truth that we do not wish to hear or with which
we disagree. Without integrity we will see our society crumble, our
churches fail, and our institutions and culture become morally
bankrupt. If we sell our integrity on the market for the almighty
dollar then what have we really done but shown ourselves to be
prostitutes and pimps? Any person who can be bought has sold
themselves too cheap, no matter what the price.

Honesty forces us to say that our ministers are decent, caring,
competent human beings who are doing their best - but we are not
perfect. We fail our Lord and each other more times than we would
like to admit. We grow tired, exasperated, and short-tempered - but
we usually do not stay that way for long. We each have gifts and
talents - but none of us has all the gifts and talents. I don't sing
well and Lanny doesn't preach too well - but probably better than I
sing. Will we hit a home run every Sunday - probably not - but we'll
do a lot better if you're praying for us and here to cheer us on.
Integrity forces us to say that the church - not just our church but
the Christian church as a whole - is often behind the times and on the
wrong side of many issues.
· We were on the wrong side of the race issue, of the women's issue,
and probably many more.
· Too often, as the flag debate has shown, we have walked more in step
with Southern culture than with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
· We have screamed to the high heavens against abortion - but have
done little or nothing to provide alternatives for girls with unwanted
pregnancies.
· We have preached and ranted about crime and obeying the law, but we
have done little or nothing to reach out to the poor and give them
hope, for it is the poor who commit most of the crimes about which we
rave.
· We have proclaimed Communism to be the work of Satan, but we have
kept our sons and daughters at home rather than send them abroad to
spread the good news of Jesus Christ.
· We have sung and proclaimed the work of missions but we have kept
our money and resources at home building our little enclaves against
the onslaught of secularism. Rather than fighting secularism out in
the marketplace and around this globe we have developed a fortress
mentality all the while proclaiming God's love for the world.
We must be people of integrity or nothing else matters.

CONCLUSION
Will the church regain its integrity? It had better - for if a church
does not have integrity then whom in our society will? We are a
democracy and in order for a democracy to work there must be trust,
there must be integrity across the board. Bertrand Russell once said:
"Without civic morality communities perish; without personal morality
their survival has no value." We need persons of integrity in all
phases of our life. If we are to regain trust in our institutions and
organizations we must have integrity. From the White House to the
Senate to Congress to our state and local governments we must have an
unimpeachable integrity. I want to be able to trust that those persons
in power possess full and unencumbered integrity, that they are doing
what they do and voting as they vote because they believe it to be
right rather than politically expedient. I would rather have in an
elected office a person with whom I did not agree but who possessed
ultimate integrity as opposed to one who agreed with me but whom I
could not trust.
Several years ago Hale Irwin went to tap in a two-inch putt at the
British Open. He whiffed it. Just plain whiffed it. He could have
said that he was just making a practice stroke and no one would have
questioned him. But golf is a game of integrity and Hale Irwin is a
man of integrity. As fate would have it Hale Irwin lost the
tournament by one stroke. That's right - the biggest golf tournament
on the planet he lost because he was honest.

Last week my own son Jack Ferguson reminded me of this lesson. On his
second hole of the State AAA tournament he went to back hand a two
inch putt so as not to step in the line of his playing partners. He
whiffed it. Just plain whiffed it. He could have said that he pulled
up and did not try to hit it and no one would have questioned him.
But golf is a game of integrity and my son is evidently a man of
integrity. He lost - would up tied for third. But you know
something? In my book he won - because he showed an integrity that
not all people would have possessed.
Integrity - truth telling and truth living. Let's get it right. We
must be people of integrity or nothing else matters.

Robert U. Ferguson, Jr., Ph.D.
Trinity Baptist Church
210 West South Sixth Street
Seneca, South Carolina 29678
May 14, 2000

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Regards
Whiskey, I.U.
President/National Coordinator