February 8, 2004
"The Meaning of Integrity"
Riley E. Jensen

William Sloan Coffin has a persistent fantasy about what happens to the idealism of college students.  It goes like this.  College-bound youth arrive on campus with ideals.  Their parents want them to have ideals; so do their teachers; so do they.  But they also have ambition; otherwise, they wouldn't be going to college.  It doesn't take them long to figure out that what American society promotes as belief and what American society rewards as belief are markedly different.

So there arises in the students' mind a painful question, "What am I going to park -- my ideals or my ambition?"  The usual answer (reached rapidly) is, "It would be a shame to abandon my ambition."  But what do you do with the ideals?  No student wants to put them out with the garbage.  So students find a closet where, well wrapped, they carefully store their ideals.

Then returning to what they now call "self-realization" they decide to go on to graduate work -- say to law school.  They do well, and upon graduation join the prestigious firm of Airdale, Airdale, Whippet, and Pug.  Their astronomical starting salary is exceedingly "self-fulfilling".  Shortly thereafter they meet the boy / girl of their dreams, get married, move to the suburbs, and have children.  And then they remember -- the ideals.  So they go to the closet, unwrap the ideals, turn to their children and say, "Here kids, play with these."

Now I am certain that very few of us recognize ourselves in such a cynical description.  And yet, when Jesus expands on the ninth commandment in the Sermon on the Mount, he understands that ideals can be elusive.  He understands that the commandment would never have been given if lying had not become a habit.  He understands that a person's word must be her bond.  He understands that the central issue in human relationships is always trust.

I.                 It is the Way We Were Raised

I recently heard a very good friend of mine described to me as a liar.  It made my hair stand on end and my temperature rise.  He could have been called a thief, or an adulterer, or almost anything else, and while I wouldn't have liked it, I would have left room for the frailties of the human condition.

But to call someone a "liar" -- well, 'them's fightin words'!  Because it meant that he consciously misrepresented himself and violated the trust others put in him.  It is deep in the myths of our upbringing that lying is among the most heinous of sins.  Remember Pinocchio?  Poor Pinocchio!  How embarrassing it must have been to have your nose extended every time you told a lie.

Very soon we will be celebrating the birthdays of two of our most famous Presidents -- George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.  Isn't it interesting that the most famous myths, which survive describing their stalwart characters, have to do with truth telling?  George just couldn't lie to his father about cutting down that cherry tree; and as a young store clerk, Honest Abe got his nickname by walking several miles to return a few pennies to a customer he had overcharged.

It is simply the way we have been raised isn't it?  Lying is wrong.  You shall not bear false witness because it rips apart that fragile fabric of trust which enables people to live together and society to function.  There are few things more devastating than to realize that someone has lied to you.  "I hate that man like the very Gates of Death who says one thing, but hides another in his heart", cries the anguished Achilles in Homer's Iliad. 

II.       The Concern of Jesus

The moral imperative is certainly clear, "You shall not bear false witness."  You shall not tell a lie.  This is what we teach our children and so we believe.  But something happens between the cradle and the grave doesn't it?  While our personal ethics seem so clear on this point, the world in which we live seems to be based more on mistrust than trust, on misdirection than straight talk, on misinformation rather than the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Move into the marketplace and the 9th commandment has suddenly been replaced by the 11th commandment, "let the buyer beware".  I can knowingly sell you a defective used car, but once the papers are signed that's not my problem; it's yours.

The thing I love about Jesus is that his ideals are grounded in the real world.  For he understood human nature.  He understood that people tend to live more according to their vested interests than the common good.  He understood that we love loopholes; we love to find ways to rationalize our particular spin on the truth.

When he speaks in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is addressing this mentality as he jousts with those Pharisees who were fond of finding loopholes.  Jesus knew that rabbinic law had divided oaths into two classes -- those that were absolutely binding and those that were not.  Any oath that contained the name of God was absolutely binding, and any oath that succeeded in avoiding its use was held not to be binding.

Lest we become too self-righteous, it must be noted that we continue this practice to this very day.  Have you ever served on a jury?  I had that privilege once in my life about ten years ago.  When we received the judge's instructions, we were cautioned a number of times to remember that real trials are not like what we see on TV.  However, there was at least one similarity.  As jurors, we're sworn in.  We were asked to place a hand on the Bible and to promise under God to deliberate faithfully according to the Constitution and the laws of our country.

As a jury we were reminded a number of times of the significance of testimony taken under oath.  We were reminded of the penalties attached to perjury which are not as onerous if one is not under oath.  But for the Christians that is a false dichotomy.  The point Jesus is making here is the one we know intuitively -- life cannot be divided.  God is a partner in all transactions whether God's name is mentioned or not. 

But we continue to find loopholes don't we?  There are white lies, and gray lies, and then there are the real bad ones.  Because we find ourselves classifying lies, let me lift up one category, which is particularly destructive -- lies about people that feed on prejudice.  Try a few of these on for size:  black people are genetically inferior; Jews control the wealth of the world; people on welfare don't want to work.

I am sure that none of us has ever perpetuated any of these prejudices but we have heard them and they are lies -- lies about the human condition, lies that deny the dignity of an individual, lies that lump people into faceless hordes, lies that feed on fear, and lies that divide people and destroy communities.

Sometimes people lie to gain an advantage.  Sometimes they lie to build themselves up at someone else's expense.  Often the lie is buried in gossip and so clothed with quasi respectability.  Whatever its form, it tears at the fabric of trust which is the foundation of productive community life.

Often the lies we have to deal with are not those told to us by others but rather those we tell to ourselves in the form of self-deception.  There is a story about a photographer who faced the issue of aging with his best customer. It seems that an attractive young woman had commissioned him to do her portrait once every 10 years.  Everything had gone well until she was 60.  Then she was disappointed with the proofs she received and more than a little indignant.  Charging down to the photographer's studio, she threw the proofs onto his desk, "This picture is not nearly as good as the one 10 years ago," she said angrily.

The photographer calmly looked at the proofs, shook his head thoughtfully for a few seconds, and then nodded sadly, "Well, ma'am, I'm sorry.  I'm just not the man I was ten years ago!"

III.    The Call to Integrity

We began this sermon with a reference to the fact that too often we sacrifice our ideals in favor of ambition.  Because I know that I am talking to a lot of ambitious people (and in fact I am one), I don't want to paint an either / or picture here.  Certainly one can be ambitious without shaving her ethics.  Certainly one can rise in power and influence and hold on to his integrity.

However, we all know that it is tough out there.  The power of self-deception can seem irresistible at times.  After my friend Bob had been indicted for price-fixing at the Weyhauser Corporation, he confessed to me how the most powerful lie in his life had been the lie of self-deception.  He confessed to me that his fraudulent activities on behalf of the company had been justified because he had convinced himself that his activities were necessary because they served the higher good of keeping his job.  That was the higher because his mental contortions convinced him that because it enabled him to support his family, he had no choice.

In Michael Crighton's novel, Disclosure, Meredith Johnson is a fast rising female executive who is willing to do anything in order to serve her ambition.  In some ways she is the stereotypical corporate barracuda who sharpens her teeth on the flesh of anyone who gets in her way as she climbs the corporate ladder.  Tom Sanders is in her way, not because he poses a threat to her advancement but because he is unwilling to participate in her web of subterfuge.

The book was made into a movie with the theme of sexual harassment in the workplace.  However, I also found it to be a fascinating commentary on the ethics of the marketplace; of how easy it is to get caught up in the practice of lying to ourselves and others -- in this case not necessarily to serve the higher end my friend Bob thought he was serving, but just to survive.

"You shall not bear false witness"; you shall not lie is a fairly obvious piece of ethical advice.  However, we all know that in the drama of everyday life it is easy to fall into a pattern of "shading the truth" and deceiving ourselves.  The call of Jesus in interpreting the ninth commandment is a call to a life of integrity in which what we say and what we do are congruent.

Before I finish, I want to leave you with an image.  Many of us have family heirlooms that have been handed down from generation to generation.  It happened that one family had as its treasure a very old vase that had been in the family for as long as anyone could remember.  It was kept proudly on the mantle where all could see it, and it often provoked wonderful conversations about the family history.

However, one day when the mother returned from a shopping excursion, she was met at the door by an obviously anxious teenage daughter who said to her, "Mom, you know that vase that has been handed down from generation to generation?"  "Yes, dear," said the Mother, "What about it?"  "Well, Mom, this generation just dropped it!"

Certainly one of the great gifts we pass down from generation to generation is our sense of integrity, our honesty, and the confidence that we are people who simply tell the truth -- not because it is convenient, not because it serves our ends, but because that is who we are.  Don't be the generation to drop it!

Amen.