The righteous walk in integrity; happy are the children who follow them! Proverbs 20:7
Dear Friends in Christ,
The season of Epiphany is all about God revealing himself to the world—about Jesus showing who he is to others. The people around him experience Jesus, what he says, what he does, and they come to recognize that he is the Son of God. This Epiphany season, I want to write about the way that we both respond to God and discover God in living lives of Christian virtue. Virtue is not about passing a test or proving ourselves. Virtue is about living into our relationship with God and with each other in Christ with integrity. As we live more closely to our creator’s intentions and dreams for us, we find the wholeness that God wants for us. Not for our pleasure or our wants, but for that wholeness, following Jesus who is willing to suffer in order to love.
In the fall, I wrote here about Commitment and Devotion, about the choice to follow and obey Jesus as Lord, and the choice to stir our hearts to love Jesus and delight in the things that delight him. That is the bedrock and starting point for Christian virtue, for virtue is not about us, but about God. In the process of bringing ourselves before God, we must do so honestly and sincerely, willing to acknowledge the truth about ourselves and the world and God. When we live our lives with this kind of honesty, then our actions match our words and our words match our commitments. This is integrity.
Integrity, the word, implies undivided, integrated together, unified wholeness, where all the aspects of ourselves are in synch rather than in conflict. The person who walks with integrity is known as trustworthy, dependable, honest and true, whose words and actions and values all match. The person who walks with integrity has consistency, has firm feet on solid ground. Even if we disagreed with someone with integrity, we would at least respect him for that clarity and consistency instead of being misleading or unreliable.
Christian integrity means living lives that track with God’s desires for us, lives that demonstrate Christian ideals, Christian virtues, and Christian devotion. This means saying yes and saying no, being clear about our boundaries, and expressing those boundaries in love and with care. Christian integrity is about living life so close with God that whether we are at work or school or home or church, who we are remains consistent and on track with God.
Of course, Christian integrity includes confession and repentance. Part of integrity is awareness of where we lack integrity. None of us is perfect, and God loves us anyway, even being willing to suffer that we might be reconciled to him. So we delight in learning and growing with God and with each other in Christ, pursuing lives of Christian integrity. And as we do, we become more and more aware of God’s presence and action in our lives, revealing himself to us in new epiphanies each day. This is the true promise of integrity—not that we earn a good reputation, but that we grow closer to God, and help others to grow closer to God too.
May God bless you with this integrity, so that small epiphanies of his presence and love for you might grow stronger every day!
Yours in Christ,
-Tom