Insight for the Journey

Integrity is doing the right thing, especially when it costs us. Our lives speak powerfully for Christ when we live that way.

Now the only way you can really measure integrity is when a person is under pressure. When things are going well you can’t really measure integrity. The only way to measure it is to see them under stress, to see them in a situation where it’s going to cost them to tell the truth or do the right thing. Then you can tell.

In a story called “Catch of a Lifetime”, James Lenfestey tells the story of a life-changing experience an 11 year old boy had with his father. Every year his family would go up to their cabin which was on an island in New Hampshire. The cabin was out in the middle of a gorgeous lake. He loved to fish off of the fishing dock. One day he’s on the fishing dock, it’s the day before bass season opens. Now, as an 11 year old kid he’s not fishing for bass. He’s using worms and he’s fishing for sun fish and perch, things like that. He’s been fishing all day long, it’s almost sunset, and his dad comes out to join him. And they are fishing together off the dock. What a beautiful scene!

Pretty soon the sun is going down, the moon is coming out, it’s a beautiful New Hampshire evening. The moon is glistening off the lake. It’s a special time with a father and son in the quiet of the evening. Pretty soon the son gets bored. He decides he wants to practice his casting. Reaching into the tackle box, he takes out a silver lure, ties it on and begins to cast into the lake just for practice. And this goes on for a while in the quiet of the night… and all of a sudden, his fishing rod doubles over. He doesn’t know what he has but it is huge! And his dad has taught him how to work a fish slowly and skillfully to bring it in until the fish kind of wears himself out. And so he is practicing this, bringing the fish in. His Dad is so proud as he watches his son practice what he has taught him. As he raises the fish out of the water, it’s the most magnificent and the largest fish this boy has ever seen. It’s an enormous bass. And he says there in the moon light I looked at my dad, and my dad looked at me and without saying a word, dad reached into his pants pocket, pulled out some matches and he lit a match and checked his watch. It was ten o’clock. Two hours before bass season started.

The dad said “Son, we are going to have to put this fish back. The boy protested, “but dad”, the dad said “No son, there will be other fish.” “But dad, there won’t be other fish like this fish.” 

And the boy looked around, they were there all alone, nobody in sight on a deserted dock at ten o’clock at night. No other boats on the lake. And he thought, “No one will ever know when I caught this fish.” But as he caught his dad’s eye, he realized this was a non-negotiable. He took the fish and lowered him back in the water and with one swish of his powerful tail this enormous bass was gone forever back in the lake.

The eleven year old boy is now a successful architect in New York City. His dad has since died, but he still owns that cabin in New Hampshire. Every year he takes his son and two daughters there and he has taught them how to fish off that same dock. And he says, “I have never, ever caught a fish that magnificent again. But I still see that fish over and over again when as an architect I come up against a tough issue of integrity. Every time I’m under a deadline and I’m tempted to cut corners on drawings. Every time I come up with insight or insider information and I can make a lot of money in the stock market. Every time when it’s ten o’clock on the dock of my life and no one else is around” he said “I see that fish and I remember the lesson my father taught me that integrity is about doing the right thing especially when it costs you.”

Wow! I like that. And it’s true.

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Perhaps the greatest character quality for an effective Christian life is integrity. Integrity means that there is a wholeness about our lives, a thorough integration of our beliefs and behavior. We are consistent.

Paul uses a special word picture in 2 Corinthians 1:12 that has always meant a lot to me. He says, “Now this is our boast: Our conscience testifies that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially in our relations with you, in the holiness and sincerity that are from God. We have done so not according to worldly wisdom but according to God’s grace.”

Paul says look, “I know there are these critics that are attacking my integrity but I have a clear conscience and I’m telling you we have been on the up and up, we have been sincere, our motives have been holy and I’m promising you that I’m the real deal.”

The word translated “sincerity” in that verse comes from a compound Greek word that literally means “sunshine judged.” The ancients made fine porcelain vases that were very expensive. Sometimes when a vase was heated in the kiln, it would crack. Dishonest merchants would pour pearly white wax over the cracks which would hide the flaws unless the vases were taken outside of the dark shops and held up in the bright sunlight. It was only then, in the revealing light of the sun that the cracks would be obvious. So, honest merchants would advertise their porcelain “heilikrinos” — sunshine judged. In other words, without wax, no cracks, no covering of the flaws. That’s the kind of integrity God wants in us. When sincerity flow from our lives, there’s no deception or embellishing the truth for personal advantage. Paul says, “My life is sunshine-judged.” Can we say that of ourselves?

There’s a great book from 2001 called Lessons from the Top: The 50 Most Successful Business Leaders in America—and What You can Learn from Them by Thomas Neff and James Citrin. Through the guidance of Gallup Poll surveys and other sources, the authors studied who they felt were the top fifty business leaders in the US. Some of them are household names like Bill Gates. Some of the names you would not recognize. But based on the finest research available, these were deemed the top business leaders in the United States. The authors went to each leader, interviewed them and asked “What took you to the top? What has made you so successful?” And the fifty chapters in the book reflect those responses.

At the end of the book the authors collate everything they’ve learned from these fifty people, and they ask “What are the top lessons we can learn about being a successful leader? And they reduced it to six principles that all of these leaders had in common. Do you know what number one was?

The number one principle of becoming a great leader:
“To live with integrity and lead by example.”

Those are their words, not mine. Wow, think about that. The number one quality: to live with integrity and lead by example.

When disciples of Jesus live that way, we are letting our lives be our ministry.

Who do you want to influence? If you want to impact people for Christ, it is imperative that they believe in you and your integrity first. People usually buy into you before they buy into Christ. Your message will always be heard in context with your character.

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