Psalm 25:21 NIV
May integrity and uprightness protect me, because my hope is in you.
Recently the wild child Lindsey Lohan was in the news because she was named in a lawsuit alleging she stole a fur coat from a friend whose party she was attending. Now, the most important question for us is not whether she did it or not but whether that same sort of absurdity is in us too. Of course it makes no sense whatsoever for this multi-millionaire actress to go about stealing coats. But is she alone in her fractured state? Is she the only one of us who does things that don’t make any sense, who say things we can’t believe we said, who act nothing like we are? The other day I was driving along and someone cut in front of me. This little housewife when she made her lane change easily could have slid behind my car but must have decided in some dark part of her soul that it was crucial she take from me my lead. Angered by the idiocy of her act, I did an equally absurd thing. I swiftly changed lanes and made my move to get back my spot on the road. Of course I immediately got trapped behind a slow moving truck and was forced, if I were to make my left turn, to cut in front of the woman immediately behind the person I was trying to conquer. This infuriated the woman I cut off, and after I slipped into the left turning lane, she, as she passed by me cocked her head back to give me the evil stare down. The idiot I sought was now the idiot I was.
There are several Lindsey Lohans in scripture that acted absurdly. In the Old Testament is the barely remembered servant of the prophet Elisha. Gehazi was Elisha’s right hand man and the witness of spectacular miracles. But it was one of those miracles that was his undoing. When the Aramean, Naaman came to Elisha begging for a cure from his leprosy, Elisha gave the general a perplexing prescription. “Go” he told the foreigner, “and dip your whole body into the Jordan River seven times and your flesh will be restored.” Naaman thought Elisha was clueless and at first refused to do what he was told, despising the soupy Jordan. But when Naaman’s servants advised him to give it a try, he trooped down to the Jordan, dunked himself seven times and to his amazement came up out of the water totally healed. Stunned and eternally grateful to the prophet, Naaman and his retinue returned immediately to thank Elijah for what he had done Gehazi the servant stood by in shocked silence as his master Elijah turned down Naaman’s offer of a million dollars in gold and silver as a gift for the healing.
Faithful servants don’t often betray their masters but Gehazi could not stare down all that gold and silver without making a go of it. Surreptitiously Gehazi slipped out and chased down Naaman.and lied to him that his master Elisha changed his mind and actually did want some of the silver and two changes of clothes. Naaman immediately obliged and Gehazi rushed home with his cache. Finally returning to Elisha with his treasures safely hidden away, Gehazi was shocked to learn that Elisha already knew about his covert trip to Naaman, knew about the story he made up to get the silver and clothes from him and knew he had his loot hidden away at home. Gehazi’s punishment was swift and heavy handed. The leprosy Naaman had just escaped fell upon Gehazi. Could Lindsay Lohan top that?
A second Lindsay Lohan is actually a pair of them…the infamous Ananias and Sapphira. We know their story all too well. When many of the early Christians were selling off property and giving the proceeds to the Church, one of the couples in the group thought they would join in the extravagance. No one told them they had to give anything; there were no rules about sacrifice and generosity in the Church. But Ananias and Sapphira decided they also would sell a field and give the proceeds to the church. The catch though, was that they wanted everybody to think they had given all their profits when in fact some of the earnings they were keeping for themselves. Again, there was no rule that said they couldn’t do this, keep part, but why did they lie about it. It was a disastrous Lindsey Lohan moment. God immediately struck each of them dead when they lied to Peter about their charity.
A third Lindsey Lohan is the Apostle Peter himself. When the Christian community made its thrust into the non Jewish world and started winning Gentile converts to Christ, the Jewish Christians were thrown into a tizzy. What kind of expectations should be placed on these Gentile believers? Should they have to keep the Jewish Law too? Would they need to eat only Kosher? What about the Sabbath and circumcision and Feast days and morality? What were the requirements for good Christian living if you weren’t raised Jew? Finally it was settled that only four Jewish restrictions would remain. No eating meat of strangled animals, no drinking blood, no feasting on food offered to idols and no sexual immorality. That was it. The sum total of Jewish requirements Gentiles had to keep to remain good Christians. Peter though still had friends who thought this wasn’t enough. Gentile believers really had to be Jews if they were to be accepted. On the other hand, he had good Christian friends who were Gentiles that thought the entire Jewish legalism thing was rubbish. When Peter was with them he was fine with the freedom of Christian faith. But then Christian Jewish legalists came to town and Peter slithered away from his Gentile friends because he was afraid of what his Jewish friends thought of them. A Lindsey Lohan moment!
What is the point of connection between these three incidents? Each time someone did something ridiculous that was completely out of character and totally unnecessary. Gehazi needed neither the silver nor the clothes, Ananias and Sapphira didn’t even have to sell their field if they didn’t want to do so and Peter had no reason to be afraid of the opinions of his Jewish brothers. Integrity is not just moral character; it is defined as wholeness, as unity, as the state of being complete. The Greek word most often translated integrity in the New Testament is “alethia”; it describes the condition of truth, or trueness within. It is what the Pharisees, who were trying to trick Jesus into condemning Caesar’s taxation, had to say of Him…Jesus was a man of “alethia” or trueness. Integrity is more than simply doing the right thing; it is true character spilling out into common activities.
Integrity is a frequent theme in the Old Testament, often found in the Psalms and Proverbs. The word most frequently used to express integrity is the Hebrew term “Tome”. It describes completeness, fullness, simplicity and innocence. Tome is a state of maturity that develops into a lifestyle of innocence brought on by a whole-hearted walk with God. David spoke of integrity as a source of protection, a sort of castle where he could find safety. May integrity and uprightness protect me, because my hope is in you. Psalm 25:21 NIV Integrity is etched in God. You cannot divorce the two from one another. A person without God is a tangle of turmoil, of competing values and concerns. The one housed in God, living within Him has wholeness, purpose, direction. Proverbs 10:9 expresses this perfectly. The man of integrity walks securely, but he who takes crooked paths will be found out. Literally, the one walking within integrity walks peacefully and confidently but the one taking crooked paths is made known..or uncovered.
Integrity is not what you do, it is who you are. It is a state within rather than a set of actions without. And yet, one is never a person of integrity without the straight paths being taken. Now the mistake many make in trying to lay out a plan for taking up integrity is setting a list of rules or standards that plant you in a moral Christian box. Integrity is not cheating on your wife, not stealing from the 7/11, working hard and earning your salary, avoiding gossip, living up to your promises, paying your taxes and setting high standards of what you watch and read. Integrity for most is a do list that if you are reasonably successful gives you permission to rip anyone else who isn’t your moral equivalent. It is the Christian equivalent of the Hindu caste system.
Now lest you think I am implying that integrity means a sort of free-wheeling whatever goes Gnostic moralism, that is not so. Integrity is a change in me that is unmistakable and discernable.
But it isn’t me making me. It is God reshaping my life into His image. Let me share a scriptural example. When Solomon insisted that we aren’t to go around righting all the wrongs done us, he wasn’t just talking about personal revenge. He was describing a revolutionary way of life that lives by faith. Do not say, "I'll pay you back for this wrong!" Wait for the LORD, and he will deliver you. (Proverbs 20:22 NIV) The Lord is insisting that whatever you need to be secure will be done by Him to you….The key to this is that God does not promise to bomb blast your enemies, your problems, your messed up work plans. He will instead rescue, or better, save you. Take matters in your own hands and you might quite well blow up your enemies and everyone who aggravates you but there will be no deliverance, no “saving”.
There is one more scripture that defines integrity. All a man's ways seem right to him, but the LORD weighs the heart. (Proverbs 21:2 NIV) This may be one of the most disconcerting verses in scripture. It insists that every road we take is a straight one to us…we see nothing crooked in our ways. But God knows what it really is in us. We can be and often are terribly misdirected, thinking we have gotten it right…what we’ve said, how we have reacted, what we decided, but we have veered horribly off course. Imagine taking a trip to Hawaii in your million dollar boat and winding up in French Guyana or Manteca. Worse yet, being there and not knowing you aren’t even close to Hawaii. That is what each of us do day after day, year after year with our integrity because we don’t know our heart nor the real force behind our actions. Without the heart being straight, the integrity of the journey is crooked and will land us nowhere and anywhere both at once.
How do I stop being a Lindsey Lohan, having rational, logical explanations for nonsensical behaviors? My heart must be shaped by God. Proverbs 19: 1 is a bit of a twisted, unbalanced verse if you don’t get what integrity is. A literal translation is, “Better a poor man of integrity than a dullard of twisted speech.” The contrast would seem to be the poor man and a rich man or a wise man and a fool but what we find is that neither is true. The opposite of a fool is one made poor. Not every poor man lacks money but every poor man lacks. This is the fundamental rule behind integrity. Integrity is built by me being made empty and letting God fill me. Why is it so crucial that I don’t try to fix those who frustrate me, settle matters with those who harm me and square off all the difficulties I face and avoid them. It is because when God makes me poor, whether it’s through what others do to me or through circumstances that make life hard, I am developing integrity. Integrity is God, percolating within me and giving me a rebuilt heart and will.
There are four commands that seem completely unreasonable to the crooked man. They are: do not divorce, do not fight back , do not hold grudges and do not judge. All four are a direct assault on self-will and the crooked heart. All four require I give up my right to do as I wish and require I trust God to make right my messy life. There is a fifth hub though within integrity. A heart can not ever be made whole unless it stops complaining about what God brings.
There is a fascinating little vignette in Job 2 that is unfortunately most remembered because Job’s wife encouraged him to curse God and die. Yet the most important part of the entire two part dialogue is her question to him, “Are you still holding on to your integrity?” Job’s response is most enlightening if we too want to have whole lives, if we want our inner heart to be free of Lindsey Lohan urges. He asks pointedly, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” Here is the key to integrity. The Hebrew word receive is rooted in the idea of being led by. The gist of this is that integrity flourishes within us when we let God lead us with the good things, the pleasant things and we also let Him lead us with hat we deem evil, ugly, unpleasant, sometimes even unbearable things of life. Integrity is built in us when we refuse to jump off the train God has made us His passenger. How do we do this? We don’t rip those we find frustrating, we don’t leave those who make our lives hard and we don’t make pain the worst of our enemies. The question before us is the same as Job’s question for his wife. Shall I be led only by God if it led is pleasant and not when it pains me? The straight path turns crooked when one is abandoned for the sake of the other. It is both the good and the bad that God brings my way, that keep my road straight and sure.
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