In our church we switch every other Sunday doing a combined Sunday School and then every in between week doing the men's and women's classes. Today in the men's class we talked a lot about integrity and based our conversation on this talk from our semi-annual General Conference.
There was a lot of good commentary between the instructor and us class members; enough so that I thought it appropriate to reflect on them here and explain why I believe integrity is so crucial to a happy life and why society needs more of it.
I'll separate it into to categories/lists.
What integrity isn't.
1. Looking for the easy way out. I once had a math teacher in High School, Rock Ramsey, who was an interesting character. He was a very down to earth, agrarian cowboy, full-on western kind of guy, straight from Wyoming, so to experience how incredibly good he was at teaching math was sort of a fun experience. One of the things he said that hit me hardest when I was in his classes was [paraphrasing] "you should always do what's right, just because you want to sleep at night." He was the kind of guy who would tell people something like, "So you did the right thing... so what? You think that's a big deal? What do you want, a cookie? Can't doing the right thing just be good enough on it's own?" I really wish I would have offered him a visit from our church missionaries because I believe he would have really got along well with them.
The point is that doing the right thing, especially when it's inconvenient and no one else is looking, is the whole baseline of integrity. This will relate to my very last point in my "what integrity IS" list later on. Anyone who is always looking to sneak their way out of a service project because "those other guys will do it" is so incredibly lazy and childish! This specific element of integrity has even been a weakness of mine that I have been fighting to overcome the last few years and progress has been slow but I'm sick of feeling the like the guy who avoids service projects at church and in other areas simply because there are other things I'd "rather" be doing, but don't "have" to do. I have been praying for God to totally uproot the part of my heart that sometimes feels like "I can't wait to just be done with this and get out of here." Jesus never EVER did that! He actually looked for reasons to serve, even when He was tired, it was late or it was a personal inconvenience to Him.
2. Believing that if something is legal, it is therefore morally acceptable (and vice versa). I love what President Nelson said about this: "...civil governments are heavily influenced by social trends and secular philosophies as they write, rewrite, and enforce laws. Regardless of what civil legislation may be enacted, the doctrine of the Lord regarding marriage and morality cannot be changed. Remember: sin, even if legalized by man, is still sin in the eyes of God!" I have seen so many wonderful examples of people acting out against unjust laws that fly in the face of scripture. A crowd singing the national anthem at a baseball game after the "officials" said no; People praying outside of a Planned Parenthood for the murdered babies despite the prevailing falsehood that such a holocaust is societally "acceptable"; The Texas state government keeping harmful people out of the state and rebuilding the fence that the feds took down to keep their people safe; A petition opposing the proposed destruction of a beautiful music hall (Abravanel Hall) that has been beloved for decades in Salt Lake City for the sake of desecrating that space with a new sports arena; and much more. People who peacefully but deliberately and conspicuously stand against corrupt policies or laws are my kind of people.
Why? There are three kinds of laws in existence we are aware of. God's laws, laws of nature and mankind's laws. Of these three, God's are the only ones that are completely unbreakable. They will all be fulfilled and satisfied in the end, no matter what. Natures laws are laws that God can (and has) circumvented, which He can because He created those laws. Still they are more difficult to manipulate and bend relatively speaking. Mankind's laws are and always have been the weakest because they can be changed on a whim. All it would take for a law to be passed declaring the idea of a round earth to be false and to ban it from being taught in schools is enough people who are simply offended enough at the idea to make it pass into law. Mankind's laws are weak, can change based purely on emotion and societal preference and are, as evidence by the sheer number of criminals in the world today, more easily broken than any other kind of law in existence.
The legal status of a principle, action or belief has absolutely ZERO objective bearing of it's moral value.
3. Having integrity always deserves praise. Just hear me out on this one. This one goes back to what my High School math teacher said. On a humorous side of this, I once saw a meme that said something like "if you really have so much perceived need for attention for your posts that you demand I like and share it or else I'm 'not going to heaven'... if you really need that much attention, may I suggest a puppy." Yes, I understand that being validated is a basic human need and that's how relationships thrive; consistent, mutual validation between man and wife. However, that should not be something you must have in order to even do some good and exercise integrity. If all you're ever thinking is "what do I get out of this?" you have no integrity.
What integrity is.
1. Doing what we say we will do when we say we will do it. For me, this one is HUGE. One of the things that bothered Lorraine and I the most when I lived up in Canada from 2009-2019 was when people would tell us they'd be at our place for something (a birthday party, service, or just a friendly chat) at a certain time and then not show up until 15, 30 minutes or even an hour later. It was so exasperating to often have the same people be negligent over and over again and over time we just stopped inviting certain people over to our house because we knew they couldn't be relied on keep their word. If you actually want to show someone that you care, keep your word to them! I do get that sometimes unexpected things happen. A kid throws up or gets hurt and has to be taken to the ER, you see a stranger or an old woman struggling to cross the road or something and want to stop and help them, which is also integrity, being kind to people when it's inconvenient.
But, when a) whatever you originally said you would do and b) the person you originally told you would visit/help/whatever are put on the back burner for someone you did not personally promise to help, that is NOT integrity. You have to remember that you can't help or please everyone. You can't fix every problem with every person you see in need. Everyone knows there are simply too many problems in the world for any one person to be able to stop and help every single person that is struggling when you see it. You have to be able to properly prioritize. What matters most is what you say you will do (unless, of course, you have said you will do something bad, in which case, please don't do it). If you say you will show up at work, a friend's house or a meeting with a client at 9 am, be there AT 9 AM! It's not going to kill you to wake up a few minutes earlier than normal and check the weather the night before to adjust travel plans to make sure you keep your promise. And you truly can't do something for someone, just politely tell them you can't, plain and simple.
Don't make a promise you can't keep. That's one thing Lorraine and I were perfectly consistent about. Her health was always completely unpredictable and whenever there was a time where her health prevented us from being somewhere we committed to, we always called or texted the moment we knew we wouldn't be there on time (or at all). If your health prevents you from doing something, fine, don't make the promise in the first place and if something unexpected comes up that actually needs your immediate attention more than the person who you promise your time, call or text them the moment you know you won't be able to make it! Anything else is inconsiderate, rude and completely lacks integrity. I'm sorry if this idea bothers you if you're the kind of person who just prefers to fly by the seat of their pants and you are used to that lifestyle, but the objective truth is that it's still rude because it goes against your word!
2. Putting what matters most ahead of our own perceived wants and needs. I have had several times since starting school here at SUU where I would have loved to just stay home and write or play music instead of serving others (which weakness I mentioned before and I am working on it). But in my efforts to overcome my bad habit of leaving the "inconvenient" work to others, in several cases recently I chose to go and help anyways. As a pianist I know that effective practice makes perfect. This is different from just "practice makes perfect", which is another blog entry all in itself. I do my best whenever I get the chance to deliberately choose to go above and beyond to form more connections my brain that solidify the "I want to serve even when it's merely inconvenient" attitude. This whole "self-care" craze that is all over the place in society is complete nonsense. Just look at Matt 6:28-33. Nothing in those words of Jesus indicates that selfishness is good. Take care of yourself, yes, but putting your own needs above someone else for the sake of convenience is very anti-Christian.
I have also learned in my marriage with Collette (even moreso than I did with Lorraine) that the best way to have your own needs met is to meet the needs of others first. We don't really even need to ask very much for what we want and need from each other anymore because we have come to a point where we consistently want to serve each other without the other asking just because it feels good. We have developed over the last 4 years (our 4th anniversary was on 5/22/2024) a pattern of just doing a lot of good for each other so any sense of "it's your turn to meet my needs" is non-existent. It's simply a pattern of putting God first, each other second and ourselves last and it works.
3. Asking how good we can be rather than how good we have to be. Anyone who has watched many of my Facebook Sunday videos or read many of the other blogs on here knows how often I repeat this "mantra" but it's worth repeating over and over and over again. This goes back to what I said earlier about finding the easy way out. Looking for the most convenient way to do something and exerting the most minimal effort possible to meet someone else's needs isn't integrity. For the next part to make sense, watch this short video about Kathy. I can't even begin to count the number of times nights that were like this, but for much longer than 20 minutes. It was sometimes a few hours of helping Lorraine get ready for bed each night and it was always at 12:30/1 am because her body just would not sleep at any other time; for ten years. We were each lucky to get 4-5 hours of sleep a night the whole time we were married.
But what I learned from service like that is that, reciprocated or not, it will make you a better person. I would sometimes have visiting nurses who would hear small snippets of our story say things to me like "you're going to get caregiver burnout, you need to take care of yourself." My only response was, "and how do you suggest I do that?" I couldn't do anything about it. With Lorraine's health care I couldn't even be gone for more than an hour or two at a time at the very most without something going really wrong with her pain management, her PTSD, her stress level or something else going really wrong. Her doctor had even done an in depth analysis of what our daily life at home was like and wrote an official note to Ontario Disability Support Program stating that they should not be encouraging me, even as very able bodied as I was, to get a job. I had to help out so much because Lorraine's very life depended on me being there pretty much 24/7. I did actually try to get a job at one point doing lawn aeration. It only lasted one day because after the 12 hours of working and bringing home a big fat $200+, her pain level was so bad by the end of the night that the money meant absolutely nothing. It did nothing to help her stress level, the excruciating pain she was in by the end of the day or anything else.
Despite all my hard work that day, my lack of presence at home meeting her immediate physical needs did far more damage than any financial burden we bore. I learned very effectively that day that what her doctor would say several years later was correct. She needed to come first after God no matter what.
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My friends. Integrity is everything. Christ was the perfect example of this. He not only did exactly what He said He would do exactly as He said He would and exactly when He said He would, He did it without a grudge, in complete submission to His (and our) Father. Isaiah even prophesied that "when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed" (Isaiah 53:10). When He was suffering in Gethsemane, bleeding from every pore and suffering again on the cross, WE were what was on His mind. He saw us! We were and still are His complete focus. His perfect integrity is the kind we should be emulating.
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