Posts Tagged: integrity

“Of Mistakes and Integrity: Jeff”

On October 7, 2021 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

“May integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait for you.” (Proverbs 25:21, English Standard Version)

As a recovering addict, I use daily affirmations in order to keep myself more or less on track. My affirmation yesterday was as follows:

“Today, by God’s grace, I am expecting to make mistakes, and expecting others to make mistakes too. Neither my mistakes nor those of others define who we are in God’s eyes.”

Little did I know how that affirmation would play out during the day!

In the afternoon, my wife and I heard a strange rattling sound outside. The trash collectors and recycling team had already come and gone, so we weren’t sure what had happened. A couple of minutes later, the answer rang our doorbell. And the answer had a name: Jeff.

It seems that Jeff had knocked over our mailbox. That happened a few years ago, and the driver drove on. I had to replace the mailbox at my own expense. In view of how narrow the road is and how close to the road the mailbox is, the surprising thing is that the mailbox has only been hit twice in the seventeen plus years that we’ve lived here.

Mistakes happen. Mine, yours, everybody’s. Most of the time, we just keep going. Jeff didn’t. Why? Because that was the way his dad had raised him.

Integrity doesn’t mean not making mistakes. Integrity means having the courage to admit them and, as best you can, making things right. In this case, “Jeff” was another name for integrity.

Eighteen years ago, I came clean with people I had harmed with my addiction. It was and is a costly process. There are people whom I love who no longer speak to me. There are people who believe that I have not come clean about everything. That is an understandable belief. It is also wrong.

But here is the conclusion I’ve come to: Integrity—at any price—is a bargain. The opposite of integrity (or wholeness) is scatteredness. And who wants to be scattered and blowing in the wind? We need more Jeffs in the world. We need to make sure we are being more like Jeff.

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“Leaving out a Crucial Detail”

On July 7, 2019 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

‘And Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought such a great sin upon them?” And Aaron said, “Let not the anger of my lord burn hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil. For they said to me, ‘Make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ So I said to them, ‘Let any who have gold take it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf.”’

(Exodus 32:21–24 The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, https://accordance.bible/link/read/ESVS#Ex._32:21)

I love this story.  It is an incredibly human narrative.  Moses “lollygags” around with God on Mount Sinai, while the people below get ants in their spiritual pants.  The people come to Aaron, the priest, and express their impatience with this slow-poke, Moses.  Aaron reacts immediately, instead of responding thoughtfully.  And voila: The golden calf!

This is not a funny story.  It is deadly serious.  And yet, even deadly serious stories can have some humor in them.  This one certainly does.

When Moses confronts his brother Aaron, Aaron explains—or excuses his behavior.

‘And Aaron said, “Let not the anger of my lord burn hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil. For they said to me, ‘Make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ So I said to them, ‘Let any who have gold take it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf.”’

When Aaron is telling the story to Moses, Aaron leaves out a crucial part of the story that the author of Exodus had already told the reader.

“3 So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. 4 And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” (Exodus 32:3-4, English Standard Version, emphasis mine)

When he speaks to Moses, Aaron leaves out the bit about his use of the engraving tool.  He says, “I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf.”

Now, before I, before we, look down our long spiritual noses at Aaron, I/we might want to have a look in the mirror.  When we are explaining why we did what we ought not to have done, or have failed to do what we ought to have done, we all tend to leave out crucial details.  And in those crucial details are the real reasons why we’ve done what we shouldn’t, or not done what we should.

A crucial part of integrity is honesty, and a crucial part of honesty is being completely honest about our own part in what has gone wrong.  It is easy to pretend that something “just happened,” when in fact we happened it.

Healing and transformation can only occur when we acknowledge our own engraving tools.  Details matter—especially the details that relate to our own personal responsibility.

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