Integrity. What’s Your Policy?

Before we move forward, a quick rewind.
As I shared with you last week, I like watching commercials. Not only do they provide grist for Sunday morning reflections, they also serve as a window through which I catch a glimpse of the culture in which we live. The commercial which recently caught my attention and prompted all this in the first place is a commercial for the Liberty Mutual Insurance Company which ends their commercials with this tagline:
Responsibility. What’s Your Policy?
And, as I said last week the commercial worked.
Not that I ran to the phone to change insurance companies,
But it worked in terms of getting me to think about…
What is my policy and what are the values…
Which shape who I am and what I do and how I live.
Last week I shared with you my reflections about family and the need for family to be a priority for us.  Next week my reflection will be about the common good. But, this week I would like to think with you about integrity. And to ask again, as I did last week: What is your policy? 

I assume what is true for me is also true for you.
That you value integrity.
That you look for it in others with whom you work and do business and interact on a daily basis. And, I assume that you want others to see you and to refer to you as a person of integrity. 
Someone who walks the talk.
Who practices what they preach.
Whose words match their deeds.
But this is where it gets complicated.
What, exactly, does integrity mean?  What does it look like?
Defining integrity is something like what Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once said about pornography.  I am not sure how to define it, but I know it when I see it.
We have all known people who modeled integrity.
Some of whom have helped to shape your life like those whom I have known have helped to shape mine.  And, we have also all known people who said all the right things, but whom we would not trust any farther than we could throw them.
Integrity…we know it when we see it. 

The dictionary defines integrity in this way:

• The quality of being honest and fair
• The state of being complete or whole
• Soundness
• Incorruptibility
• Completeness

Someone else defined integrity as: “doing the right thing, even if nobody is watching.”  As I read through the definitions and the quotes I saw online, I found myself saying, “Yes, but…”
Whose sense of being honest and fair? 
Whose “right thing” are we supposed to do?
Yours?  Mine?
Senator Ted Cruz’s right thing or Senator Bernie Saunders’ right thing?
And, is integrity rigorously holding to a set of internal values and acting on them? Yes, but… That whole rigorously holding onto thing seems to me like a part of what is crippling our federal government right now which, at least to me, doesn’t seem to have very much integrity wrapped up in it. So, after a couple of days of reading and thinking and saying, “Yes, but…” and trying to figure out what in the world to say this morning, here is the direction I found myself leaning. Not quite the three points and a poem which previous generations of preachers were instructed to use in constructing their sermons.  Instead, three verses from the Bible and a line a poet.

The Bible first.
Matthew 7: 12
In everything do to others as you would have them do to you. 

Even if you don’t think you know much about the Bible, most of us know this lesson. Treat others as you would like to be treated.
Treat others with respect and with understanding.
Be kind.
Do not intentionally do something to hurt another.
Help when help is needed.
All that and more.
But, as may be true with all real wisdom, it is simple and complicated all at the same time.
How do we treat them whoever them happens to be…
The unfriendly neighbor;
The surly check out person;
The immigrant among us;
The political opposition;
How do we treat them especially when they don’t treat us the way we would like to be treated…which, just to be clear, is not what Jesus said. But, integrity, I think, has something to do with moving beyond that tit for tat which sometimes dictates our social relationships.  And, it does, in fact, have something to do with treating others the way we would like to be treated no matter how they treat you, doesn’t it? 
It doesn’t mean agreeing with them, but it does mean being respectful.
It doesn’t mean condoning their actions, but it does mean approaching the person or the situation with a desire to understand.

In everything do to others as you would have them do to you.

Matthew 5:37
Let your word be “Yes, Yes.” or “No, No.”
[Notice that Jesus did not say, “Yes, but…] 

I chose this verse because I think speaking straightforwardly and with sincerity is somehow a part of integrity.  Saying the same thing to one person as you say to another and not sending mixed messages or playing one person off against another.
And, it means doing your best to walk the talk.
And, having what you say match what you do and what you do match what you say. And, it also has something to do with doing your best to share your understanding of how life as it is without demeaning or belittling or demonizing the other.  When I am in a conversation with others who I believe are being honest with me I might not like what they have to say, but I know I need to listen carefully and to take it seriously. I know that somewhere in what is being said there is something I need to hear and to understand. 

Deuteronomy 6:5
You shall love the Lord you God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 

I don’t want to go all mushy with this verse with the way we often think about the word love and sometimes think about what it means to love God.  The connection for me between this verse and integrity is that if integrity has something to do with convictions and honesty and doing what is right and how we treat one another, then integrity also needs to be in an ongoing conversation about an understanding of what is right and what is just and who is the other whom we are to treat the way we want to be treated that is beyond the narrowness of my own particular perspective and sometimes parochial views. 
God, for me in this context…
Loving God for me in this context…
Embodies that larger Other against which I need to measure my understandings and my values; my sense of what is right and the way I look at and treat another.  If right is only equated with my understanding of right, it quickly becomes woefully inadequate.  If the other whom I am to treat the way I would like to be treated is limited to those who look like me and live where I live and have the same color skin I have or the same level of income, we close ourselves off to huge segments of the human family, and integrity gets shrunk to a useless size. God, in this context, is that more against which my understanding and my sense of right and wrong gets measured. 

Which leads to this…
From the author and poet, Maya Angelou:
Do the best you can until you know better.  Then, when you know better, do better. 

While integrity has something to do with…
Saying what you mean;
And meaning what you say;
And then doing what you mean and say.
And, something to do with respect and honesty and how you treat others…
Integrity also includes a humbleness which knows that the knowledge of this moment is incomplete.  And the understandings we have today are limited by the horizons of our own particular lives.  And while we are to act on what we know and believe, and are to live towards our best values and our bravest hopes, we also need to acknowledge that we may be wrong. 
That our best intentions may fall short.
That our best efforts may go awry.
Do the best you can until you know better.  Then, when you know better, do better. 
Somewhere in that mix we name as integrity conviction and humbleness walk hand in hand. 

So, where does that leave us?
What do you think?
Integrity. What’s your policy?