consequently

(by Pastor Joe)

The Word for Today: Proverbs 10:1- 11:13

Mark this: Proverbs 10:9 "The man of integrity walks securely, but he who takes crooked paths will be found out."

And this: Proverbs 11:3 "The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity."

What exactly is integrity?

That is a much more difficult question to answer than one might imagine.

We can agree that it means doing what is right, even when no one is looking.

We can concur with the psalmist that it means keeping one's oath, "even when it hurts (1)."

But how do we deal with the failures we've seen all over the world: from behind lecterns, news desks, pulpits, podiums and teleprompters, to within boardrooms, city halls, offices, courtrooms, stadiums, and into the very homes we live in?

Our world is bankrupt when it comes to integrity. Consider the following commentary:

“Ours is an age where ethics has become obsolete. It is superceded by science, deleted by philosophy and dismissed as a feeling by psychology. It is drowned in compassion, evaporates into aesthetics and retreats before relativism. The usual moral distinctions between good and bad are simply drowned in a confused emotion in which we feel more sympathy for the murderer than for the murdered, for the adulterer than for the betrayed, and in which we have actually begun to believe that the real guilty party, the one who somehow caused it all, is the victim, and not the perpetrator of the crime (2).”

Spot on. He nails this current sorry state of Wall Street, and Hollywood, and Capitol Hill. Only this statement is from 1959! Talk about foresight. But ethics and integrity have been under attack for much longer than that.

Today's passage is full of something we all might rather do without- consequences. But consequences are essential to integrity. Throughout this chapter and a half, we see warnings about the consequences that face the foolish, the lazy, the wicked, the gossip, and the loudmouth etc. From the "Mark this" verses above, it is also clear that there are good consequences for choosing integrity and not so good ones if we ignore it. Don't forget the consequences!

Sounds simple, sounds like more good advice. (We seem to have a lot of this in Proverbs.)

But it is much more than that. Our world's shortage of integrity is directly linked to our insistence of negating or overriding consequences. Instead of insisting that people change their wrong behavior, we instead come up with ingenious ways of limiting the damage from the natural consequences of such behavior. We actually attempt to alter reality! How delusional.

What we find here in Proverbs is what Paul later develops in Galatians- the Law of Sowing and Reaping. "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows (3)." There is no getting around it! There are always consequences! Sin always destroys.

Certainly, we've already learned from Galatians what a travesty it is to reduce the Word of God to a mere set of "do's" and "don'ts," a book of wise sayings or list of rules (The error of legalism.) But perhaps its an even bigger travesty to attempt to use the Word as some sort of "get out of consequences free card." (The error of license.)

We can easily confuse the amazing grace of God with some kind of magical eraser. If I am rude to people, if I say unkind words to my family, if I choose to cheat on my taxes, if I wreck my life because of laziness or selfishness or greed; I can certainly be forgiven. No doubt about it, I can be washed clean and restored. (4). But to think that God's forgiveness suddenly gets me off the hook with the consequences of the mess I made is a fallacy. I can choose integrity or I can choose duplicity, but what I cannot choose are the consequences.

So as we continue through this most practical of books, always remember that we are not dealing with some nice thoughts that you can take or leave. No, we are dealing with something much more perilous. Then again, whoever said the truth was easy?

****************

(1) Psalm 15:4

(2) Robert Fitch, Christianity and Crisis: A Journal of Opinion, 1959

(3) Galatians 6:7

(4) 1 John 1:9