TOD 11.05.07

What would you say about a person who claims to love his wife but rarely spends recreational time with her? Or about a person who claims to have a heart for the poor but rarely donates anything to charity, or who claims to value education but rarely reads a book? What about a person who claims to value health but rarely exercises?

The common thread is a lack of integrity; not the character defect that we usually associate with that term, but the technical defect in which the values a person is speaking don’t match the values he’s behaving. One may wear stripes or one may wear plaid, but one may not wear them together. Likewise, every choice we make with our time either matches our values and builds our integrity or clashes with our values and tears it down. It’s not that people are lying in these examples so much as it is that they just haven’t practiced integrity enough to look like they’re telling the truth. And the good news is that we can always start moving in that direction at any time.

This, in part, by the way, is what the Bible calls repentance.