Living with the man in the mirror

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy (Martin Luther King).

As a teenager, my values coalesced often around what my parents, church, and peers thought. Those values and beliefs were still very fluid as I worked out not only what I valued but how to live those values out in the real world. For instance, I remember very clearly making fun of a classmate to my brother and father. This young man had dared to wear gray, suede boots to school (not a very common fashion choice for young males in the '80s), and he was roundly mocked for it! My brother's response is still crystal-clear to me. He looked at me and simply said, "So what?" Like lightning, his response drove through the noise of the eighth-grade madding crowd and reminded me that external factors (like clothing, accent, skin color, hairstyle, etc.) rarely determine a person's worth and mocking someone for something so superficial went against my values as one who believed (and still does) that human beings are made in God's image.

As I matured through college, I solidified many of my values, as is common for people in their 20s. I distinctly remember how "rock-solid" my opinions on various subjects were. Certain I knew the rights and wrongs of the prevalent social issues of the day, I sallied forth from college and seminary in my armor of self-righteousness to combat the ills of the time. Perhaps you remember this own time in your life, when you knew "for certain" what you believed, what you would hold dear, what hills you were willing to die on. And perhaps, like me, your cocksureness was eventually tempered by empathy, understanding, and humility as your values and the vagaries of life clashed. Sometime in my mid-30s, I became more attuned to the gray areas and less comfortable with the black-and-white. Compromise became a tool I used to navigate the oft-stormy seas of my life. For this, I am thankful.

As it turns out, rigid thinking is unable to flex to the realities "on the ground," as it were. Dr. Stephen White wrote extensively of this in his many works on Soviet Russia, and the same reality may be at play in current American politics. This hard truth is also at work in human relationships. We must compromise in order to build community and have genuine relationships. But how does one compromise without losing one's integrity? How does one compromise without making values and beliefs worthless? I give you five steps to maintaining your integrity and not losing your soul.

• Integrity dies in darkness! {I borrowed this from the Washington Post's byline, by the way.}

Think of all the expressions English has for darkness.

1. To be "left in the dark" is to be uninformed;

2. A "shot in the dark" is one made without any real direction;

3. "Groping in the dark" is to feel blindly for something;

4. If someone is "operating in the shadows," he or she is acting out of public view … in secrecy;

5. To be caught in "pitch black" is to be in a place utterly devoid of light;

6. "Dark waters" are dangerous and mysterious.

You get the picture. Culturally, "darkness" is where danger dwells, confusion reigns, secrecy holds sway, monsters prowl, and icky things grow. Surrounding our actions in secrecy and not allowing others to view those actions is a recipe for the death of integrity. 

• Take care of Mom!

In the Gospel of John, chapter 19 and verse 25, we are presented with a picture that I often have trouble fathoming. Jesus is hanging on the cross--He's been whipped, mocked, abandoned; nails have been driven through his wrists and feet; the pain is excruciating and the thirst is torturous--and sees His mother at the foot of the cross. In the midst of all that is happening to Him, He ensures the well-being of His mother.

25 Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” 27 and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home (NIV).

Can you imagine?! In the midst of the pain and the suffering and all that He was accomplishing on the cross, Jesus took care of His mom …. Maintaining integrity demands we do the same. No matter the circumstances, we must keep our eyes on the main issues. Integrity is lost when we curry favor, hold promotion higher than our values, or practice self-preservation at the expense of others. Our moral center holds when we take care of "mom" first!

•  Walk the tightrope between "legal" and "moral."

Is what is legal always moral? The Nuremburg Laws targeting Jewish people in Nazi Germany and the Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation in the American South come to mind as legal but not moral. Understanding this distinction is key to maintaining one's integrity. The growing study of moral injury highlights the spiritual damage which occurs when one commits a "legal" act, and thereby crosses a moral boundary.

• Be the sheepdog, not the wolf.

In the old Looney Tunes cartoons, Ralph Wolf seeks a sheep. He must outwit the crafty sheepdog, Sam, and employs every method known to wolf (and man) to snag a tasty sheep! Sam Sheepdog, however, is always on guard, and at the end of the day, poor Ralph goes home empty-handed. Now, surely it wouldn’t have hurt that much for Sam to give Ralph a sheep! Wolves must eat, as well, right? After all, one sheep a week, say, is surely enough to feed Ralph for seven days. But Sam knows this--to make one compromise away from his duties and responsibilities towards the shepherd and towards the sheep is to take one step on a slippery slope from which there is no escape!

The point is clear. Integrity demands we care for the weak and defenseless among us. The Apostle Paul wrote it this way,

"We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. 2 Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up" (Romans 15:1-2, ESV).

• Practice humility.

Humility is the idea of seeing yourself as you truly are. From a Christian perspective, it's seeing yourself as God sees you! The Apostle Paul admonishes this in Romans 12:3, where he writes, "… do not think of yourself more highly than you ought" (NIV). To be honest, humility is in short shrift among contemporary leaders. Too many believe their own press, and because of this, they begin to feel they are, in fact, superior to others. In this sense of superiority, integrity slides off the ledge into the abyss of criminality. Values are based on something higher than ourselves, and if, in a lack of humility, we believe we are the highest, then our values and the concomitant integrity become whatever we decide they are and do so in secrecy (see #1).

Conclusion

Kafka's novella, The Metamorphosis, describes a salesman who wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant insect. This is the picture I see when we fail to put boundaries in place and allow our values to become fluid. We wake up one day, only to realize that our integrity has morphed into something unrecognizable. These five guardrails allow us to be satisfied with who we are becoming, even in the face of tumultuous times.