A couple of weeks ago I flew out to Minneapolis for just 36 hours to see my
godson Ted in The Music Man. If he hadn’t skipped the cast party and come home early Thursday night I wouldn’t have gotten to see him off stage at all. But there we were, at 10:30 at night, both exhausted and happy, talking about - would you believe it? Moral relativism! Ted is taking philosophy this year, and to my delight, he loves it. When I asked him what he liked about philosophy, Ted told me that he likes the questions it raises. I asked for an example, and he said, “Are moral standards absolute over time, or do they change from culture to culture?” Well, as you can imagine, this led to an absolutely terrific discussion which ranged from Plato to Calvin. I just hope he had as good a time as I did. Anyway, what makes this anecdote relevant is that my initial response was that morality is absolute at the core, in its internal dimensions, but that its appearance changes from culture to culture. And thinking about it over the next few days, I boiled the essence of morality down to two words: Integrity and Respect.
Imagine my surprise - and delight - to discover that the key concept in my favorite commentary on the passage we are looking at today was integrity.
But what is integrity? The primary definition of integrity seems to be a matter of persons integrating various parts of their personality into a harmonious, intact whole. Basically, that persons of integrity are the same on the inside and on the outside, the same to their superiors and subordinates, and the same on Mondays as on Sundays. For a Christian, of course, that means that we have an obligation to act like what we claim to be. Last week we called that “putting on Christ”, that is, not just wrapping our old selves in a word but wrapping ourselves in a new way of thinking and being in the world.
In this text Paul gets more specific about how to go about doing this. He addresses our feelings, our actions, and our words. And in every one of these arenas, the standard is - of course - the character of God himself. Of course, in many ways we cannot copy God; we cannot, for example, imitate his omnipresence or omnipotence, nor are we asked to. We are asked to imitate God’s character, as expressed in his speech and behavior. And that requires integrity, as Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” [Mt 5:48]
This is not new. Human beings started out from the beginning as image bearers. At the dawn of creation, God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.” [Gen 1:26-27] Well, as you know, this initial lofty purpose didn’t get very far before humanity went off the rails but it’s still God’s intention for humanity. Our call as Christians is to advertise God-likeness to the world. We are to reflect God’s attitude and acts toward us to other people. And the central fact about God is the story of redemption, through Jesus crucified and resurrected. God is not “out there” to dream about, but present here and now to change lives. He is the standard. We have received grace and forgiveness from him, and we are to show these qualities to others as well.
Paul starts out with the absolute necessity for truth. The philosopher Immanuel Kant said, “By a lie a man throws away, and as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man.” [Immanuel Kant, Doctrine of Virtue] But it isn’t only the self that is destroyed. Since Christians are actually, organically, functionally part of each other, as one writer put it, “a lie is a stab into the very vitals of the Body of Christ.” [John Mackay, God’s Order] How strange that one part of the body would deceive another part, as if the eye would lie to the foot about some danger it sees. Lies distort reality and accompany every form of wrong-doing. Psychiatrist Scott Peck identifies the core of evil as the lie, which is only another way of putting what Jesus said: “the devil... is a liar and the father of lies.” [Jn 8:44]
The only way anyone can live meaningfully is with the truth. It is not an option, it is the ground on which we stand. As my sister Kathleen puts it, “Life is confusing enough without falsifying the data.” Truth - that which corresponds to the facts and on which we can rely - is both necessary and freeing [John 8:31-32]. Truth encompasses the totality of life, including relation with God. If God is real and has sent Christ, then living in relation with God and speaking the truth includes communicating the reality of life with Christ. The issue is not just words, but an integrity - see that word again? - marked by the correspondence between word and act.
If God is the pattern, integrity is the result. God is the source of truth by which we live. If taken seriously, this should separate us from much of our society, which seeks to live lies. We cannot allow ourselves the comfort of deception. Our neighbors are part of us, and lying will only destroy both us and them. Whether in a court of law or at the kitchen table, Christians should not need an oath to insure veracity.
But the fact is that we all live to some extent by deception, trying to appear better than we are. How many of you have ever thought, “if he/she really knew what I am like they wouldn’t have anything to do with me.” Well, maybe, but we’re all going to experience rejection. Isn’t it better to be rejected - or accepted - for what you really are? The shameful weaknesses we know personally are weaknesses we all share and about which we must be truthful. Otherwise, we hide behind masks of fake purity. We make ourselves real by telling the truth.
Paul goes on from the issue of truth to anger, then to work, and then he moves back to more broad categories of speech and emotions. Each one of his examples really merits a sermon all its own. But their common element is that life in Christ, life with God, is life lived in relationship. Relationship with God establishes relations with other people. And that is where the second essential element comes in. Integrity maintains the health of our identity as persons, and since our identity comes from our new relationship with God through Christ, then our relationship with God also requires integrity. But our relationship with others is a matter of respect. It is the recognition of the rightful place of the other within God’s providence and design.
If we are to reflect God in our relationships, we must always keep before us both the pattern of God’s character and the reality of our inter-connectedness. This is why images such as “in Christ” or “the body” are of such practical importance. What does a mirror reflect? Only what is in front of it! Likewise, we will only reflect what is in front of us, or in front of whom we live. We cannot copy what we do not see. What motivates us to obedience isn’t knowledge of correct action, but awareness of God. Imitation of God is an overwhelming idea in the abstract, but experience of God’s forgiving love makes imitation both necessary and natural.
Awareness of our relations both with God and with other people is also the key to rejecting self-centeredness. None of the commands in this passage can be followed as long as the primary interest is oneself. Only when our attention is shifted to something greater than ourselves can we escape the prison of self-interest. If we are conscious that the Spirit is in us, marking us as belonging to God and therefore under his direction, service to self is blocked off. Similarly, awareness of oneness with other people will not permit inattention or mistreatment of them. If other people are diminished, we are diminished; if they prosper, we prosper with them.
Rejecting self-centeredness pushes us to recognizing the role of integrity with
regard to property as well as to speech. God - the lavish giver of life - cannot be reflected by someone who is a taker. Self-centeredness says, ‘Take what you can get, no matter the method.” God-centeredness marks out boundaries which respect the rights of the other - including impersonal institutions like government and insurance companies - for they are institutions upon which we all depend and to which we all contribute. Does it make sense for the hand to steal from the foot? And theft includes not only taking what you are not entitled to, but withholding something to which another is entitled. Reflecting God means giving away things - food, shelter, approval, forgiveness, time, self...
And yet we live in a hostile world. All of us fear violence or mistreatment, so we tend to be watchful, guarding every inch of our rights. All of us have been wronged, which makes us aggressive in self-defense or so scarred we seek wholeness by harming someone else. The violations and failures that occur in all our institutions and movements push us to hostility and cynicism. Even Christians can become defensive, suspicious, and vindictive.
It grieves the Holy Spirit when our broken, crazy, noisy world has more effect on our actions than does our experience and knowledge of the love of God. It grieves the Holy Spirit when we fail to recognize that same Spirit at work in the life of some person with whom we are angry. It grieves the Holy Spirit when we let our words and actions keep the life-giving power of God’s love for the world bottled up behind walls of suspicion or hostility or deception. It grieves the Holy Spirit when we do not allow his power to transform us into the likeness of Christ.
The purpose of the gospel is to establish integrity in our being - to make us whole in ourselves and in our relationships, first with God, then with others. And it is out of that wholeness that we develop the ability to see and treat others with respect - as integral members of our own body, co-heirs with Christ, and participating in the call to reflect God to the world.
