GENDADS

It caught me by surprise.  Shouldn’t have.  I’ve seen Paul grow personally, professional, and spiritually over the years.  He’s now considered one of the world’s premier sitar (Indian “Guitar”) performers. Talk about witness in challenging context!  Travels all over.  Picked it up as a missionary kid in India. Father is a major figure in world missions and best friend (next to soninlaw, Matt).  “Uncle” in this case is an earned title. it’s what best friends become when “uncles” have a better voice that dad’s too familiar one.

So, of all the responses from the grandson’s and the readers about INTEGRITY, Paul’s wins the year’s subscription to all three of my blogs.  Besides, if I did charge, he’d pay me in Rupees.

Am sending the following to Matt for dialog with the boys and the home church meeting this morning.  Please poke “MORE” here then (again, PULEEZ) poke “Comments,” above.  This is life changing material.

Uncle Gary, I appreciate your opening this up on the Gen Dads page. Integrity has been a forefront issue Im struggling with for some years, so always great to bring it back central in the scope of vision, thanks! Hope this isn’t too far ofF the mark with rambling… Just returned from an amazing trip to Nepal, India, Czech Rep (to see David & family) and Germany, was full of concerts and blessings of new relationships and sharing Jesus with new and old friends as well as my own brother (who I had the truly the best time of our lives we’ve ever had together!) and Ladislava and their beautiful kids. – paul

Uncle Gary’s definition…
Personal INTEGRITY is the core of good character. Good character is what people will know you by. It is what YOU come to know yourself by.

I like that definition very much Uncle G! The second part reminds me of something from Bonhoeffer’s book ‘Ethics’ I was reading on my trip recently where he says in the chapter on ‘Conformation’, “To be conformed to the Incarnate-that is to be a real man… to have the right to be the man who one really is. No pretense, hypocrisy or compulsion to be something other. God loves the real man. God became the real man.” He goes on to speak about the profound reality that man carries God’s sentence of death and that in dying to ourselves daily, we die to sin and this is the process of our become real, and having integrity with all we are.

OK here’s my definition… as requested. Not the rant, just the definition.
Integrity is wholeness, a true sense of ‘no dichotomy’ between your talk and your actions, it’s your commitment and your walk matching up. The projection of who you are is identical to the manner in which you live daily.
Additional thoughts…

Because we are all imperfect, we will always run up against our own integrity. Especially as we serve a God who commands us to ‘be perfect’. Oops… what was He thinking? Hahah. What I am learning, very slowly I must say… is that, as I dwell daily in the presence of God I become more acutely aware of how often I miss the mark (sin). The things that may not bother me much if I kept myself busier and distracted from God’s presence become quite bothersome and annoyingly clear! These are often perhaps what some may not consider ‘sins’ but small things, which are essentially compromises of my own personal integrity.

I believe that the time we spend humbling ourselves before the Holy Spirit is directly proportional to the awareness we will have of our own shortcomings. God has this way of clarifying our values without our being aware of what He’s doing. Thankfully, as we become aware of our own bogosity (yeah, maybe it’s a new word) the Spirit of Truth gives us the strength to make the necessary and oft painful amends to get back on track with our integrity.

The word says ‘they will know we are Christians by our love’. How often is the church and Christians out of integrity with this? As followers of Jesus we need to constantly evaluate our capacity to love, because the enemy is always trying to diminish it. Perhaps one of Satan’s biggest jobs is to convince us that we are better than we truly are, to boost our egos into thinking that we are actually quite ‘spiritual’ and good anyway, and certainly better then those retched ‘publicans’ or whoever else in our lives we’re ‘better’ than. We need to remind each other as believers that this kind of self-deception is a recipe for excusing a lack of integrity, not for growing in it.

BACK TO ME: Why don’t you print this one out, ponder it, share it? OH, AND COMMENT (poke “Comments,” above)