Integrity
"There once was a man named Job who lived in the land of Uz. He was blameless—a man of complete integrity. He feared God and stayed away from evil" (NLT) Job 1:1
Men and women of integrity are rare gems. In the market place of behaviour patterns, the quality of integrity is in a critical short supply. Integrity is the most talked about, the most admired, the most needed but it's the least supplied by people.
What's integrity? Integrity is the juxtaposition of our character and reputation into a composite whole. The etymology of the word itself connotes something of an excellent quality. One's character and reputation may be bad but when we talk about integrity, we mean the good and beautiful.
The two key words - character and reputation - is very critical to our understanding of integrity. Character is who we truly are and reputation is how others see us. If we have a good reputation but a bad character, then we have disintegration.
Let me explain it further with this analogy. Supposing you get carried away by a certain advertisement of a product in the media and you chance on it on the shelf in the supermarket. Due to its good reputation, in terms of the advertisement, you decide to get one and try. You go home and to your greatest chagrin, the quality of the product is a far cry from what you have been made to believe. How will you perceive the manufacturers? You will see them us sham and fraud. Why? Because there's mismatch between their reputation and their character.
Unfortunately, the analogy in the previous paragraph happens to be the dominant behaviour of a lot of people. They come across as the finest specimen of beings but deep down they are something else. Christ admonished us thus:
"Beware of false prophets who come disguised as harmless sheep but are really vicious wolves. You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act. Can you pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit. So every tree that does not produce good fruit is chopped down and thrown into the fire. Yes, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions" (NLT) Matthew 7:15-20