My Integrity Has a Loophole

I’ve been thinking a lot about integrity lately. Character isn’t measured by how we treat our friends. It’s how we treat our enemies that reveals who we really are.

I know the word “enemies” doesn’t sit right, feels harsh. Lots of us might say we don’t even have any enemies, really. 

But let’s expand the concept to include anyone you don’t enjoy. Anybody you hold a grudge against. The annoying coworker. The crotchety neighbor. The girl who broke your son’s heart.

How do we treat those people?

“If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?” (Matthew 5:46-47)

I tell my kids to speak truthfully and kindly about others, but as soon as one of those “others” gets up in my craw or—heaven help them—dares to offend my child, well, this momma goes outright feral, and ALL the ugly words spew out my mouth. 

Is that harmless venting? Justified, even—like integrity with a loophole?

Or is it hypocrisy?

“Fools give full vent to their rage” (Proverbs 29:11) yet God desires “truth in the inward parts” (Psalm 51:6, NKJV). He doesn’t expect us to keep our frustration bottled up. He wants us to be honest about it, and bring it to Him.

We are supposed to express our deepest, ugliest anger over injustice.

We’re just not supposed to announce it to the room.

That kind of conversation is best saved for a private conversation between each of us and God—and then sometimes with the offending person involved, after the anger has calmed.

That might be where I fall short.

You, too?

The temptation to gripe about people who’ve hurt me or my loved ones is so strong I can taste it on my teeth. And yet, God says, Cast those cares on me (1 Peter 5:7). I can handle them. 

I’m grateful we have a Heavenly Father who can sympathize with our hurt, with the pain of betrayal and misjudgment and humiliation. He knows how it feels to be a human disappointed by another human. And yet He doesn’t respond the way our flesh wants to. He gives us a different example.

“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34)

I’m not there yet. But I’m working on it. My problem comes when “they” are supposedly Christians, too, and should have known what they were doing. It irks me to no end. Yet I am just the same. Flawed, trapped in a body weighed down by sin even as my soul is free to fly. That’s the conundrum of living in this world.

So what is the real measure of our integrity? Perhaps it’s not about us at all, but rather the One we trust to make us new. His integrity is what saves us from ourselves. And I am endlessly, humbly grateful.