Integrity is more than Not Lying Outright

Henry Neufeld points out that Integrity is more than Not Lying Outright:

People often think that legalism is about trying very hard to be right, and that the main problem with it is that people can’t succeed at it. I would suggest that there’s something more characteristic of legalism, and that it results from trying to paste on the narrow letter of some “right” things to oneself without really taking it in.

A legalist reads the commandment about “bearing false witness against one’s neighbor” and construes it very narrowly, either as lying under oath or as lying outright. Then he tries not to lie outright. If he can deceive people in some way other than lying directly, he doesn’t care. Similarly the legalist looks at a list of sexual commands and tries not to do those specific things, or perhaps not get caught doing them (note that he’s not lying outright, just deceiving).

… But integrity involves a consistent viewpoint.

Henry’s making a point about a Ben Stein movie I haven’t seen and am unlikely to see, evidently involving creationism. I used to read Ben Stein’s articles and enjoy them. This movie sounds a lot like something Mike Moore would put out, which is to say, dishonest garbage intended to make a political point and not convey accurate information. But again, I haven’t seen it and I’m just going by some posts I’ve read.

In any event, Henry’s larger point is applicable to pretty much everybody, all the time. We all want what we want, when we want it, and we want to be perceived as being noble and upright while this is going on. Legalism is the mechanism that can make that happen. Bill Clinton didn’t have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinski. (Because intercourse did not occur.) I could pick about any politician from a list and come up with more examples. But I have one of my own.

We finally, after several years of complaining that “there’s nothing on TV” had our cable television turned off last week. But the TV in one room still received the signal due to a technical glitch I won’t go into lest someone else be tempted. I wanted, more than I can say, to just let it ride. I’d love to not pay $600 a year while enjoying plausible deniability AND cable television. While it’s true that there’s usually nothing on, I do like to keep the news, CSPAN, and very often the History channel and A&E on for background noise. We tried rationalization and legalism. We didn’t take any action to try to steal cable TV. Is it our fault? No, we told them to turn it off! But after a couple of days of feeling guilty, we disconnected the TV, figuring our integrity was worth more than $600 a year.

Like everyone else, sometimes we make poor choices; this time we eventually did the right thing. But the temptation to appear to do the right thing while actually doing what I wanted was powerful.