Integrity (re)defined
December 1, 1997
Amendment A wordsmiths have undertaken an ambitious enterprise. Redefining “integrity” away from any meaningful connection with its roots, they offer Presbyterians sound without substance. As one Syracuse commissioner put it when asked what “fidelity and integrity in all relationships of life” could possibly mean, “I don’t know. I just like the way it sounds.”
Commenting on A’s abuse of a very good word, Rev. Earl Palmer, minister of University Presbyterian Church in Seattle, wrote in his September newsletter: “I respect and treasure the word integrity when it means ‘congruence’ as in Philippians 1:27, ‘Let your life be worthy of the gospel.’ But congruence is not the intended purpose of this word for many who use it. Instead, it has become the word of self-affirmation and openness that is meant to validate ethically an individual Christian’s own behavior … .”
Palmer told his parishioners that when Amendment A comes before the Presbytery of Seattle, he will vote against it. “When a word like ‘integrity’ means faithfulness to the biblical witness,” concluded Palmer, “then I love the word, but it must not be a word I control to fit my own special mandate or advocacy.”
Twisted by Amendment A’s progenitors, integrity means living a life that is consistent with one’s own self-definition, being true to whoever I say I am. Sigmund Freud may have applauded such a notion, but it earns no accolades from Scripture. The Bible reminds us that we do not define ourselves. We were created by God, and in God’s own image, an image that we all have twisted and distorted by our rebellion against God. But the good news is that Jesus Christ, by his sinless life, obedient death and resurrection, has restored God’s image. Only in him who is the way, the truth and the life, can we discover what integrity means.