Integrity

Continuing this series of reflections on how we can be transformed by the Quaker “SPICES” (Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, and Stewardship), I now consider “Integrity.”

As a young person of faith conviction, I learned to be morally good. That was my understanding of integrity. Perhaps at times the tone of the message was a bit legalistic. Looking back, it is easy to be critical of the unhealthy aspects of a morally strict environment. But that is not my point in these particular reflections.

In many ways being taught at a young age to say “no” to certain vices served me well, even if it was at times out of balance. I avoided consequences such as addiction, legal trouble, financial ruin, and poor health. One night some of my high school friends were taken from a vehicle to the police station and charged with underaged drinking. My simple integrity kept me from joining them that night. Leading a life of integrity kept me from making decisions that could harm myself and harm others. I am grateful.

Yet as the years went by I came to realize that my morality did not necessarily lead to any transformation of the parts of me that were already broken. Only the challenges of life over an extended period of time would reveal the dark parts of me long concealed before I had learned my morality. Those hidden places would not be transformed by my noble effort, though for years I tried. These parts of me would only transform by navigating the most painful difficulties of life, and by finding a further spiritual journey beyond the one I knew in my youth.

I was also quite surprised when I met people who, based on their identity, I had been taught to see as “bad,” and learned that sometimes they were filled with deep goodness. It worked the other way as well – some of the people I had long viewed as “good” ended up doing deplorable things. How could this be?

So I began to discern that there is more to the value of integrity than just black and white moral goodness.

I first caught a hint of a more complete concept of integrity through the writings of M. Scott Peck. The word “integrity,” he taught me, comes from the same root as the verb “integrate.” Integrity requires us to recognize the tensions between competing thoughts and demands, and to “integrate” them into a fuller reality. Integrity is about wholeness, entirety, and completion.

Ironically, my initial understanding of integrity involved focusing on one side of every issue at the expense of seeing other parts of the whole. I labelled everything and everyone as either good or bad, often missing the bigger picture.

Then came a major personal crisis. I was in my mid-forties when my marriage of over twenty years came to an end. Years of effort and struggle ended in divorce. While there were significant issues at play for which I could not take responsibility, I was still faced with the part that I had played. I had to take responsibility for those broken parts of me that had contributed to the problems. Though painful, taking responsibility for my part was the only portal to personal transformation.

When my understanding of integrity was limited to simple moral goodness, I was off to a good start. But I was out of balance. Being out of balance, it was only a matter of time before I fell. Quite surprising, though, was that in the falling down I discovered something more. Richard Rohr calls it “falling upward.”  That something more was a further spiritual journey of integrating the complexities of life into a larger reality. Understood this way, integrity was all about finding what had been missing: transformation.

For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.