Personal integrity...

Continued from my post on Brennan Manning's book A Glimpse of Jesus...

"Jesus' enemies had to acknowlege His integrity." [p. 119]

I make the following comments with the full knowlege that (a) I am not Jesus and (b) I have made people not like me over the years, at least a few times...

The greatest compliment someone who does not like me could say is "well, she stands for what she believes." That would include the PTA member who disagreed with my stand on what was "appropriate" for the eGroup message board (since I was the moderator), or the neighbor who was unhappy with our decision to fence in our yard because it made HIS yard look smaller. Neither action was done capriciously on my part (in fact with a lot of angst, a few tears and a round of second-guessing my decisions!) But despite our disagreements, at least my integrity is intact. And that is very VERY hard to keep.

Keeping my integrity (faith, life and practice) in concert is what I am beginning to see is what Christianity is all about. It gets interpreted differently for each generation. My kids, who are Generation iPod, will have to discover what this means as they grow up. I'm re-learning what it means alongside them. If I can't communicate to my neighbors (most of whom really DON'T get this God-thing) then I have no hope of being able to communicate to a church.

And I'm still mulling over the idea that "integrity" and "emotional honesty" might not be compatible... What I mean by that is that it may be more important to live gently and "Christianly" than to always prove I'm right.

From our home to yours...

Deb