Reading: from Integrity by Stephen Carter¹

My first lesson in integrity came the hard way. It was 1960 or thereabouts and I was a first-grader at P.S. 129 in Harlem. The teacher had us all sitting in a circle, playing a game in which each child would take a turn donning a blindfold and then trying to identify objects by touch alone as she handed them to us. If you guessed right, you stayed in until the next round. If you guessed wrong, you were out. I survived almost to the end, amazing the entire class with my abilities. Then, to my dismay, the teacher realized what I had known, and relied upon, from the start: my blindfold was tied imperfectly and a sliver of bright reality leaked in from outside. By holding the unknown object in my lap instead of out in front of me, as most of the other children did, I could see at least a corner or a side and sometimes more--but always enough to figure out what it was. So my remarkable success was due only to my ability to break the rules.

Fortunately for my own moral development, I was caught. And as a result of being caught, I suffered, in front of my classmates, a humiliating reminder of right and wrong: I had cheated at the game. Cheating was wrong. It was that simple.

I do not remember many of the details of the "public" lecture that I received from my teacher. I do remember that I was made to feel terribly ashamed; and it is good that I was made to feel that way, for I had something to be ashamed of. The moral opprobrium that accompanied that shame was sufficiently intense that it has stayed with me ever since, which is exactly how shame is supposed to work. And as I grew older, whenever I was even tempted to cheat--at a game, on homework--I would remember my teacher's stern face and the humiliation of sitting before my classmates, revealed to the world as a cheater.

The professional football season is only three weeks old, and I've already seen this play more than once: a receiver dives for a ball thrown low by the quarterback. The ball seems to arrive at the instant the receiver hits the ground; it's hard to tell just what happened. The receiver jumps up and celebrates what appears to have been a fabulous shoe-string catch. Then we see the slow-motion replay, and it's clear that the receiver never caught the ball, or only managed to reel it in after hitting the ground. We can guess pretty well that the receiver knew he didn't catch the ball, but acted as if he did in the hopes of fooling the referee and getting the advantage of a bad call. Whether the acting job works or not, the announcers almost always speak glowingly and with a little chuckle about the receiver's exemplary efforts to get his team some extra yardage. And millions of children watching on television have this lesson reinforced: good for you if you can get away with deception!

Now there is a clearly a place for deception in football. Teams are always trying to deceive the other team about the true nature of the play they are about to run or the defensive scheme they are about to utilize. Brett Favre always pretends to throw the ball after he hands off to a running back, in the hopes of deceiving a defensive player or two into thinking it's a passing play. These deceptions are within the rules. But trying to deceive the referee is not or should not be within the rules or the spirit of the game. While it may not be specifically against the rules, it detracts from the integrity of the game and sends a message of "anything's okay if you get away with it and if it helps your team win."

In spite of the reality that most people at least try to live with integrity, images of people in our society living in utter disregard for integrity abound. The oft-repeated football play I just described is but one common though rather trivial example. Another football example Stephen Carter refers to in his book was the Colorado/Missouri college football game in 1990. Through referee error Colorado got an extra, fifth down and used it to score the winning touchdown as time expired. Colorado's coach, a devout Christian who quit coaching a few years ago to devote his full attention to the Christian men's group Promise Keepers, said after the game that his team "earned" the two-point victory--even though they wouldn't have won without the mistaken fifth down. Although there is precedent for a college team "giving back" an undeserved victory, he never considered giving the victory to Missouri. In fact, this bogus victory enabled his team to end the season not only undefeated but as the national champions. For the coach, cheating another team out of a victory it deserved apparently wasn't at odds with the life of integrity supposedly embraced by the Promise Keepers. The moral for all to see seems to be: winning is the greatest good; the end justifies the means.

Of course examples of living with a lack of integrity are not limited to football. I mention these examples mostly because so many of our young watch football and are influenced by what they see. But there are certainly an abundance of other images of people making little effort to live with integrity: editors in the tabloid and all too often mainstream media who make decisions on what to report based on the bottom dollar of profitability. Such editors often fail to consider the story's truth or its impact on individual lives or the common good. There are other examples: integrity-less politicians who lie and deceive to get elected, or who take the low road to getting elected by making (and perhaps delivering on) promises that appeal to constituents' self-interest rather than the common good; or, to hit closer to home, you or I being silent at work after a co-worker makes a hateful comment that is racist or sexist. How can we expect our children to develop personal integrity with such images abounding in their and our lives?

Part of our problem with integrity may be that although the word is thrown around a lot, we don't really understand what it means. Of what does integrity consist? Stephen Carter gives a very helpful answer to this question in his book. Integrity, he writes, consists of three steps:

(1) discerning what is right and what is wrong; (2) acting on what you have discerned, even at personal cost; and (3) saying openly that you are acting on your understanding of right from wrong.²

Let's examine this process step by step.

Carter's first step, discerning what is right and what is wrong, brings me back to a sermon I gave last spring. The importance he attaches to discernment only adds to my belief that discernment is a key to living thoughtfully and, as much as possible, ethically. The process of discernment takes a lot of time and effort--time and effort that is well worth it because it enables us to act with forethought instead of just reflexively.

What is the source of our knowledge of right and wrong? It depends on the beliefs of the individual person. Some people understand their source of knowledge about right and wrong to be a higher power such as God. Their discernment process focuses on figuring out which course of action is most congruent with the values and teachings of their higher power. The process involves going within and, often, trying to get in touch with one's higher power through prayer or other means.

Others name the source of their knowledge of right from wrong as their conscience. Their discernment process focuses on their conscience--their deepest understandings of what is ethical and moral behavior. The knowledge of right and wrong is available within themselves and is not necessarily dependent on the existence of or a relationship with a higher power. I think discernment can work for people with either of these conceptions or variations of them.

This discussion leads to a difficult question that lies at the very heart of ethics and morality: is there a universal, objective, absolutely correct answer to what is right and wrong? In other words, as we discern about what is right and what is wrong, is there an inescapable and correct answer we should come up with--regardless of the theological character of our discernment process. Are some courses of action simply more moral than others? Or, as moral relativists would believe, is there no ultimate standard of right and wrong? Does the rightness of one's conclusion depend on the particular situation and one's own particular set of understandings about life?

I am not a moral relativist: I believe that there are universal rights and universal wrongs. As Carter writes, "Some answers to moral dilemmas are truer than others."³ Imagine, for example, that you are a rather prosperous Christian living in Nazi Germany. One day a person appears at your door dressed in rags, hurt and obviously hungry. You make the probably correct assumption that she is a Jew in hiding. You have some clear choices, and in this case not a lot of time for discernment. You could quickly find some food and clothing for her and put them outside for her. You could invite her in, feed her, perhaps even take her into hiding. You could pretend you didn't see her and go about your business. Or you could run to the police station and report that you saw a woman whom you believe to be a Jew in hiding. This moral dilemma is similar to the one faced by the people in Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan who come upon the bloody and beaten man on the road to Jericho. They have a similar choice: stop and help, or walk on. In both cases, some of the possible actions are truer and more moral than others. In spite of the risks or inconveniences, helping another person in genuine and desperate need is more moral than ignoring that person, or, in the Nazi case, than turning her in. One course of action is right; the other course of action is wrong. An honest and open discernment process should help one determine which is which.

I do need to acknowledge, however, that we human beings do not often have the ability to know for sure what is right and what is wrong. Part of being human is that we are not always able to see perfectly clearly. I believe that none of us is infallible. Sure, there are moral absolutes--only we can never be absolutely sure what they are. And most ethical or moral dilemmas are far more ambiguous than the two I just mentioned.

Acknowledging our human fallibility, we must also acknowledge that our discernment process--even if carefully done--might lead us to an immoral conclusion. Gandhi understood this. This understanding led him to the principle of non-violence: it is wrong to kill or hurt someone else in order to advance a cause that just might be immoral.

The second step in Carter's process of integrity is acting on what you have discerned, even at a personal cost. One doesn't have integrity if one consistently fails to render one's belief about what is right and what is wrong into concrete action. If the prosperous German Christian discerns that it is right to help the Jewish refugee at the door but doesn't in fact offer any help, he has no integrity. If the priest or the Levite discerns that he should help the person lying half-dead on the road to Jericho but fails to help anyway, he acts without integrity. Discernment without action is not enough. This second step tells us that we must not let our ultimate uncertainty or our acknowledgment of the possibility of error paralyze us into inaction.

Another thing paralyzes many of us into inaction or causes us to act in a way different from what we discerned we should do: the risk or cost associated with morally right action. Stopping to help the beaten man on the way to Jericho could cause us to be late for an important appointment. Helping a despised Samaritan of all people could cause us embarrassment or the risk of persecution. Giving even a few scraps of food to a Jewish refugee could cause the Gestapo to come after us. Most of us might be willing to pay the cost of being late for a business appointment to help someone, but how many of us if we lived in Nazi Germany would risk imprisonment, torture and even death to help a refugee? When the risk is so high, it becomes decidedly more difficult to act with integrity. There is no doubt: at times living with integrity requires great courage.

Carter's third step in the integrity process is saying openly that you are acting on your understanding of right from wrong. This step also often requires a great deal of courage. Saying openly what one is doing is an essential part of most non-violent civil disobedience. Both King and Gandhi didn't just act for justice by breaking the law, but they announced what they were doing and why. And they accepted the consequences for breaking the law, including prosecution and jail sentences. King said that he could only break the law "openly and lovingly." Of course there are some conceivable circumstances where speaking openly about one's actions is clearly not warranted or even ethical. Returning to my example of the Jewish refugee at your back door: if you decided to take her into your home and hide her, speaking openly about your action not only would risk your life, but also the lives of the Jewish woman and all of the other refugees you could help if you were not caught.

Perhaps it will be helpful to consider a few more concrete examples of moral dilemmas. Let's take the draft during the height of the Vietnam War first. I will give you my spin on this question. As I do so, I must acknowledge that some men in this congregation faced this difficult decision and that--this is an understatement--it was a whole lot harder to work through it for real in 1968 than in a sermon in 1997. So it goes with real, tough moral dilemmas. But imagine that you are a young man facing the prospect of being drafted in 1968. What do you do? First of all you spend time discerning whether serving in the United States military in Vietnam is moral or immoral. This discernment process must focus not on whether serving will have good or bad personal consequences, but on your duty to your nation and on whether the U.S. policy is moral or immoral. You must ponder the question of whether it is right or wrong to kill people on behalf of this (or any) government policy. You may conclude that the war is just or that your duty outweighs your personal feelings against the war. People of integrity did come to these conclusions.

If you conclude that the war is wrong and this wrong outweighs your duty to your nation, then you must be prepared to act to stop it and say openly that you are acting on your understanding of right from wrong. Fleeing to Canada is an action, but it is one that pretty much will prevent you from saying openly that you are acting to stop the war. Deciding to join the National Guard as a way of avoiding service in Vietnam has even less integrity. In that case, your action has nothing to do with ending the war and everything to do with minimizing your personal danger. The act that appears to have the most integrity would be to refuse to serve and then tell the military that you are refusing to serve because you believe the war is unjust. You could seek conscientious objector status. If that doesn't work, then you could with great integrity express openly that you are refusing to fight an unjust war and will accept the government's punishment.

The issue of abortion is another good example to contemplate. To develop a position on abortion that has integrity, you must first do some serious discernment. Let's not fool ourselves: abortion is a complex moral question. Reflecting on your higher power and/or your conscience, you must explore whether abortion is ever a morally right decision, and if so, in what particular cases. You must try to imagine yourself in the position of a woman contemplating whether to have an abortion. If you feel that the issue is significant for you and you have some clarity about it, then act on your discernment and talk about your actions openly.

I should point out that this is exactly what many people in Operation Rescue do. I disagree with both their stand on the abortion issue and their tactics. I hope that they continue to be arrested when they break the law. But I must recognize that they possess some integrity: in many cases they have discerned their viewpoint and they have acted on it and they have had the courage to say publicly that they are breaking the law in order to act on their understanding of right and wrong. As long as they remain non-violent, they are engaging in classic civil disobedience.

A final brief example is hearing a racist joke at work. Many of us discern that such a joke is wrong, but then do and say nothing expressing our viewpoint. Our silence betrays a lack of integrity. We discern but do not act or speak.

I feel compelled to cover one other issue before I conclude: there is somewhat of a fine line between leading a life of integrity and self-righteousness or even fanaticism. I have observed that religious liberals have just as easy of a time crossing this line as religious conservatives. I think that it is important for all of us to keep in mind that we just might be wrong and that in most cases, another person possessing every bit as much integrity as we have can come to an opposite conclusion. Bearing these things in mind can go a long way toward keeping us from self-righteousness. I think it is also important to acknowledge that none of us except the fanatic has the time and energy and focus to act or speak on every single moral issue. And only the fanatic never compromises. As Carter writes, "True, all of us should be steadfast and uncompromising about something, but only the fanatic is steadfast and uncompromising about everything."⁴

At the same time, our actions and words--even apparently little ones--can be important. As Hannah Arendt pointed out in Eichmann in Jerusalem, even something as horrible as the Holocaust is only possible because a lot of ordinary people decided day after day to turn the other way or to go along without questioning. The life of integrity is hard and complex. I totally disagree with one of the church ads in yesterday's Post-Crescent that stated that "Life is not complicated if you follow God's instructions."⁵ Surely none of is perfect in discerning, acting or speaking with integrity. But try we must. As Carter points out, the root of the word integrity is "integer"--wholeness. Striving to live a life of integrity and teaching our children to do the same occupies much of the path to wholeness.

(This sermon should not be reproduced without the consent of its author.)

²Ibid., p. 7.

³Ibid., p. 59.

⁴Ibid., p. 45.

⁵An advertisement for the Apostolic Truth Church, Appleton, in the Appleton Post-Crescent, p. B-12, September 20, 1997.