Having integrity is not what you may have thought. Have you ever heard this definition of integrity? “Integrity is about being the same person when people aren’t looking as when they are.” In other words do you act the same way in private as you do in public? This had long been my definition of integrity, but a couple of nights ago that definition underwent a major overhaul.

The problem with the public, private definition is that it smacks of “people pleasing”. It isn’t about the internal, it is about the external. Now you may say I don’t get that from the definition. But when you’re a people pleaser, as I once was, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It is all about how you appear to people. The subtle connotation of the definition is that people and their opinion of you should be the motivation for your actions. Don’t believe it? Let’s say that you are a complete jerk, and you are a jerk when people are looking, as well as when they aren’t. By the definition above you would have to say this man is a man of integrity, right? But we know that isn’t what’s meant by this definition, we know what is meant is that our actions should be acceptable to people, both publicly and privately.

A few days ago though I had this definition turned on its head. I came to realize that integrity is about doing things and saying things that may not be acceptable to people. Look at Jesus life. He ate with sinners. Not acceptable to the Religious. But he didn’t care what the religious people thought, he did it anyway. Today we like the self-righteous of Jesus day would advise against such behavior and use integrity as a reason for our advice. You need to consider your integrity, we would say, “What would people think if they knew the kind of company you kept?” In other words we need to be concerned about how we appear to people. This revelation came to me as I was coming home with some friends from a bar where we had been to hear a band. Just a few years ago there is no way I would go to a bar for fear of how it would look. But as God has helped me overcome my people pleasing I have been able to go places I never would have considered before.

I wasn’t sure when I accepted this invitation just how I would feel about it. But I actually enjoyed myself. If there is anything I could say about the people and the band at this bar it would have to be they were real. No pretentiousness about whom or what they were. As I sat there I thought this is what it means to have integrity, to be real, to be yourself no matter where you are. I was just as much a Christian at that bar as I was on a Sunday morning. And I can’t tell you how God’s Spirit filled me that night as I thought about for the first time I didn’t care what people thought of me. I didn’t care what the people at the bar thought of my Christianity, and I didn’t care what Christians would think of me for being there. I knew who I was and I was that person. And the most exciting part is that I knew God loved me and I was starting to love myself because I was being myself, regardless of what people thought. I can hear though the accountability partner believing Christians, and their cynical beliefs about a man’s ability to have integrity, warning of the dangers of such actions. But I don’t care anymore what they think. Men are capable of integrity and that’s all there is to it. That lie and its inevitable attitudes are of no concern to me anymore.

Before God started working on me and my people pleasing I would have been ashamed of my Christianity at a bar. I wasn’t anymore. But hear is the real kicker to the story. Not only was I not ashamed of my Christianity at this bar, I had also began loosing my shame of faults and sins around Christians. Again this flipping of the definition of integrity occurred. I began to realize that I didn’t care what Christians thought of me either. All my work to make pornography an important issue in the church had not won me a lot of friends. My sin for a long time kept me from working in this area. But I had come to a place now I didn’t care what “Christians” thought of me either; just as I didn’t care what non-Christians thought. So I may offend some people by saying they are being negligent in their duties to shepherd God’s flock and that some of the things the church is teaching are not scriptural. Jesus again did not shy away from offending the religious either. Being a man of integrity is not about being acceptable to people in public and private as much as it is about being unacceptable in public and private. Being a man of integrity is about being a rebel. Something I always thought of myself as, and frankly think every Christian should. Never though had I linked being a rebel to having integrity. But here it was staring me in the face and I loved it. I have accepted God’s call to be a rebel. Have you?

“People pleasing” is a part of being an addict I believe. It is a way of acting out in private what you wished you could do in public; which is to exert your power. What I mean is that we as pornography addicts want power. But we are misguided in the area we have chosen to exert that power. When you loose your people pleasing tendencies though along with your addiction you find a kind of power you always dreamed of having; the power to be a rebel in the face of this society, the power to be yourself. It really is the call to be a prophet for God in the tradition of the greatest prophet of all, Christ. Who didn’t care one iota what people thought of Him. He if anything was the antithesis of a “people pleaser” and an absolute inspiration to me in this area of His life. Once you find freedom from pornography you may also find yourself being called to be a prophet. Accept it and run with it. God needs more people in this world that aren’t afraid of being themselves and proclaiming the truth whether it be outside the church or in it.

Back to Home Page