Integrity..

We are spending the weekend with my wife's parents. My children got so excited, I almost had to wrestle them to get them calmed down for bedtime. I didn't have to wrestle Carolyn. She just fell in and went promptly to sleep. :) Here I am at the computer, wide awake. Guess who did the least work today?

I spent the better part of the evening with Carolyn's father, a man I deeply admire and respect. He's a farmer. He has a BIG farm. He is quiet spoken and speaks few words but when he does speak, it's worth hearing. He is a man of integrity, and I would trust him with my life. He's a Christian man, has been since his teens.

We talked some about integrity tonight. I told him the following story about a judge I read about in one of Charles Colson's books.

"In his book Loving God, Charles Colson draws attention to an incident involving an Indiana judge named William Bontrager. Bontrager had to pass sentence on Fred Palmer, a decorated Vietnam veteran who was found guilty of burglary. The crime was caused partly by involvement with drugs and alcohol. Indiana law required a sentence of ten to twenty years for Palmer’s offense. However, new regulations designating a lesser penalty had gone into effect eighteen days after Palmer’s arrest. To complicate matters, Palmer had become a Christian in jail and seemed to have changed. Should the judge sentence Palmer, a man who had never been in jail, to ten years or more? Or should he declare the older statute in violation of Indiana’s constitution and give him a lighter sentence? Bontrager did the latter. Fred Palmer was out of jail in seven months, had a job, and was paying back his former victims.

The events that followed received national attention. The Indiana Supreme Court reversed the judge’s decision and ordered Fred Palmer sent back to prison. The judge’s attempts to fight the court’s decision during the next two years led to his own indictment for criminal contempt of court and, finally, his forced resignation. Fred Palmer was sent back to prison, only to be released twenty months later by the governor. Bontrager’s convictions cost him his job, but not his integrity."

Mr. Murphy shared this poem with me. I like it and like to think I live such a life. There is nothing more important to a Christian than God-graced integrity, in my opinion.

Myself

I have to live with myself, and so
I want to be fit for myself to know,
I want to be able, as days go by,
Always to look myself straight in the eye;
I don’t want to stand, with the setting sun,
And hate myself for the things I’ve done.

I don’t want to keep on the closet shelf
A lot of secrets about myself,
And fool myself, as I come and go,
Into thinking that nobody else will know
The kind of a man I really am;
I don’t want to dress up myself in sham.

I want to go out with my head erect,
I want to deserve all men’s respect;
But here in the struggle for fame and pelf
I want to be able to like myself.
I don’t want to look at myself and know
That I’m bluster and bluff and empty show.

I can never hide myself from me;
I see what others may never see;
I know what others may never know,
I never can fool myself, and so,
Whatever happens, I want to be
Self-respecting and conscience free.

Source unknown

"Those who love Your law have great peace, and nothing causes them to stumble." Psalm 119:165