Monday, December 12, 2005

Looking Up Integrity

I had already decided what I was going to talk about in my blog this morning until I heard a startling fact on the radio. Really it just complements what I was going to say. The number one word looked up in the dictionary this year was the word "integrity." Now you look up a word in the dictionary for two purposes. One, to see how it is spelled. Two, to see what it means. What does it mean? Have we lost the meaning of integrity in our society? Has our culture so blurred the lines that we don't even know what it is to be a person of honesty and honor?
This morning I heard a colleague talk of how people shoplift in his wife's store. They really can't confront them because they are concerned about having a gun pulled on them. He told of girls who bragged about jewelry that they stole from a store. They compared notes as to who got the nicest piece of bling. My son was filling out an application for a clothing store. They asked all kinds of questions concerning stealing and honesty. Evidently, they are having a problem with employees not being entirely honest.
What I originally was going to talk about was how when I stepped outside this morning the temperature was 36 degrees. But after having highs of 9 and 10 degrees, it seemed like a heat wave. In the fall after having a day of 60 or 70 degrees, 36 degrees was cold. But today it seemed like a virtual heat wave. So much so, that I didn't wear my jacket. It's kind of like the frog in the pot of water. The weather doesn't seem cold after having gone through what we did last week. I have gotten used to it. In the same way we have gotten so used to sin that we don't know what it is anymore. I find myself being that way, too. Movies that I see I just blow it off as our culture. Instead of being outraged, I tolerate. Now I'm not asking that we become fanatical and excessive in our views. I'm just wondering where we stopped seeing sin as it really is. So much so that our socieity has to look up the word "integrity" to see what it means.
I'm not usually this depressing, but I think it's something we need to think about. I'll try to be more positive tomorrow.

JW

1 comment:

Donna G said...

It is a problem. We get so used to something we allow too much to get in...

Thanks for the reminder.