How Does Your Profession Rank?

"Then Jesus said to the crowds and to His disciples:The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not do what they preach." Matthew 23; 1-3  

In a recent Gallop survey, people were asked to analyze their perception of honesty and ethics in different professions. Here are a few of the results out of 20 as to how they ranked. Nurses #1, Accountants #8, Bankers #10, Clergy #5, Business executives #15, Teachers #3, Building contractors #11. Real Estate agents #13, Policeman #6, Lawyers #12, Congressman #16, Pharmacists #2, Doctors #4 Car salesman #19, telemarketers #20 

Part of our responsibility in the market place is to represent Christ with integrity.  Many would say that integrity is to be honest as the poll suggested. But I can be honest and be a criminal. I can tell you that I am going to steal from your business, and if I do it, then I am honest. But do I have integrity? In the passage in Matthew even Jesus admonishes the people for not doing what they say.

Proverbs 20: 25 states - " It is a trap for a man to dedicate something rashly and only later to consider his vows." How is dishonesty manifested as honesty in todays world? Do we ever experience a situation where the truth about a product or service is stretched? How about falsifying an event or experience?  Do we hide certain facts from disclosure in a deal? Many of these, as we can see, have become so prevalent in today's world that we take them for granted. We go into a situation with our guard up knowing that all the information is probably not correct. All though honesty is a primary measure of our integrity, there must be something other than honesty we can use as a foundation upon which we can evaluate integrity.

Whoever lives with integrity fears the Lord. but the one who is devious in his ways despises Him." Proverbs 14:2. To fear the Lord is the foundational basis for integrity. The world offers us many things that can tempt us away from this foundation in God. But the world also offers us lies that can seem like the truth if we are not grounded in Him who holds all the truth. It is God whose character never changes, who is pure and righteous, who paid the price for us to be a part of His Kingdom, who cannot lie, does what He says, and represents our best interest.  

In Isaiah 6: 1-7, Isaiah had a vision of God and was overwhelmed with His holiness. R. C. Sproul relates that Isaiah became disintegrated -came apart- to become unglued. Sproul also relates that to integrate is to be made whole. Integrity, then, is to be so overwhelmed by the presence of God in our life that we are first emptied and then filled back with a wholesomeness that reflects the character of God. Integrity, therefore, would have to contain ethics. A person of integrity has to be an ethical person, one who has a standard of right and wrong, good and evil. A person of ethics believes in the right things - things of God.

Finally, integrity has to have a sense of morality. This is a lived out standard of right and wrong. It is how we actually live. A moral person is one whose life reflects wholesomeness in the way he lives. Think how it might be if all the professions we listed above lived by the right standard.