The Kingdom Movement

A Literary & Pastoral Study Guide to the Gospel of Matthew

The Inspiration of Matthew,

by Caravaggio

On the King's Errand

Devotional Reflections on Matthew's Gospel

Heart Transformation for Integrity, Part 3:  Mt.5:33 – 37

^5:33 Again, you have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not make false vows, but shall fulfill your vows to the Lord. ³⁴ But I say to you, make no oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, ³⁵ or by the earth, for it is the footstool of His feet, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king. ³⁶ Nor shall you make an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. ³⁷ But let your statement be, ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no’; anything beyond these is of evil.

          It's hard to have integrity.  I’ve noticed that on Facebook events, people will say ‘Join.’  But they didn’t really mean it.  Why do we do that?  I'd like to explore some common reasons:

          Lack of self-awareness.  “What limits?”  People fritter away their own integrity is because they lack an awareness of their own limits.  They are overconfident or optimistic that they can do it all.  As an example, some freshmen just join everything!  “What limits?”  Or, there are resume packers who get involved in leadership in too many organizations.  They think they can survive on 4 hours of sleep a night.  Not only will that burn years off your life, it will damage your friendships.  You weren’t made to live like that.  If you are going to be a gift to other people, you have to accept the fact that you need sleep, that you have limitations.  That is very related to the next reason.

          Idolizing ‘options’:  fear of missing out on something better later; fear of having to sacrifice and lose out.  Now I’ve seen this happen in different ways.  My wife and I were counseling a younger couple in their premarital counseling.  One thing that came up as they were planning their wedding, their honeymoon, and where they would live is that the guy kept wanting to save money so much that he wanted to switch photographers, switch honeymoon locations, switch move in dates to their new apartment.  He would say, ‘Yes’ to something and then want to change it later.  It stressed her out because she was in medical school at the time, and there were only so many balls she could have in the air at once.  We said, ‘Can’t you just decide something, and then close the door on other options?’  That was actually difficult for him. 

           Now for some of you, it might work out differently.  Let’s say that you get chronically overcommitted.  What Jesus is saying here is that you have to work on knowing yourself better.  Making commitments requires that you know yourself, to get perspective on your own emotions.  Or you may need a different view of time.  You don’t have to do everything while you’re in college.  Believe it or not, there will be time for you to take art classes after college.  Cramming everything in now doesn’t make the dollars you’re spending worth it.  Why do you feel guilty?  Why do you feel afraid?  Jesus’ call to integrity drills down deep into other issues.  Henri Nouwen wondered how we develop integrity, and he said,

‘I think by no other way than to find the courage to enter into the core of our own existence and become familiar with the complexities of our own inner lives. As soon as we feel at home in our own house, discover the dark corners as well as light spots, the closed doors as well as the drafty rooms, our confusion will evaporate, our anxiety will diminish, and we will become capable of creative work.’ (Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer)

          People pleasing:  fear of disappointing people that just pushes things off to the future.  As an example:  I am a terrible long distance friend.  I’m really good in person, but I have a hard time keeping in touch.  A friend of mine who used to live out here in Boston and now lives elsewhere asked me, ‘Your friendship is important; could we keep in touch more often?’  I said, ‘Sure, but it would really help me to get a sense for how often you might want to talk.’  He said, ‘A couple times a month?’  I was tempted to say, ‘Ok’ to that, but realistically I had to say, ‘I would be more comfortable with once a month.  If you’re okay with seeing how that plays out, we can try that.’  Helping people to have accurate expectations of you is important.

          Fear of conflict:  harboring reservations and not bringing them up early.  I have been a part of men’s accountability groups where this has gone badly and where it has gone well.  For any of you who don’t know, an accountability group is a group of people who meet to encourage one another to grow in Christian character and mission.  One time, a friend of mine was sharing that he was irritated with Person B and thought Person B was doing something wrong.  I let him share, and then asked, ‘Are you going to talk with this person about that issue?’  He seemed a bit surprised that I asked that.  So I said, ‘Well, I made a commitment to Jesus to encourage reconciliation.  If you want to talk things out here and process, that’s fine.  But we can’t just use this group to gossip.  Part of my integrity, and our integrity, then, is to help you think through it in whatever way we can, but to help you decide whether this is important enough to talk about with this other person.’  My friend was surprised about that, and we’re not the tightest of friends because of it.  But that is Jesus’ definition of integrity.  As Dumbledore said,

‘It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to your enemies, but a great deal more to stand up to your friends.’ (J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone)

          So let’s be hopeful.  There was a Boston Globe article published on October 27, 2013 called ‘Morality, Secret to Popularity:  A new study suggests it’s less important to be friendly than to be good.’  It says,

‘The researchers believe we value morality over warmth because it’s a better predictor of whether someone will help or harm you. “Friendliness can be quite disingenuous,” Goodwin says. “It can conceal darker motives.”  The new findings raise real implications about how we present ourselves. Given our usual assumption that friendliness means likability, Goodwin says, people might feel pressure to produce extroverted displays to achieve social success—but “perhaps that’s less important than people think.” In other words, you’ll earn more points for staying after a party to clean up than for being the one to creatively make the mess. But appearing moral is harder than appearing warm—you have to be moral. “To convince someone that you are fair you actually have to engage in certain behaviors that require much from you,” Piazza says. “You can’t just fake it.”  Strohminger says her results have made her friends “think more about their own relationships and what they really value.” When you’re choosing a friend or romantic partner, in the beginning you might pay attention to whether they share the same interests or how funny or good-looking they are. But moral traits, she says, are “actually what ends up making the relationship last, because those are the ones that you’re ultimately keyed into.”  As a friend of mine who’s had some health problems recently posted on her Facebook wall: “It’s pretty easy to be fun. It’s a lot more impressive when a person is fun and reliable.”’ (emphasis mine)

          Finally, the last reason I think we overcommit (and sometimes undercommit) is Lack of love and respect for people:  not taking their commitments seriously; carelessness.  I think we do need to make the appropriate kinds of commitments to other people.  In many ways, we are defined by our commitments, not by our independence from commitments.