I see many things today that show that we are .. Many people seem to affirm the value in living up to one's convictions and that that is the most honorable thing - "to thine own self be true". But I want to make a very important distinction in this idea - a distinction between being integral to one's beliefs and being right in your beliefs. Here of course we are bringing in the much-maligned concept of absolute truth and moral absolutes, given from God to man (us). This, in truth, is what the world is searching for and which is necessary if we are to survive. It is the loss of this truth that is the mark of a deluded and depraved society, which is what we're becoming.

integrity is more than just living by your convictions, it is making sure you're convictions line up with God's truth. God's truth leads to peace, health, prosperity, eternal life, and is consistent with doing good to your neighbor, and with beneficence, etc.

There are people today that believe it is honorable because they are suffering for their beliefs, but their beliefs are against God's truth.

People that blew up the world trade center were integral to their own beliefs and believed them throughly, to the end. They believed they were serving God and their fellow-man by doing what they did. Is that honorable? NO. Why? Because their beliefs were erroneous, they were wrong. Who says? God says.

So we must be careful that we do not honor someone merely for being faithful to their beliefs IF their beliefs are not honorable. There are people today who suffer because they refuse to accept God's truth regarding sexuality. God has a way in which he created man and woman to act sexually - and yet some homosexuals assert that God made them that way, or that God accepts them as they are. They are wrong - God accepts all people, but he clearly does not accept the behavior of those who go against the way he has created for people to be - that is the definition of perversion. And yet people wrongly consider themselves or others as courageous or honorable because they suffer the consequences of their wrong behavior and refuse to acknowledge that they are wrong - but rather assert that they are just being true to who they are and should be accepted as they are. If that line of reasoning was followed through to the logical conclusion, we would all be in a lot of trouble, and indeed we are becoming more and more in trouble as a society precisely because that line of reasoning has taken root - that of 'victimization' of total intrinsic acceptance of all human behavior - the debunking of the notion of moral absolutes which apply to all people and which are given by God. It's okay to molest your niece because 'that's just who you are' - It's okay for a man to kill his neighbor as long as he's being true to how he truly feels. We elvate elevate 'feeling' and emotion as something sacred and as the only governing influence which is valid at determining behavior. But this runs into obvious problems as shown above, aside from the fact that it is clearly wrong from God's perspective. What is God's perspective? Well, it is obviously the right one, since it is from God. The Bible asserts, as does even a shallow observation of humanity through the years, that man and the creation around us is in a fallen state. It is 'under a curse' which was placed here as the result of man choosing to go against God's command. The upshot of this is that we, being in a fallen state, are, every one of us, in need of rehabilitation, reprogramming, regeneration, reformatting, whatever term you want to use - we all have stuff that needs to change before a perfect God can fully accept us. It is not that God does not want to accept us, it's that he wants to accept us, AND,as a loving Father, He wants us to be acceptable, to be the perfect creation he meant for us to be. When Daddy's little girl comes in from playing and she has mud all over her face, Daddy still loves her and wants to hug her - dirty face and all. But it would be a strange Father who, BECAUSE of his love, also does not wish his little one to remain in a state of dirt (even though the child may not care and/or be aware of it). It is love that moves him to wash off her face for her. God's love was such that he made a way for all of us to have our faces washed, even when we didn't think they needed them washed. In other words, the sins and evil things in our hearts that we had grown accustomed to, and maybe even defined ourselves by (because we didn't know any better), God sees, just as Daddy see's his daughter's dirty face clouding over her wide grin. God loves all of us - that is why he sent Jesus. Jesus Died for the world. Why? Because God loved the world (us) so much that he sent Jesus to do what we could not do on our own, remove the dirt of our sin from our faces and our hearts and everywhere else. "Behold the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world" was how John described Jesus. That was Jesus primary purpose, to take away the sin of the world. In a world where "I'm okay, you're okay", what need is there of a savior? In other words, if you can live with your dirty face, I'll live with mine - who cares what Daddy thinks.

I began this conversation talking about integrity and how things are wrongly honored in our society. Beliefs are only as valuable as the truth they are built on. If a belief is built on a lie, then it is only a fool or a deluded person who would die for it. That's what Jesus was thought of as being by many (and still many today). He claimed to be the Son of God, the one whose mission it was to die for the offenses of the world - even a world that did not recognize him as such and who mocked him to his face, though he did no evil to anyone. His vindication was the ressurrection from the dead and the fact that God the Father, the creator of all, raised him up and is still working to bring people to him for the removal of their offenses, the mud from their face.