As the debate on CV-19 continues with cognitive dissonance while smoldering fires within our cities cast a dreary haze bespeckled with the glint of projectiles hurled by “peaceful protestors,” there is an acute awareness amongst the majority of our citizens that something is terribly wrong in America.
Our nation has seen its fair share of crazy upheavals. We’ve had a civil war and have the T-shirt and statues to prove it. Now, there’s talk again of civil war. Despite that drastic chatter, this strangely seems worse. There permeates within our midst a deterioration of a critical virtue found in the human heart. To make this sound more official, let’s give this threat a Latin name: integritas extincto, death of integrity.
Integrity has a complex meaning but at its core is honesty and truthfulness. Truth begets trust which is the essential ingredient for every healthy relationship as nautically-speaking, trust is the keel in a relation – “ship”; break the keel and the ship sinks. Relationships require truth.
Truth is light; truth is king—an immovable object able to withstand the onslaught of a horde of lies. Lies cannot defeat truth; they can only mask or possibly distort it to those less discerning. A nation not built on truth and its byproduct of trust is not a nation worth keeping.
Are we still a law-abiding nation? As we watched the rioting and the looters on TV scurrying away with their ill-gotten liquor, TVs, and merchandise, how many of our citizens wished they had gotten some too? How many would steal if they knew they could get away with it? Has our society’s embedded level of integrity reached a tipping point?
What about our leadership? How is truth working out within our cultural pillars of society? Is our government a purveyor of truth? Sitting beside King Truth is Lady Justice. With her famous blindfold, sword, and scale, is she unbiased in her judgments? Is the rule of law being applied equally to all?
Our nation sits at the precipice of the largest government scandal in the history of our Republic. The corruption is massive expanding across multiple government agencies of the DOJ, FBI, the intelligence communities, several members of Congress, and current and/or former administration officials. There is a multitude of government workers who are knowledgeable of this and their silence is deafening. There are either complicit, apathetic, or fearful. None of those are good. Is there no one willing to step up to defend justice and proclaim the truth?
How about our media—the fourth estate and supposed watchdog for we, the people? Are they proclaimers of truth? Given their disinterest in the above scandal, the MSM is a sham. Objective journalistic integrity has left the country years ago. With the ever-shortening news cycles, journalists have become too pressed or lazy to even hide their bias. It is so blatant that even Ray Charles can see it and he’s not only blind, but dead.
What about our education system? Do they teach the importance of truth? Are they a forum for the free exchange and expression of ideas in search of truth or are they choked with political correctness and so-called wokeness that stymies thinking and threatens students toward single-minded compliance?
What about the business world? Surely, the importance of integrity is key to building consumer trust. Is Big Tech trustworthy? As social media platforms, they are protected by law to be an open and fair forum of communication. Are altering algorithms for search engine logic, shadow banning, and account suspensions for dubious violations of community standards signs of an ethical and truth-seeking enterprise?
The arts (Hollywood), the science community, heck, even our trust in doctors has been infected with truth malpractice. The WHO and our own CDC all appear tainted by a political ideology. Can they be trusted?
The fact that we are asking these questions already proves we have a serious problem. The manifestation of that problem is that everything has become political. Thus, every solution offered is provided within the context of promoting a political agenda. It is a sad testimony that when we, the people listen to our doctors, scientists, news media, business leaders, educators, and politicians, we are now forced to evaluate if what they say is actually true or slanted by political bias.
Truth is under assault. This leads us to the second aspect of integrity—wholeness. Integrity means wholeness and as we see the truth-challenged behavior deteriorate the pillars of our society, it weakens and divides us. It cracks the keel of our relation-ships. Our ship of state is sinking.
This can be reversed. First, we’ve got to possess the desire and the will to fix it. Second, we have to be selfless and prime the pump with generosity. The primal motivational desire—the binding energy that can keep us together is…love.
This isn’t the romantic, “Hey baby, what’cha doing tonight?” type of love. This is the charitable, selfless love of having another’s best interest at heart. Keeping the nautical theme, it’s looking after your shipmate by caring, serving, accepting, forgiving, and encouraging one another. It’s a “pay it forward” mindset that puts in the required grease to salve the inevitable mini-conflicts of human interaction and keeps the gears of society turning. It is following the customer-centric advice of the Golden rule to treat others as you’d like to be treated. It’s the mindset that President Kennedy tried to inspire when he exclaimed, “Ask not what the country can do for you, but what can you do for your country.”
Are we willing to step up for our country? If we are self-absorbed, if it’s all about me, if we place ourselves first and sacrifice truth to do so—if that’s our condition, then we are sunk. However, I believe there are enough people within our nation with the heart to turn this around. Imagine if our society could regain that “help your shipmate” mindset and simply follow the Golden rule. Looting, rioting, and all the destructive nonsense raging in our country today would dissipate. Lying and disparaging one another would cease. The pay it forward approach would help heal the nation and unify Team USA. Yeah, we have the freedom to burn the flag or take a knee during the national anthem, but what true American would want to do so? That’s like dissing your family. Granted not all family members get along. This type of love doesn’t mean you have to like others, but it does mean that you treat everyone with respect. That’s the baseline standard of performance for a healthy and thriving society that we all can embrace.
For the Christian faithful, the Golden rule (Matt. 7:12) is just the starting point. Every human (born or unborn) is created in the image of God and worthy of great respect. We also believe that truth and love are not some abstract theoretical concepts. Truth and love is a Person; truth and love is Christ (John 14:6, 10:30, 1 John 4:8). Our command is the new command which is to love others as Christ loves us. That’s an “all in” level of commitment. That is the level of effort and the level of love necessary to turn this thing around. This is a battle for our nation’s soul—a struggle for who we are as a nation.
The last chapter of the obscure paperback, Blue Collar Faith is an excerpt from a research paper written by Lieutenant General Van Antwerp who forecasted the greatest threat to America. It is not Russia, China, North Korea, or Iran. It’s not some future pandemic. The greatest threat to America is spiritual decay. The fruit of that decay is integritas extincto—death of our integrity. We lose our integrity; we lose our nation.
There is a loosely-coupled, influential group within our nation that lusts for power and they, along with their useful idiots, are not encumbered by the restrictions of morality and ethics in their quest to achieve it. These antagonists are forging and financing the current chaos and they must be stopped. The immovable object of truth and its companion justice, along with the unstoppable force of love are sufficient for the task if we the people are willing to employ them.
For the spiritually-inspired, we cannot make America great without God or as President Reagan noted, “If we forget that we are a nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.” America has been the most giving and benevolent nation in the history of man. We need to keep it that way. If we are still a nation of integrity, indivisible with truth and justice for all, it’s time for we the people to step up and defend it. If we lose this battle, the America that we know and love, will be lost forever.
