Today I want to talk with you about a virtue that is just plain smart and that will have as much impact on your happiness, your peace of mind, and your ability to fulfill your life’s mission as any virtue I can think of.
It is a virtue that will ultimately make you or break you. It will make or break you as a husband or wife, father or mother, brother or sister, colleague or friend or leader. It will make or break your career. And most significantly, it will make or break your efforts to achieve exaltation. For it will define your relationship with God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost.
This is a virtue that every man or woman of God must come to possess in increasing degrees. It is a virtue found in every true follower of Jesus Christ.
It is the virtue of integrity.
We tend to define integrity as honesty. And without question, it includes that. But telling the truth is just the beginning of integrity.
Living with integrity isn’t necessarily easy, but it is far easier than the alternative. Integrity engenders confidence and peace of mind, whereas breaching integrity always has painful consequences.
Integrity is the foundational virtue upon which all other virtues are dependant. It is the first rung on the character ladder. Where there is integrity, other virtues will follow. Where there is no integrity, other virtues have no chance of developing.
Prophets ancient and modern have provided patterns to emulate. Consider Joseph, whose rotten brothers sold him into Egypt and then lied about it. In stark contrast to his brothers, Joseph’s integrity held fast under the most trying of circumstances. Consider his words as he resisted the seductive advances of Potiphar’s licentious wife:
Behold, my master...hath committed all that he hath to my hand;...neither hath he kept back any thing from me but thee, because thou art his wife: how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God? (Genesis 39:9).
Prophets in our day have been similarly valiant, beginning with the Prophet Joseph, whose vision of the Father and the Son consigned him to a lifelong crucible. He was mocked and persecuted, tarred and feathered, imprisoned for months at a time, and betrayed by trusted friends. Through it all he declared,
I had actually seen a light, and in the midst of that light I saw two Personages, and they did in reality speak to me; and though I was hated and persecuted for saying that I had seen a vision, yet it was true;...I had seen a vision; I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it, neither dared I do it” (JS-H 1:25).
Joseph’s successors have followed suit. Elder Ezra Taft Benson was an Apostle when President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed him to serve in his Cabinet as Secretary of Agriculture. For eight years the press routinely battered Secretary Benson for his policies. But over time, he won the respect of even his opponents. A reporter for the New York Timesexplained why:
He acts like a man whose conscience is always clear–his testimony today will be the same next week...or a year from now. He doesn’t have to remember what he said to an opposition Senator at their last meeting. This is a built-in ulcer-saving device not always found in Washington” (New York Times Magazine, 11 April 1954).
President Gordon B. Hinckley has also been a model of integrity. After he was interviewed by Mike Wallace for “60 Minutes,” I spoke with Mr. Wallace about their interview. Of the many things Wallace praised President Hinckley for, he seemed most impressed with the fact that the prophet had done everything in connection with their interview that he had promised to do. When I later offered to show Mr. Wallace how I intended to quote him in President Hinckley’s biography, he replied, “That’s not necessary. You’re a Mormon. I trust you.” Do you really think this hard-hitting veteran journalist believes every member of the Church is trustworthy? Of course he doesn’t! He is not that naive. But his statement was not a reflection of me or of us, it was a reflection of President Hinckley. Wallace was saying, in effect, “If you are associated with that man, then I assume that you, too, will do what you have said you will do.”
Such trust can only be earned one person at a time. Do you do what you say you will do? Can you keep a confidence? Does your signature on a document or a check or your temple recommend mean something? Your word is who you are. No wonder James the Apostle taught that “a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8).
May I suggest seven things that will help us become men and women of integrity:
1. Decide today, once and for all, that you will be worthy of trust–the trust of family and friends, colleagues and business associates, and most of all, the Lord. The more the Lord trusts you, the more knowledge and power He will give you.
2. Have faith that the Lord can and will help you, and then diligently seek His help.
Faith is the first principle of the gospel because it is our faith that activates the power of the Atonement in our lives. If your faith is wobbly, if you’re not sure the Lord will come toyour aid, put Him to the test “Even if ye can only desire to believe, let this desire work in you” (Alma 32:27). The results will astound you, for God “worketh by power, according to the faith of the children of men” (Moroni 10:7). Challenges that test our faith are almost always opportunities to strengthen our faith. So believe the Lord will help you, and then diligently seek after His help.
3. Make covenants and keep them. In other words, do what you say you will do. This begins with keeping the covenants you made at baptism and again in the House of the Lord, and then being precisely, completely true to those covenants.
4. Stand up for what you believe. In fact, look for every opportunity to do so. Don’t be showy or loud about it, and please don’t ever criticize or judge others in the process. But relish every opportunity to stand for something, to be true to what you know is right.
5. Expect your integrity to be challenged. Metaphorically speaking, be on the lookout for Potiphar’s wife. She will show up again and again. Be ready to leave your cloak in her hand and flee again and again, because Satan won’t tempt you just once. Moses had to resist Satan’s temptations four times. And he had to tell Satan to beat it four times before he finally left–and that was after ranting and raving, weeping and wailing, and exposing Moses to the bitterness of hell (see Moses 1:19-22).
6. Don’t give up. This is a lifelong process. I am fifty years old, and I have to work at this every day. The older I get, and the more determined I become to keep the commandments with exactness, the more often I find myself seizing the opportunity to repent, ask for forgiveness from the Lord and others, and then try again. Daily repentance and precise obedience are crucial to increasing integrity. But then, that is the pattern of life. And when you do something that intro-duces a crack into your integrity, if you are paying attention the Spirit will let you know through His whisperings and the workings of your conscience that you have something to work on.
7. Covenant–or perhaps I should say, renew your covenant–with our Father and His Son to do what you came here to do. For doing what we agreed to do premortally is the ultimate expression of our integrity.
President Boyd K. Packer said this:
The world is spiraling downward at an ever-quickening pace. I am sorry to tell you that it will not get better. I know of nothing in the history of the Church or in the history of the world to compare with our present circumstances. Nothing happened in Sodom and Gomorrah which exceeds the wickedness and depravity which surrounds us now....The first line of defense–the home–is crumbling. Surely you can see what the adversary is about. We are now exactly where the prophets warned we would be (Boyd K. Packer, BYU J. Reuben Clark Law Society Devotional, 28 February 2004).
Now, that doesn’t mean you are all living up to who you are. Some of you no doubt need to make course corrections. To help with this, I invite you to undergo the spring cleaning to end all spring cleanings by enrolling in Integrity 101. Let me outline the coursework. First, take an inventory of your integrity by asking yourself the kind of questions I listed earlier. Look for cracks that may have started to form. Be honest with yourself about your past dishonesties. Second, for the next 30 days take time every night to assess how you did that day. Were you true to yourself and to others? Were you true to God in every situation? See if it makes a difference in what you say, how you spend your time and money, the decisions you make, and what you repent of. See if it also makes a difference in how you feel about yourself and your life.
And finally, as you become more fully aware of your strengths and weaknesses, turn to the Savior more frequently and with increasing fervor. Thank our Father for the gift of His Son and the privilege of repenting. Express your deep desire to live with integrity. And then plead for help. The Savior has the power to help you change. He has the power to help you turn weakness into strength. He has the power to make you better than you have ever been.
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