NearnessNäide

When I read this Proverb, I immediately thought of corrupt leaders, used-car salesmen and drug dealers—you know, rich people who lie a lot and are pretty dodgy. It’s easy to look at people like that and think, “yeah, they’re terrible, but I’m a common man and not a bad person. This doesn’t apply to me, right?”

Then I think of where I sit in the economy of the world. I am objectively rich by so many global standards, and my walk? Far from blameless. I am not as openly sketchy as some of the examples I gave earlier, but I’ll admit that I tell a lot of white lies as a chronic people pleaser. I bend the truth if it will make me look better or get me further ahead in life. I pick and choose which details to share with people—it's all a bit crafty.

When I think of what it might mean to be poor—truly poor—do I really believe that it would be better to be poor and blameless?

I think that true integrity often does come with a cost. That's what this Proverb is telling us. To be a person of radical honesty, consistency, character, and purity is hard. It's going to make you stick out like a sore thumb. But Proverbs is telling us that it is better to be poor and out of public favour than to be a fool with perverse lips.

2 Corinthians 2:16 (NCV) says: “To those who are lost, we are the smell of death that brings death, but to those who are being saved, we are the smell of life that brings life.” When something smells like death to you, you don’t really want it around. So we have to be prepared that if we walk blameless and godly lives, it might come with a very real cost.

Today, ponder this: What ways am I compromising on my integrity? Where might the Holy Spirit be calling me to practice radical integrity in the fact of real risk?