Person of Integrity in Culture of Duplicity 2
Being A Person of Integrity in a Culture of Duplicity
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Daniel 6 Countercultural Faith Series # 2
We are working together in a series on confronting our culture with faith. We’re looking at the issue of what is shaping us—are we being shaped by our faith in Christ, or are we being shaped by the culture around us and the ways that the American people tend to do things.
Specifically, as we began, we looked at Romans 12:1-2 and talked about this question of, am I being molded by the culture, or am I being molded by the Lord. The bad new is, we are being molded by someone. Everyone is in someone’s mold. The good news is, I can choose which mold I want to be in.
As we think about this issue today, I want to remind you of the statement in Romans 12:1-2 where he says that we should be transformed by the renewing of our minds. He is calling us to think like Jesus Christ thinks, to use the Word of God to cause ourselves to think differently. And I want to encourage you to think about this whole process of what do I do to renew my mind, what do I do to cause the Word of God to be changing me?
We talked last time about two key questions. Number one, who does God want me to be? If I look ten years down the road into my life and answer the question, what should I look like? Who should I be as a believer in Jesus Christ? What should my life be like? And then, asking the second question, and that is, what will I do to mold my life so that I eventually look that way?
Who should I be? And how will I get there?
With this first specific topic, as we think about being molded by the Word of God rather than being molded by the culture around us, is the subject of integrity.
If you have your Bible, look with me at Daniel chapter 6. I’ll be reading the entire chapter. This is an incident in the life of Daniel, in which Daniel as one of the high officials in the government of a foreign country, he was not a native here. A high official, and he came into a severe trial in his life as some people around him, motivated probably by jealousy, attempted to take his life.
Daniel 6:1
“It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom an hundred and twenty princes, which should be over the whole kingdom; 2 And over these three presidents; of whom Daniel was first: that the princes might give accounts unto them, and the king should have no damage. 3 Then this Daniel was preferred above the presidents and princes, because an excellent spirit was in him; and the king thought to set him over the whole realm. 4 Then the presidents and princes sought to find occasion against Daniel concerning the kingdom; but they could find none occasion nor fault; forasmuch as he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him. 5 Then said these men, We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God. 6 ¶ Then these presidents and princes assembled together to the king, and said thus unto him, King Darius, live for ever. 7 All the presidents of the kingdom, the governors, and the princes, the counsellors, and the captains, have consulted together to establish a royal statute, and to make a firm decree, that whosoever shall ask a petition of any God or man for thirty days, save of thee, O king, he shall be cast into the den of lions. 8 Now, O king, establish the decree, and sign the writing, that it be not changed, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not.”
They had a law among the Medes and Persians that if the king made a law, it cannot be revoked, even if he wants to, even if it’s a ridiculous law, even if it begins to harm him and his people. It stands, and you will see the text reiterating that at several different times.
“9 Wherefore king Darius signed the writing and the decree. 10 Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime. 11 ¶ Then these men assembled, and found Daniel praying and making supplication before his God. 12 Then they came near, and spake before the king concerning the king’s decree; Hast thou not signed a decree, that every man that shall ask a petition of any God or man within thirty days, save of thee, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions? The king answered and said, The thing is true, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not. 13 Then answered they and said before the king, That Daniel, which is of the children of the captivity of Judah, regardeth not thee, O king, nor the decree that thou hast signed, but maketh his petition three times a day. 14 Then the king, when he heard these words, was sore displeased with himself, and set his heart on Daniel to deliver him: and he laboured till the going down of the sun to deliver him. 15 Then these men assembled unto the king, and said unto the king, Know, O king, that the law of the Medes and Persians is, That no decree nor statute which the king establisheth may be changed. 16 Then the king commanded, and they brought Daniel, and cast him into the den of lions. Now the king spake and said unto Daniel, Thy God whom thou servest continually, he will deliver thee. 17 And a stone was brought, and laid upon the mouth of the den; and the king sealed it with his own signet, and with the signet of his lords; that the purpose might not be changed concerning Daniel. 18 ¶ Then the king went to his palace, and passed the night fasting: neither were instruments of musick brought before him: and his sleep went from him. 19 Then the king arose very early in the morning, and went in haste unto the den of lions. 20 And when he came to the den, he cried with a lamentable voice unto Daniel: and the king spake and said to Daniel, O Daniel, servant of the living God, is thy God, whom thou servest continually, able to deliver thee from the lions? 21 Then said Daniel unto the king, O king, live for ever. 22 My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions’ mouths, that they have not hurt me: forasmuch as before him innocency was found in me; and also before thee, O king, have I done no hurt. 23 Then was the king exceeding glad for him, and commanded that they should take Daniel up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no manner of hurt was found upon him, because he believed in his God. 24 And the king commanded, and they brought those men which had accused Daniel, and they cast them into the den of lions, them, their children, and their wives; and the lions had the mastery of them, and brake all their bones in pieces or ever they came at the bottom of the den. 25 ¶ Then king Darius wrote unto all people, nations, and languages, that dwell in all the earth; Peace be multiplied unto you. 26 I make a decree, That in every dominion of my kingdom men tremble and fear before the God of Daniel: for he is the living God, and stedfast for ever, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed, and his dominion shall be even unto the end. 27 He delivereth and rescueth, and he worketh signs and wonders in heaven and in earth, who hath delivered Daniel from the power of the lions. 28 So this Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian.”
One tells the story of a high school daughter who had a teacher whom she absolutely idolized. She thought the man was a great teacher, she enjoyed his classes, she took several classes from him and worked very hard for him. About November of her junior year, some of the students went to his house to speak to him, and found that he was not home. But they looked in his windows, and they saw in his house stolen computers, stolen sound systems, things that had been taken from the school district and from the courthouse and from a college nearby. They went and reported to the police what they had seen, and the police came. They got a search warrant, confiscated the items, and brought charges of theft against this teacher. The man was never brought to trial. For some reason, the charges were dropped, but he was fired from his job, and he left the city, and never came back.
The shock and disappointment in the life of this young daughter was incredible, when she found out that this man was not the person he was billing himself to be. This man discouraged a trainload of high school young people in that city, because his public persona was different than his private reality.
In the end of the 1800’s and into the early 1900’s, there was a very famous preacher in England. His name was Charles Haddon Spurgeon. He preached in London for almost thirty years. He had written a number of books, and had personally read over 10,000 books. He was a person who built the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, building up to over 4,000 people in worship every Sunday morning. During the course of Spurgeon’s life, he kept chickens, and kept laying hens. He had a tremendous number of eggs that he was getting from these chickens. And he was selling the eggs. And during the course of his ministry, Spurgeon came under attack from some people in his church who said, “You shouldn’t be selling those. You should give those away to the needy, you should give them to people who are suffering. It is greedy on your part to take a salary from your church and also to sell eggs.”
Well, Spurgeon would not stop selling the eggs. In fact, his entire life, he kept those hens, he sold those eggs. He refused to give them away. Finally, after his death, almost five years after his death, some friends were pressing his widow about this issue and still would not leave it alone, saying, “why would he never stop selling those eggs?” And his wife said to them, “My husband and I were supporting a destitute widow and her children with the egg money.”
Spurgeon was a person who was preaching generosity in his pulpit, and he was practicing generosity in secret at home. He was the same person in the pulpit as he was in the chicken coop. He was just one man.
I want to ask you to think with me about this issue of integrity and duplicity in our lives and in the culture around us.
There is the story of a high school teacher who was two people. He had a public image he was presenting, but he had a different identity in his own life. And there is the story of the preacher who was one person. He was a person of integrity. He was the same person in the pulpit as he was at home.
The questions I want us to think about today are, number one, how do I become a person of integrity even though I live in a culture of duplicity? And number two, how do I ensure that my life stays in this realm of integrity?
I want to discuss those questions by looking at the life of Daniel, looking at the story we read in chapter 6, perhaps a very familiar story to you. I want to begin by talking about Daniel 6:, verses 4-13, as the reality that Daniel lived in a culture of duplicity.
Daniel lived in the middle of people who were different than what they projected themselves to be. In Daniel 6:4-13, as we just read, we find a group of people who were projecting themselves to be very loyal subjects to the king. They were passing themselves off as people who cared about the king, and who cared about the kingdom, and who were deeply committed to the best interests of the king. In reality, they were people who were scheming, they were deceitful, they were extremely jealous, and they did not care about the king. They did not care about the kingdom. They cared about themselves and their agenda. They saw a man of whom they were jealous and they said, “We’ll get rid of him.”
Daniel lived in a culture of duplicity. In our culture we have the same kind of struggle. We have a huge percentage of our culture who are presenting themselves to be something, but who in their private lives are something different.
You may have heard the story a number of years ago of a man in America who had passed himself off as a teacher, an airline pilot, a medical doctor, and several other professions without having any training in them. At one point he was the supervisor of an emergency room in a hospital. Not one day of medical training in his life. He was supervising interns. He was supposed to be training doctors in the emergency room. Not one day of medical training in his life. He was not the person he was presenting himself to be, and that I think is a microcosm for much of our culture in which image is more important than substance.
The big issue is not who are you really, but the big issue is what are you projecting yourself to be? A number of years ago the tennis star named Andre Aggasi did a commercial for Canon camera. And the punch line in his commercial was, “image is everything.” And corollary is, substance is nothing.
It doesn’t matter who you are, what matters is who you project yourself to be. Daniel lived in a culture of duplicity and we live in the same kind of culture.
The second issue of Daniel 6:4, Daniel was not like his culture. He was a person of integrity. Listen to verse 4 again, please. “Then the presidents and princes sought to find occasion against Daniel concerning the kingdom; but they could find none occasion nor fault; forasmuch as he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him.”
Daniel projected himself to be an honest official of the king, and when these people went through his life with a fine-toothed comb, they found out he was exactly the person he was projecting himself to be. In fact, it says in the text that they were working very hard to find some kind of error or fault in him, and when they got done they realized, Daniel is exactly the person that he projects himself to be. There is no difference between the public Daniel and the private Daniel.
I want to take a moment right at this point to define this issue of duplicity and integrity as we think about Daniel’s life, and your own life. Duplicity is very simply being two people. It is being the one person that you bill yourself as, and then it’s being the other person who you really are. It is being a person who has an image or a façade in life, and then who has a private reality that is far different. A public person and a private person, a family personality which is different from your public personality. It is being one person when someone is watching, and being another person will no one will ever know. Duplicity is very simply being two people.
Integrity, on the other hand, is being a person who cannot be divided. Integrity is defined as something that has wholeness, completeness, indivisibility, or oneness. The inside person being the same as the outside person. The public person is the same as the private person. It literally means a person who is integrated. It really has two parts to it. There is an inner integrity--that is a mindset that says I will be one person, and that results in an outer integrity which is my living out of my decision to be one person.
They went through Daniel’s life with a fine-toothed comb and they said, we’ve got to find something. And in the end they said, he is the same person inside and out. Same person on the job as he is at home. Same person in public and in private. Daniel was one integrated person. Daniel was a person of integrity.
And beyond that, verse 10, he continued in his integrity even at the expense of great personal loss. We’ve established that Daniel had integrity. Now the question comes, will he keep his integrity in the face of losing his life?
Daniel was fully aware of what was happening in chapter 6. Daniel knew exactly what they said to the king. Daniel knew exactly what the penalty was. Daniel knew exactly what these people were up to. Chapter 6:10, “Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime.”
Daniel continued to do what he needed to do, even when it cost him. He did not suspend his integrity because there was going to be a price for him. He knew full well about the decree. For Daniel the issue was not peer pressure. For Daniel the issue was not an image that he wanted to keep up. For Daniel the issue was not how much will it cost me to obey? For Daniel the issue was very simply, integrity. I will be the same person that I have been in the past. I will be the same person in the face of great loss. Daniel was a person of integrity. And I am powerfully convinced that God calls us to imitate Daniel, to imitate God Himself and to be a person of integrity. To be a person, who, for example, in our personal lives, is the same person. In our personal lives, when we are a person of integrity, and we retain self-worth, and we avoid the ugly consequences of duplicity.
When I have integrity in my personal life, I never have to wonder, who did I tell what to? I never have to remember my lies. I never have to keep my story straight. I never have to say to myself, I forgot what I told them, if, in my personal life, I am a person of integrity.
In my family life, if I am a person of integrity, I can relate to my family in a gracious way, even in the unscrutinized privacy of my home. If I have integrity, even in when I am in my home and you don’t see me, I am still the same person.
I don’t suppose you could imagine me walking up to my wife sometime on a Sunday morning in front of the whole church and just exploding, blowing up, verbally battering her, calling her names. It’s not something that you would probably see me do. If I have integrity, I will not be battering her at home either. Whether you are there to see it or not. In our personal lives integrity makes us a safe person.
In our daily lives, integrity causes us to hold on to what is valuable rather than chasing after things that glitter but have no value. In my business life, integrity enables me to hold on to what is right and to resist what simply gives me an opportunity to gain.
There was a poll of Fortune 500 companies. They asked employers, “what are the qualities that you look for in an employee? When you are getting ready to hire someone, what are you looking for?” Number one they said, “we are looking for loyalty to the company. When we hire someone we want to believe they are going to be terrifically loyal to this company. Number two, [they said, and this is incredible to me] we are looking for a sense of humor. And at the bottom of their list, the sixth thing, and only 3% of the employers said this, three out of a hundred people interviewed said, “We’re looking for integrity.”
As they look for new people, most employers say, we don’t really care if the person has integrity. We want them to be loyal to us.
God is calling us today to be people who have integrity. God is calling us in the ministry setting to be people of integrity. People who do the ministry that God sets before us, whether it is glamorous or not, whether it is fun or not, whether people notice or not, whether I like it or not. Doing the ministry God has set before me simply because God has set it before me.
I think He wants us to be people of integrity in our speech. People who say what is true, even if it costs me. People who say what is true, even if it costs me personally.
The question that comes to my mind in the face of all that is this: why would Daniel hold onto his integrity when it was going to cost him his life? They were going to throw him in a lion’s den. As far as he knows, these lions are going to be on him and crush him before he hits the bottom. Why would he hold onto his integrity in the face of that kind of loss?
The answer is very simple. For Daniel, and for us, the benefits of integrity are a lot greater than the benefits of duplicity. Daniel wasn’t doing anything particularly sacrificial. Daniel said I want the benefits of integrity. They are a lot bigger.
In this very chapter, verse 24, one of the benefits of integrity for Daniel was that his enemies were silenced. In this case, silenced in a pretty brutal way. One of the benefits, verse 25, is that God was honored among unbelievers. And the king writes a decree for every unbeliever in the whole nation and says, you honor Daniel’s God.
One of the benefits of integrity, verse 28, is that Daniel’s own life was enriched for his integrity. He was the number two official in the government of two different major governments. He spent his life enjoying success. For over 70 or 80 years he enjoyed success, because he was a man of integrity.
There is a man named Kent Hughes who wrote a book entitled, The Disciplines of a Godly Man. In one of his chapters he lists six benefits of personal integrity. He says number one, you have the sustained cultivation of character when you stick to integrity. Number two, you have the continued relief of a clear conscience. You don’t lose any sleep about the way you’re acting and the things you’ve done. You don’t lose any sleep, thinking to yourself, I wonder which lie I told to that person. Number three, you have the personal delight of intimacy with God. You have the priceless inheritance of a lingering legacy. You never have to worry what your kids are going to find in your papers when you’re dead. You never have to worry what your grandchildren will find out about granddad or grandma. You have the blessing of a lingering legacy.
Number five, you have the rare privilege of being a mentor. And number six, you have the crowning reward of ending well. You have the terrific blessing of making it to the end without driving in the ditch.
What if someone came up to you today and said, “I’m going to give you a choice. I’ll give you either a thousand dollars today, or I will give you $5 million a year from today.” I suspect most people would say, I’ll wait a year. I’ll take the $5 million.
That is very similar to what God is offering us with integrity. Integrity doesn’t always pay immediately, but when it pays, the profits, the rewards are staggering! There are terrific rewards for holding on to our personal integrity.
The final issue I want to think about is how do I build integrity into my life? Daniel was a person who knew how to do that. And I think the answer for Daniel’s life comes out of chapter 1, verse 8. If you read the entire book of Daniel, you find a man of terrific integrity, and I think it begins in Daniel 1:8. There are probably a lot of factors, but the main factor is found here.
Daniel 1:8 says, “But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat, nor with the wine which he drank: therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself.”
Daniel’s integrity started with a person inner decision that said, I will be one person. Daniel went home, got by himself, got alone with the Lord and said, Lord, I am committing to You that from here on out, I’ll be one person. There will be no way to divide me from here on out. I am making a personal decision, a foundational resolve that says, I’ll be the same in public as I am in private. I’ll be the same when people are watching as when nobody will ever find out. I will be the person that I am projecting myself to be. I’ll be the same on Saturday night as I am on Sunday morning.
I think God is calling each one of us to go home, get alone with God and to make up our mind that we will be one person. That the person we are projecting will be the same as the person we are. That we will be like Daniel, who said in Daniel 1:8, he purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself.
And I need to make up my mind to be the same person in public and in private.
A minister was traveling with a college group for a tour of Israel. They were traveling from Alaska to Tel Aviv, and unfortunately on the way because of some fog in Seattle, he missed the flight. There was a student with him, about 19 years of age, engaged to be married. He was a junior or senior in the college. So this minister and this young man missed the flight to New York City. The rest of their tour was gone ahead of them. They took them as far as Copenhagen, Denmark, and that was as far as they could get them. They put them in a hotel and booked them for Tel Aviv the next morning. The minister had a room, and the college student had a room. They were very tired, it was late. They got into the rooms and found out that on top of the television set was a placard covered with nudity, advertising pornographic movies that you could watch in your hotel room in Copenhagen without any checking of your age and without any financial cost, you could simply turn the TV on the way you would any set, and there were pornographic movies pumped into that room. Who is going to know? No one is going to know. The minister turned away from the TV set and went to bed, and he began to wonder how this young college student was doing. The next morning, the young man was supposed to meet the pastor to go to breakfast and he didn’t show up, he was a little late. So the pastor went to his room. When he got to his room, the door was standing open. He looked into the room to find that the young man had taken the placard full of nudity and had torn it up and put it face down on top of the TV set.
That young man proved himself to be the same person in Bible college classrooms as he was all alone in a hotel in Copenhagen, Denmark. He had integrity as a 19-year old. He was just one person. He was billing himself to be a certain person in the Bible college, and it turned out that when he was in Copenhagen, Denmark, all by himself, that was exactly the person he was.
Daniel purposed in his heart, and that young man made up his mind. You need to make up your mind.
You need to say, Father, by your grace and your help, from here on out, I’ll be one person.
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