This is the last episode we are doing from the book Traditional Quaker Christianity. We’re talking about integrity. This ties in a lot to our last episode, which was on plainness.
People often use “integrity” and “honesty” interchangeably, but integrity is bigger. It means wholeness or completion. What’s whole? Well, you could say it’s our lives or our relationships with God. But the temptation to separate parts of ourself off is huge. We need integrity in order to let our lives preach.
Integrity might require a person to attempt conscious consumerism, but then good luck figuring ethical consumption under capitalism. There are too many layers to producing goods. Integrity might also require changing the media we consume. If certain media makes you less sensitive to the Light, should you avoid it?
Raise your hand if you were a Quaker kid who couldn’t watch GI Joe or play with Nerf guns.
We talk about integrity in speech. The book comes down against sarcasm. You’re saying the opposite of the truth. Kids and some adults have trouble recognizing sarcasm. And Micah points out it’s joyless humor. (It seems unlikely Mackenzie is going to stop being sarcastic any time soon. She has at least excised “I bet” and “I swear” from her vocabulary, though.)
Now that we are at the end of the book, we’re going to be coming up with our own list of things to talk about. We’d love to receive listener requests too. But next time, we’ll be talking about the afterlife,
References
* A Long Road by T Vail Palmer Jr
* Harry Potter series
* Marvel movies
Transcript
Mackenzie: Welcome to Quaker Faith and Podcast where we will explore traditional Quaker beliefs and the variety of Quaker beliefs found today.
Mackenzie: Welcome back to Quaker Faith and Podcast with Mackenzie and Micah. We are going to be finishing out this book with Section 7 of the book being Traditional Quaker Christianity with Section 7G, which is on integrity. This is strongly related to the last episode we did, which was Plainness and Simplicity. Actually as I was reading this chapter, Micah was going, “Wait but this is simplicity again.” So, I think I want to start with saying that integrity and honesty, while they are frequently used interchangeably, are not actually the same thing, and so integrity also means wholeness.
Micah: Is honesty a part of integrity?
Mackenzie: Yes, I think honesty’s a part of integrity but that integrity is a larger thing. So, you can talk about the integrity of an object, meaning it’s not broken, it’s whole or complete.
Micah: Right.
Mackenzie: I think integrity is probably ultimately the sort or overarching thing when it comes to Quaker testimony, because it’s about our wholeness with God or the completeness of our surrender to God.
Micah: Which means we’re not broken into pieces, but all of our life is one piece.
Mackenzie: Sure, or we’re not separating off parts of ourselves from God in order to keep them in an ungodly way, I guess if you want to put it that way.
Micah: Yeah. I mean, I think this is a big part of sort of the transformation experience with the Holy Spirit that I know has been going on in my life. I think when you read the writings of Quakers throughout the centuries has been a consistent experience of growing integrity, that is a growing integration of life in Christ as opposed to in the ways of the world. I think a big part of the reason is the process, because I’ve had,
