INTEGRITY AT HOME
Psalms 101:1-5 NLT
1 I will sing of your love and justice, Lord.
I will praise you with songs.
2 I will be careful to live a blameless life—
when will you come to help me?
I will lead a life of integrity
in my own home.
3 I will refuse to look at
anything vile and vulgar.
I hate all who deal crookedly;
I will have nothing to do with them.
4 I will reject perverse ideas
and stay away from every evil.
5 I will not tolerate people who slander their neighbors.
I will not endure conceit and pride.
I like how this psalm reads in the New Living Translation. This is a psalm of David, and he is describing what it looks like to live a blameless life, a life of integrity. And the life he describes is integrity at home. If we can live it at home, we can live it anywhere.
David lists some of the characteristics of living a blameless life of integrity at home. And don’t get too caught up with the word blameless. This is not perfect, but it is a life on the right path. So David tells us what that blameless path of integrity looks like.
Refuse to look at anything vile and vulgar. This would leave out many internet sites and a whole lot of movies and TV. But the goal is a life of integrity, and what we look at has an impact. The scripture says Lot tormented his righteous soul by what he continually saw and heard in the city of Sodom. There is a massive amount of vile, vulgar, soul-tormenting material available today. Stay away from that path; it leads to nothing good.
I hate all who deal crookedly and will not have anything to do with them. Hate, in this sense, is not the hatred that wants to hurt but the disregard that wants to avoid. Hanging around with crooked people produces some crooked ways, not ways of integrity.
David is talking about how he will live in his own house among his own people. And he rejects the ideas that are perverse. The New King James says a perverse heart will depart from me. Perverse is to be morally off course and wrong. So, to avoid having a perverse heart, it makes sense to avoid ideas and thoughts that are morally off and wrong. After reading God’s Word and spending time with Him, it becomes easier and easier to discern the error and crooked ways and thoughts all around us.
And stay away from every evil. This is a good rule of thumb for living a blameless life of integrity. Just don’t go there. The best way to resist evil is to avoid it. If it’s not in your path, it’s easier to stay away.
A lifestyle of integrity picks friends and associates carefully. We absolutely cannot avoid the people in the world who do not know God. We can’t isolate ourselves, but we can choose to associate with people who do not slander others. Remember, if someone is slandering and talking badly about another to you, you may be next on their verbal hit list. And beware the conceited people who are full of pride. They are not going in the direction that you want to go. We all deal with pride, but being aware of human pride and looking to stamp it out of our lives personally will make it hard to hang with the prideful.
Living a life of godly integrity is a full-time job. And don’t get me wrong in thinking that we must avoid all the people who are not saved and who act wrong. The idea is to let our light shine by being an example of different. A blameless example of someone who lives in integrity.
PRAYER
Lord, strengthen my heart that I might live a life of integrity at home and in front of others.