Integrity

Mark 12:14: "You aren't swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth."

In this passage, the adversaries of Jesus, the Pharisees and the Herodians, acknowledged that Jesus didn't succumb to the pressure of his peers or even the religious establishment, but He spoke truth (the way of God) despite how unpopular that may have been to the culture at the time. These religious leaders even recognized Jesus as a man of integrity. Although that platitude was an enticement by them to get Jesus to conform to their insatiable desire to control Him, Jesus did not play along. His first words to them were, "why are you trying to trap me?"

Followers of Jesus Christ should be bold in their proclamation of truth in our world, and not succumb to what is popular or politically correct. No matter how society treats with contempt the person to lives by Godly truth, God Himself will be well pleased, and that is what is most important. Donald Miller in his book, Searching for God Knows What has said it well: "If we are going through religious motions to get people to think of us as religious, praise us, and all that, we are receiving our false redemption from a bunch of people who are going to be dead in fifty years. This is a shabby replacement for an eternal God." (pg. 203).