Integrity— The Gateway to Freedom

If you don't possess a set of true moral standards and honest principles in your life you WILL be pushed around and cornered until you feel your life losing control. Isn't that the freedom that Satan advertises, do what you want and YOLO around from one satisfaction to the next? 

In a talk by James E. Faust in the April 1982 General Conference, “the dictionary defines integrity as a firm adherence to a code of moral values (see Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary). It connotes soundness and incorruptibility. It is the mother of many virtues. It begins when we deal justly with ourselves.”

Basically integrity is doing what you say you will do and having those desires to keep your commitments. How does Satan rob us of our integrity? Not by getting us to break our commitments, but by not getting us to commit at all. If we don't commit to a principle or action or a good habit then we don't even have the AGENCY to choose to remain committed to such a cause when the temptation arrives  to do otherwise.

Take relationships, for an example, as marriage rates have been drastically declining and cohabitation rates inclining. When a couple decides to cohabitate they agree on a few things to do together in mutual benefit. But in the moment problems arise and their affection for one another challenged, what is to stop one or the other from walking out of the relationship? Sure, we still have a CHOICE and our agency is technically still existent, but our integrity isn't compromised because it was never challenged in the first place. If you aren't committed to any moral values or principles then you aren't committed to being honest with yourself and with others—the core of integrity. And if we live a life without commitment then we will be “tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive” (Ephesians 4:14).

As Latter-Day Saints we make covenants with God beginning at baptism because we understand that doing good is not happenstance, becoming clean from our sins is not something a person stumbles upon, and returning to God's Kingdom in heaven does not come by chance. Every good thing this life and the next has to offer is received through hard honest work. “There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated—And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated” (D&C 130:20-21).

We as Latter-Day Saints understand that we often make mistakes and break our covenants with God—we sin. But our covenants do not become invalid when we make mistakes, rather, the blessings upon which those covenants are predicated simply cannot be obtained in that time. This is why we recommit ourselves each week by partaking of the sacrament and renewing our covenants/promises to God. If we are being sincere and truly repenting of our sins then that ordinance (sacrament) will be enough to cleanse us and invigorate us to continue to strive for perfection. Jesus Christ has already paved the way to take control of our lives and be free from the clutches of sin.

So how does Satan rob us of our integrity? He doesn't want us to commit. He wants us to believe that we can still do good by not committing ourselves to a good cause, thus leading us carefully away from truth (2 Nephi 28:21-23). Maybe he even gets us to commit outwardly but inwardly our hearts are not broken nor our spirits contrite 2 Nephi 2:7). As Christ teaches us in Mosiah 7:33, “But if ye will turn to the Lord with full purpose of heart, and put your trust in him, and serve him with all diligence of mind, if ye do this, he will, according to his own will and pleasure, deliver you out of bondage.”

So let us stop hating ourselves and start loving our God. Let us commit our minds and our hearts to His gospel, which gospel lays out all the laws upon which blessings and happiness (both temporally and spiritually) are predicated. Let us commit to being honest with ourselves and with others that we may control the course of our lives and NOT be tossed to and fro. Let us have integrity which IS the mother of many virtues and brings the sincere closer to God. Let us “remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall” (Helaman 5:12).