A "Carrot" of Integrity

“I know, my God, that you test the heart and are pleased with integrity.”
1 Chronicles 29:17 NIV

“The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity.”
Proverbs 11:3 NIV

Even young children can begin to understand integrity with the help of our orange friend, the carrot. And a carrot peeler. (Sorry, carrot!)

As you peel a carrot, and then peel some more and some more, all you get is carrot. All the way to the center, clear through to the other side, there’s nothing but carrot! There is no seedy core or spurting seed pod or wood-like pit hidden in a carrot. What you see is what you get, layer after layer.

We are often not so carrot-like. Sometimes our lack of integrity presents a polished version of who we are while hiding very different habits and character traits where we hope they won’t be discovered. Peer pressure can affect the opposite pattern. We behave worse than our true, deeply-held values to gain acceptance or avoid criticism or ridicule. 

The Bible is honest about our heart, telling us it is “deceitful above all things
and beyond cure,” adding, “Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9 NIV) But we are not left hopelessly at the mercy of such a heart. Integrity through and through is possible when the Gospel transforms our terminally deceitful base of operations:

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”
Ezekiel 36:26 NIV

Just like the carrot, our intentions and our actions can be faithfully consistent, powered by change gifted to us by the Spirit of God. A lapse of integrity remains possible as long as we are earth-bound, but a life of integrity for a believer includes accessing the forgiveness we claim to embrace and moving forward in the freedom we say Jesus paid for.