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PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
You can use this story or, if possible, think up your own before discussing the questions. Last week I was making a coffee in the kitchen of the office I work at. As I poured the coffee pot it dripped all over someone’s important looking diary that had been left on the side. My first thought, of course, was ‘Oh no!’ But then I thought: ‘Who leaves a diary on the side in a kitchen? It’s their own fault!’ A minute or two later a colleague came in to the kitchen and was upset to find their diary a bit sodden with coffee drips. I had a choice – Should I own up and apologise, do I just keep quiet and let her assume it was someone else, or do I take the high ground and berate her for leaving it on the side in a busy kitchen? What would you do? Does it even matter? Are there any deeper implications of this decision? How does integrity grow in a person? Can you think of a situation you were in when integrity was at stake? How did you feel? How do you feel about it now?
VALUE GRID
Plot your position on the grid (right) for ‘How I deal with the temptation to lack integrity?’
BIBLICAL REFERENCE
Look at the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5:1-10. Discuss integrity in this story: why did they not display integrity? What was the temptation – how could they have acted instead? What caused them to go wrong? Do you empathise, or are you scathing in your judgement of them? Pray together about integrity.
INTEGRITY SLIDER
Choose a score that best reflects how well you are doing with your integrity in these places, with zero being hopeless and ten being perfect: school, home, money, time, hidden thoughts, what you portray about yourself to others.
