Walking in the Valley A bi-weekly column, featuring one Christian's (a)musings on life's journey by Barbara Dahlgren

Looking It Up Column for the weeks of April 16-30, 2006

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In school I would roll my eyes when I’d ask teachers how to spell a word and they’d say, “Look it up in the dictionary.” How can you look something up when you don’t know how to spell it? With the Internet, that is no longer a problem. If you want to know how to spell a word, just type it in the search engine. If it’s misspelled, the Internet will ask you, “Did you mean antidistablishmentarianism?" or “Did you mean supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?” It’s their little way of saying, “Don’t you know how to spell, you dummy?”

Not being the greatest speller in the world, I appreciate this prompting. I appreciate other conveniences of the Internet as well. No longer do fingers have to do the walking through the Yellow Pages. Look it up online. Can’t remember where you read that article? Type in the subject matter and like magic, hundreds appear. Want to know the definition of a word? Forget the dictionary, where you would actually have to know how to spell the word to find it. Go to www.miriamwebster.com.

I guess I’m not the only one who uses the Internet for this. In fact, Merriam Webster keeps track of what words are looked up online each year. Merriam-Webster president, John Morse, says, “The entire list gives us an interesting window that opens up into what people are thinking about in their lives.” Perhaps it does. The top ten words in reverse order for last year were: inept, levee, conclave, pandemic, tsunami, insipid, filibuster, contempt, refugee, and…

The #1 word was – drum roll please – INTEGRITY. I guess it’s not surprising that Americans might be confused over the meaning of this word, since finding people who adhere to a moral code and are incorruptible is getting harder to do. Integrity isn’t even a quality employers seem to look for.

According to Business Week, 87% of top executives say strong ethical values are not the most important leadership traits they look for. In fact, new studies reveal that “functional psychopaths” make better investors, CEOs, and lawyers than normal people because they lack normal human emotions. One would think being a psychopath would hold you back from that job promotion. Who knew it could be an asset?

Some adjectives for integrity might be: principled, honest, scrupulous, trustworthy, consistent, fair, faithful, open, whole, and truthful. Integrity requires doing the right thing, not the most popular thing. What is popular or accepted is not always right and what is right is not always popular. Being ethical might not help you climb the corporate success ladder, but it will help you sleep better at night.

How does one develop integrity? A start would be to eliminate these phrases from your thought process:

• Everyone else does it.
• They'll never miss it.
• Nobody will care.
• The boss does it.
• No one will know.
• I don't have time to do it right.
• That's close enough.
• Some rules were meant to be broken.
• It's not my job.
• It’s just a little white lie.
• I’ll take the credit even though I didn’t do it.
• After all, the ends justify the means.

Integrity starts in your mind. As a man thinks, so he is (Proverbs 23:7). Your thoughts become words, actions, habits, and your character. Life is a daily struggle. Decisions need to be made. Choosing to do what ought to be done rather than what you might prefer to do, takes self discipline and control. It takes integrity.

Be sure to visit this page often to read the next edition of Walking in the Valley. You can write to the author at bdahlgren@wcgsouthbay.org.