Integrity the Stands

Dalat students live ethically by exhibiting integrity and honesty.

Living life with integrity means that your actions and words are consistent with your beliefs across various situations. When I was growing up, this meant that you were the same person at home, at church, and at school. Spending time with a lot of the same people meant that your reputation and behavior had to be pretty consistent.

One challenge our kids face with integrity today is being consistent across their online and in-person lives. Many young people create fake personas online, whether it’s to gain access to restricted content, meet different people, or try to create a different reputation for themselves. Whether the intentions of this are innocent or not, it actually leads to living dishonestly. Pretending to be someone you are causes added stress to the person. We get reports of students treating one another badly online much more often than in person. The students need to learn that they are the same person whether face to face or online and so are others.

At the heart of living with integrity is a deep understanding of our own identity. Once we really understand who we are and what we believe, we can then live that out. I recently watched a video from the Colson Center on worldview development, and the speaker said, “You may not live what you profess, but you will live what you believe.” The key to integrity is matching our beliefs to our words and actions. Once we have developed firm beliefs and values, we hold to them courageously in every situation.

Proverbs 10:9
Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but he who makes his ways crooked will be found out.