The small matter of integrity

Today in the paper there is a story about Hydro One (a provincially owned company) giving donations to the provincial government of the day.  The minister in charge says there is nothing wrong with a taxpayer funded company donating to a political party.

It is interesting that in many ways, it is the small things that call people out as lacking integrity.  We often have little trouble trusting those we shouldn’t trust with important matters.  I think that is because we somehow believe that they intrinsically understand the gravitas of such things.  And I don’t think that trust is truly misplaced for most. 

Rather, it is the smallest things that people first lay down their integrity on.  I think the reasoning goes something like that which we are all familiar with in our diets and exercise plans.  “Oh, it’s just minor thing – I’ll make up for it later”.  The problem is that often we believe we’ll actually make it up (if such things can be ‘made up’ – for the time is forever lost).  The only real problem (we may reason to ourselves) is if anyone notices.

The problem is of course that someone does notice.  We notice right away, and if we (being human and evil) can notice such a thing, do we really think that God does not notice?  That the ‘great cloud of witnesses’ do not notice?  That angels and demons do not notice?  The scandal may come to light only when the reporter publishes the story, but the scandal was there for all to see from the very moment the decision was made to act on impulse.  And once enshrined in time (and therefore history), it will always be there to look back on, even if we are successful in ‘making it up’.

And so the trade is made.  Our integrity for a cookie (or the trust of an entire province for a few hundred dollars).  And then once that trade is made, the next trade is right behind it – for we are living beings, and moving things always gather momentum.  Now you are also limited – and on that page we are all the same.  The clock testifies that we all have a mere 24 hours a day.  The question then is - how much of that time and how much of our limited energy will go into stopping the momentum we’ve built up once we realize we’re headed in the wrong direction?  If the momentum we’ve already acquired is too much we won’t be able to ‘make up for it later’ – no matter how hard we try.

So pay attention to the small things.  It doesn’t need to be winter to see a snowball effect, and it takes no effort at all to roll things downhill.