A Need for Personal Integrity

Recently I have been very bothered by the loss of personal integrity of people in power as the newspaper and online aggregators daily bring news of corruption and bribery in high places. Personal integrity is character. What we do flow out of who we are.

Fred Smith was a well respected Christian leader, businessman, mentor and writer. He died in August this year. This article which he wrote for the Leadership Journal tells us about what he had learnt about character building from another great Christian, Francois Fenelon who lived more than three hundred years before.

He wrote:

(1) Self love is subtle
(2) Suffering is useful
(3) One test of relationship with God is peace.
(4) Growth and changes are the work of the cross
(5) Give grace to yourself and others.

read complete article here






Os Guinness from Trinity Forum (a Christian think tank) edited a book (1999), Character Counts, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books in which scholars examined the character and leadership qualities of Washington, Wilberforce, Lincoln and Solzhenitsyn.

Each of these persons were examined from their biography to determine what molded their character and made them who they are.


...that adversity, apart from its power to overwhelm, has the potential to reveal the moral character and create life-changing leaders.