Whosoever cometh to me…is like a man which built an house…and laid the foundation on a rock…- Luke 6:47-48, KJV

We all want to be respected. Perhaps one of the reasons why we do is because the respect of others is not easy to come by. You have to earn respect, and when you have to earn anything in life you value that thing much more highly than if it was just given to you.

You earn respect by paying for it with a valuable currency, and that currency is integrity. In exchange for treating others with integrity, those others will repay you with their respect. Knowing this, we don’t give our respect to others lightly. When the people or organizations we give our respect to falter, we can easily feel betrayed. The betrayal turns to sadness and then, if we’re not careful, to apathy.

When our heroes fall, it is natural to become disgruntled. But the problem with becoming disgruntled when our heroes fall is that it is, well, natural. As Christians, we are not called to live natural lives but supernatural ones. Being bummed out because a person or an organization we respected has compromised its values is a sign that we have built our spiritual house too much on the sifting sand of human nature and not enough on the solid rock of God’s nature. When others fall, the right response is to stand firmly upon the solid rock of the risen Christ, the One who will never betray our respect.

The world has been and always will be filled with disappointments. People and organizations we respect will compromise and lose their integrity. When that happens, look unto the Source of integrity, pray for those who have fallen, and seek God’s power to stand fast in the integrity He has given you.