Probity

pro  .  bi  ty / noun/  the quality of having strong moral principles, honesty and decency; integrity,  goodness, respect, ethics, sincerity

This is a power-packed word that we have for  this week. Look at all the dynamic meanings probity  embodies.  It’s like a pomegranate bearing an abundance of seeds for generating good fruit. A treasure trove of virtues, this word has in it what we humans need–the values that should be deep-rooted in our individual character and in the society at large.

“There is a time for every purpose under heaven,” says the Wise Man Solomon. He tells us there is a time to be born and a time to die, and he has a catalogue of other contrasting times, each with a beginning and ending point. Each occurs and is replaced by another time. They have their entrances and their exits, to broadly apply  Shakespeare’s  words. However,  probity is a word  for all times. There is no time when it  is acceptable for it to make an exit.

But in today’s world, there seems to be a belief that there is a time for integrity and a time for duplicity; a time when we should act with integrity and a time when integrity is not vital. People with this kind of thinking use the words “it depends”;  the point of view involved here is called situational ethics. Being truthful and  honest would depend on the situation or the circumstance, they would say. In such a  case, honesty, an offspring of probity,  would not always entail “a refusal to lie or deceive in any way.” When the situation demands  a lie as the best option, they would advise, do it. That attitude is abroad in the world today.

For instance,  many prominent officials deliberately distort  the facts to suit their own agenda. When a little “fact-checking” is done and they are caught in a lie, they make the  excuse that they were misquoted or they had misspoken. Then they give  a new version of the statement to gloss over the initial falsehood that was perpetrated.  The incident passes, and the same behavior is repeated later on.

A recent  newspaper headline read,  “Sneaky Swap-out of Triplets.” It’s the story of a Missouri high school basketball coach who used one of triplet brothers as a substitute at the free-throw line during a holiday tournament game.  The player was sneaked into the game and got away with it until a video surfaced and  exposed  the deception. The boys’ father is the coach. This act may have seemed like a little thing to him and his sons, even a clever joke,  but  where is the integrity? Other stories are becoming quite common about shoplifting by employees, computer hacking of  major corporations with individuals’ privacy being breached, and identity theft of all kinds.  Honesty and trustworthiness are taking a back seat to flawed personal desire.

“Goodness,”  a hallmark  of probity,  is getting short shrift nowadays. Simple goodness seems to be rather scarce. When I went to  my hairdresser the other day, I noticed  something was different about the front window. Instead of glass, I saw a large  piece of board that looked as if it had a pattern on it. So I asked about it.  Was it a new part of the salon’s décor?  “Someone broke in over the weekend,” I was told.  Nothing was taken, just a lot of shattered glass on the floor.  Unconscionable vandalism had been perpetrated by someone with a marred sense of decency. The individual simply had an inclination to break a large pane of glass in a store window and did it. This kind of mindless lack of goodness shows itself in a myriad of ways all over the country.

This brings me to the definition of probity as “having strong moral principles,”  meaning that an individual knows what is right  and sticks by what is good and decent, doing so with other people’s welfare in mind.  There is a little ditty that used to be heard somewhere in the nineteen seventies in a drive to stamp out prejudice and hatred:

You’ve got to be taught,
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

I would submit that if we want to see strong moral principles become pervasive in our society, we need to begin with the children. They’ve got to be carefully taught. Susanna Wesley, mother of John Wesley, founder of Methodism, has been lauded for her careful teaching of her ten children (she lost 9  others in their infancy). She taught her children through the Scriptures and by her own example. She made it her goal to spend an hour a day with each child over a period of a week, giving them the grounding in the virtues  that later were displayed in their personal lives.

In our homes, in our businesses we can do better at being honest, truthful, and decent. It’s time to begin teaching these virtues to the children, and it’s not too late for adults who lack strong moral principles to make  the necessary changes and become individuals of integrity. The world needs such individuals. It will be highly rewarding  to conduct our lives in this new year with  probity so that its excellent virtues can blossom in us.

Blessings,

Judith

*****

“There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness, and truth.”
Leo Tolstoy, Russian Writer