A SENSE OF SCRUPLES

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In Christ, Mark

The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

“It’s no good, it’s no good!” says the buyer—then goes off and boasts about the purchase.

Food gained by fraud tastes sweet, but one ends up with a mouth full of gravel.

An inheritance claimed too soon will not be blessed at the end.

To do what is right and just is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.

Proverbs 20:14, 20:17, 20:21, 21:3            

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Are you scrupulous?

That’s a word we don’t heard used very much today I’m afraid. Perhaps that’s because it’s getting harder and harder to find anyone who adheres to its meaning, a sad but true testament of the world we live in today.

The word “scrupulous” simply translates to one who has and displays moral integrity, one who acts with a strict regard for what is considered right or proper. A person with a sense for scruples will always feel compelled to do the right thing, even if it’s not the popular thing to do, even if it means admitting wrong, and even if it means passing on something they want to do personally.

I would like to consider myself among the ranks of the scrupulous and can offer an example of where I exercised it. I was in the Navy and a Command Master Chief in Djibouti, Africa. It was time to negotiate orders for my last duty assignment before retirement and so I contacted my detailer to discuss. I wanted to serve close to home (Virginia Beach) in my last tour but the detailer only had ships available and I wasn’t ready to be separated again from my lovely wife after being apart from her for 14 months while in Africa. Only two shore assignments offered to me, one in Philadelphia and the other in Southern Maryland. And so my wife and I talked about it and settled on the assignment in Southern Maryland since my tour before Djibouti was in Washington DC and we were familiar with the area.

Shortly after I committed to the Southern Maryland assignment, I received a call from a fellow Command Master Chief in Norfolk VA, the city adjacent to my home city. A Command Master Chief job was opening up there and they wanted me to put in for it. I immediately felt excited because I really wanted to be closer to home but there was something that tempered my excitement and caused me to step back to assess the situation a little better. That something was scruples.

You see, if I put in for the Norfolk position and was selected, I would have abandoned the Southern Maryland command that I had committed to. In essence, I would have pulled out the rug from underneath them and they would have had to continue without Command Master Chief leadership. And although there was a part of me that was enticed about being able to serve right down the road from my front door in Virginia Beach, there was a greater part of me, my sense of scruples, that wanted to do the right and ethical thing. After praying over the proper thing to do, I turned down the opportunity to go to Norfolk and stuck to my word, going to Southern Maryland and leading for two years before retirement.  And I don’t know how things might have gone if I had went the other route but what I can say is that the two years in Southern Maryland were two of my best years of service and I believe they were so blessed because the Lord favored me doing the right thing. I felt it was His will that I was there.

Friends, that’s the key when it comes to having a sense of scruples. It’s about allowing the Lord to guide our choices and doing so with such a strict sense of discipline that no other method of decision making is ever appropriate. For He and He alone will always lead us onto the path of righteousness where our conduct, our thoughts and words and actions, will always be proper and pleasing in His sight.

Solomon touched on the matter of scruples in our proverbs for today as well as what the Lord favors. Look again at our four verses:

“It’s no good, it’s no good!” says the buyer—then goes off and boasts about the purchase. Proverbs 20:14

Food gained by fraud tastes sweet, but one ends up with a mouth full of gravel. Proverbs 20:17

An inheritance claimed too soon will not be blessed at the end. Proverbs 20:21

To do what is right and just is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice. Proverbs 21:3

In the first, a buyer intentionally talks down something they wish to buy saying it is “no good.” Of course, the buyer knows the item IS good, they just want to try and weasel their way down to a cheaper price. Rather than ethically paying the seller the right value for the object, the buyer wants to get away with paying less and then afterwards, he or she will go and boast about how little they paid for something they will tout as being great.

This person lacked a sense of scruples.

The second proverb addresses fraudulent behavior. A person fraudulently acquires food, perhaps by begging for it when they could really afford to buy it. No matter what the fraud entailed, the outcome will end up being unpleasant for the deceiver, as unpleasant as a mouth full of gravel. For the Lord will punish sin and anyone lacking scruples and behaving fraudulently will fall under the His judgment.

The final example we see in the third proverb involves inheritance. It was considered flat out disrespectful for anyone to ask their parent for their inheritance before the parent had passed away. As we read, anyone who would do so would not be blessed.

Point in case can be found in Jesus’ parable of the Lost Son (Luke 16:11-32). In it, the youngest son asks his father for his inheritance early and then proceeds to go off and spend it all on wild living in a distant country. The end result was the son ending up in the fields, hiring himself out as a laborer to a citizen of the country he had went to. The Lord did not bless him after he received his inheritance early. Had the son possessed a sense of scruples, he wouldn’t have asked in the first place.

Our fourth proverb sums everything up nicely and serves as a good point to end this devotion. For the Lord expects us to do what is right and just, to exercise a sense of scruples in everything we do, and He is ready to lead and guide us to ensure we always walk in the ways that are acceptable in His sight.

Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea as we begin to think about resolutions for 2014 to place “Live always with a sense of scruples” at the top of our list.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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