The UK’s integrity crisis.

“The portrait of a nation increasingly relaxed about ‘low-level dishonesty’ emerges in a major study” conducted by the University of Essex.  The report “suggests that the ‘integrity problem’ is likely to get worse because young people are more tolerant of dishonest behaviour than the older generation.”

According to the study, “… in 2000, 70 per cent of people believed an extramarital affair could never be justified; today, the proportion is about 50 per cent.  The proportion of people who say picking up money found in the street is never justified fell from 40 per cent to 20 per cent.  Lying and breaking the speed limit have also become an accepted part of life.”  The report highlights the generation gap’s effect on integrity, “... younger people are far more likely to tolerate dishonesty.  Only 33 per cent of under-25s think lying on a job application is never justified, compared with 41 per cent of middle-aged people and 55 per cent of those over 65” (The Independent, January 25, 2012).

The Bible prophesies of an integrity crisis at the end of the age, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness… and take away justice from the righteous man!” (Isaiah 5:20-23).  It is God’s Ten Commandments that provide the moral foundation upon which society must base its values.  As that code is buried deeper in the pages of history and replaced by the “situation ethics” of a post-modern era (Judges 17:6), we should expect, and not be surprised by, an unethical pandemic!