Welcome back – I hope you all had a nice, long weekend.  Last week, we considered what it means to be honest in all things; this week, we’ll reflect on the second part of the Honor Code—being upright in conduct. 

It is kind of an odd expression, don’t you think?  We don’t really use the word upright, unless we’re talking about somebody’s posture, as in “sit upright, Tommy, you’re slouching,” or when we describe members of the military as standing upright at attention.  But we also talk about people as being “upstanding” members of their community.  Of course, we’re not saying that they don’t ever sit down—so, what does it mean to be upright in conduct?

Well, sometimes the best way to understand something is to consider what it is not.

Proverbs 11:3 says:

The integrity of the upright guides them,
    but the crookedness of the treacherous destroys them.

So, for one thing, the conduct of an upright man is not crooked.  It is a life lived on the straight path.  It holds the line and doesn’t bend.  There is a reason we call criminals crooks—their lives are crooked.  But to be upright is not just to be right or straight—it also is to be “up.” 

In Genesis 4:7, we hear God tell Cain, before he kills his brother Abel, that Cain still has a chance to do well, but if he does not, “sin is crouching at the door.”  It is the same description later in Gensis 49:9 of being “stooped down; [ ] crouched like a lion….”  So, evil conduct is also low, hunched over, crouching, like an animal before it pounces.

Crouched and crooked is the way of the criminal and the animal.  But tall and straight—that is the way of the upright man.  Like Cain, we all have the choice of whether to be upright.  The question is, will we choose it?