Some borrowers who seemed to have strong ethics when I loaned them money suddenly became unethical when they felt they had no choice but to lie or cheat.

One retail business owner talked about how important his word was to him. But when the owner’s business was failing, I caught him in several lies and discovered him selling our collateral without paying us! His word proved unreliable.

His ethics had become situational. His integrity mattered until he felt cornered.

In the book of Job, we see that Job had lost everything, yet his ethics weren’t situational. In Job 27:5 we read, “I will never admit you are in the right; till I die, I will not deny my integrity.”

God desires our ethics to be like Job’s, not situational.