“I hate this problem I’m having with lying,” Phil told the pastor.
“But you don’t hate lying,” the pastor replied.
Point well taken. If we truly hate something, we usually stop. If we tolerate sin in our lives, however, we will search far and wide, high and low, for ways to justify it, skating around the possibility of harsh consequences. As speaker Doug Easterday says, Christians don’t usually fall into sin, we jump into it…like kids jumping into a pile of autumn leaves. Wheee….
It has been said that “A lie does not sacrifice a truth, but THE truth.” The Bible tells us that Satan is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44). Jesus is called the Truth (John 14:6). “Thou shalt not lie” is one of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:16). It is obvious, then, that people of faith are to be honest. Honesty isn’t just the best policy; it’s the only policy for Christians. 100% honesty, 100% of the time. No using stamps from the office for personal mail just this once. No “white lie” about one’s whereabouts last Thursday evening.
Is honesty a problem in the church? I dare say it is. Perhaps attendance numbers are inflated on a report, or a sermon is appropriated, word for word, from the Internet without giving honor where it is due (Romans 13:7). Perhaps someone speaks an untruth to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. But when we discover that a brother or sister has lied to us, we feel let down. If he or she lied about that, what else can we not trust?
I used to pride myself (pride being the red flag here) on my honesty. A friend once called me “stupid honest” because he thought my commitment to telling the truth went beyond reason—even when I would get in trouble, when truth would hurt someone, etc. Maybe I told the truth, but I was not a person of truth—in fact, I was quite deceptive in the way I manipulated questions and answers, or followed the letter of the law while ignoring the spirit.
One example from my teenaged years –my parents set a rule that I was not to be alone with my boyfriend at our house or at his house…so we went to his grandmother’s (vacant) house! I could “honestly” say I obeyed the rule, but clearly, honesty was not what was on my mind at the time.
As I’ve walked a little further down the narrow road that keeps getting narrower, the Holy Spirit has shone his light with increasing intensity on that tendency, or at least willingness, to hedge while also teaching me about the difference between facts and truth. The standard hasn’t changed—never changes—but the degree of personal accountability has.
Recently I had a fresh lesson: While in town, I realized that I had a government check of my daughter’s from recent mail which needed cashing. She hadn’t signed it yet, but since I have power of attorney I thought nothing of signing it, then endorsing it with my own name. Everything would have been copacetic had the teller not been so specific. “Did she sign the back?” she asked…quite efficiently. I replied in the affirmative…and beat myself up about all the way home. I tried to rationalize that my daughter wanted the cash, had no problem with my signing it, etc., etc., but the fact that I had been asked, pointblank, and…lied, let’s face it…continued to nag me.
I don’t know about you, but I live with too much external stress I can do nothing whatsoever about, to endure one iota of personally-generated stress I can offload by a simple action. I want a clear conscience—even if the particulars don’t really matter, my heart DOES matter. The next time I was in the bank, I took the teller aside, explained the situation, and apologized. “As a Christian, I believe it’s important to be honest,” I told her, “and I wasn’t completely honest with you.”
Whether she thought I was noble, or stupid, or an alien dropped off from another planet, I have no idea, nor do I really care. Clearing my conscience was for ME (and to please my Father), not for anyone else sake. (Of course, the fact that I work for a church and am known to attend another could have also reflected poorly at a corporate level, as could any wrong action by a particular “Christian” reflect on other Christians in general).
Keep short accounts with God—why let that nagging sensation of wrongdoing have time to fester? We’ll always be learning, always blow it, always have new areas for that Holy Spirit spotlight to shine. The idea is to acknowledge…then act. Over and done with, now on to the next lesson.
The other side of the truth issue? The difference between facts and truth…I’ll leave that for another time.
ellenofgillette1@aol.com
Some portions of this blog first appeared in Baaad Sheep—When God’s People Let You Down by Ellen Gillette (Carepoint Publishing, 2007), ISBN-13:978-0-9792-0893-5.
“But you don’t hate lying,” the pastor replied.
Point well taken. If we truly hate something, we usually stop. If we tolerate sin in our lives, however, we will search far and wide, high and low, for ways to justify it, skating around the possibility of harsh consequences. As speaker Doug Easterday says, Christians don’t usually fall into sin, we jump into it…like kids jumping into a pile of autumn leaves. Wheee….
It has been said that “A lie does not sacrifice a truth, but THE truth.” The Bible tells us that Satan is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44). Jesus is called the Truth (John 14:6). “Thou shalt not lie” is one of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:16). It is obvious, then, that people of faith are to be honest. Honesty isn’t just the best policy; it’s the only policy for Christians. 100% honesty, 100% of the time. No using stamps from the office for personal mail just this once. No “white lie” about one’s whereabouts last Thursday evening.
Is honesty a problem in the church? I dare say it is. Perhaps attendance numbers are inflated on a report, or a sermon is appropriated, word for word, from the Internet without giving honor where it is due (Romans 13:7). Perhaps someone speaks an untruth to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. But when we discover that a brother or sister has lied to us, we feel let down. If he or she lied about that, what else can we not trust?
I used to pride myself (pride being the red flag here) on my honesty. A friend once called me “stupid honest” because he thought my commitment to telling the truth went beyond reason—even when I would get in trouble, when truth would hurt someone, etc. Maybe I told the truth, but I was not a person of truth—in fact, I was quite deceptive in the way I manipulated questions and answers, or followed the letter of the law while ignoring the spirit.
One example from my teenaged years –my parents set a rule that I was not to be alone with my boyfriend at our house or at his house…so we went to his grandmother’s (vacant) house! I could “honestly” say I obeyed the rule, but clearly, honesty was not what was on my mind at the time.
As I’ve walked a little further down the narrow road that keeps getting narrower, the Holy Spirit has shone his light with increasing intensity on that tendency, or at least willingness, to hedge while also teaching me about the difference between facts and truth. The standard hasn’t changed—never changes—but the degree of personal accountability has.
Recently I had a fresh lesson: While in town, I realized that I had a government check of my daughter’s from recent mail which needed cashing. She hadn’t signed it yet, but since I have power of attorney I thought nothing of signing it, then endorsing it with my own name. Everything would have been copacetic had the teller not been so specific. “Did she sign the back?” she asked…quite efficiently. I replied in the affirmative…and beat myself up about all the way home. I tried to rationalize that my daughter wanted the cash, had no problem with my signing it, etc., etc., but the fact that I had been asked, pointblank, and…lied, let’s face it…continued to nag me.
I don’t know about you, but I live with too much external stress I can do nothing whatsoever about, to endure one iota of personally-generated stress I can offload by a simple action. I want a clear conscience—even if the particulars don’t really matter, my heart DOES matter. The next time I was in the bank, I took the teller aside, explained the situation, and apologized. “As a Christian, I believe it’s important to be honest,” I told her, “and I wasn’t completely honest with you.”
Whether she thought I was noble, or stupid, or an alien dropped off from another planet, I have no idea, nor do I really care. Clearing my conscience was for ME (and to please my Father), not for anyone else sake. (Of course, the fact that I work for a church and am known to attend another could have also reflected poorly at a corporate level, as could any wrong action by a particular “Christian” reflect on other Christians in general).
Keep short accounts with God—why let that nagging sensation of wrongdoing have time to fester? We’ll always be learning, always blow it, always have new areas for that Holy Spirit spotlight to shine. The idea is to acknowledge…then act. Over and done with, now on to the next lesson.
The other side of the truth issue? The difference between facts and truth…I’ll leave that for another time.
ellenofgillette1@aol.com
Some portions of this blog first appeared in Baaad Sheep—When God’s People Let You Down by Ellen Gillette (Carepoint Publishing, 2007), ISBN-13:978-0-9792-0893-5.
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