Honesty

Do you ever wonder what happened to honesty? I do all of the time. I have to admit that trying to wade through the lies and misleading information that I encounter everyday simply wears me out. For whatever reason, honesty has lost its foothold. It is hard to know how many times we are lied to each day, whether it is by a TV commercial or a coworker. Truth telling is simply not a value that our culture promotes.

I am sure that it has always been a problem. Consider Adam and Eve. From the beginning people were trying to spin their situation to avoid consequences with "the serpent made me do it" or the woman gave it to me so I thought well who am I to say no. It just seems that the quantity of lies must have gone up. Maybe it is because it is the information age and with information comes misinformation.

I understand that people or companies have agendas and will often do what promotes that agenda. It is simply sad that we have to walk through life always asking if what we read or hear is true. Will this cereal really help me be healthy or has the FDA simply not started monitoring the use of this word. Or, is this car dealer really going to lose money if he sells this car at the price on the paper or am I getting ripped off (you are getting ripped off). It is like walking in a mine field of dishonesty.

Another thing that is sad is that we can so easily be drawn into and see no implications for our faith. Christians sell bad products or cheat people and the excuse is that well this is just the job. Question: should our standard of behavior really be the world around us? Isn't there a pretty good amount of material in the Bible about not conforming to the world around us? You know who wished that they hadn't followed the customs of the surrounding people? The Israelites as God led them into exile after they refused to stop worshipping the gods of the other nations.

Why did God tell people not to bear false witness? It's because it simply demolishes relationships. If you cannot trust someone, why be around them? Lying completely destroys a relationship because it says to the person lied to that he or she is not valuable or respected. Lying impacts people significantly, making them unable or unwilling to trust other people.

Truth-telling has become counter-cultural, but, honestly, isn't that what Christians are called to be?