Honesty is like a magnet radiating a strong magnetic force; in the heart of God’s people it is a clear bell set on a hill; like a clarion call it draws truth-hungry people to engage. Honesty should be one of our chief most attributes, honest with God, honest with ourselves, and honest with our neighbor.
Is it possible a lack of honesty is why people are repelled by many politicians, much of corporate America, some church people, and even our government? When, in our spirit, we sense a distinct lack of honesty, or the nagging feeling something is not right and not the truth, we are repelled, sometimes knowledgeably, sometimes not, either way, people tend to go away when dishonesty is in the room. Like honesty, dishonesty has a magnetism all it’s own ….it draws people with a deceitful character who don’t mind wearing a very loose belt of truth.
Some seem to believe that dishonesty is a shortcut to success and wealth. However, they seem to forget they can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time. Once their crooked and duplicitous tactics are exposed, they, the dishonest ones actually become the real victims. In my mind, they simply did it to themselves. And you know, once others see you as dishonest, it’s just hard to unstick that label from yourself.
Honesty is to truth and hope, as dishonesty is to lies and despair. Dishonesty is like false hope, and false hope is far more cruel than the truth ever thought of being. It is true, sometimes honesty is very uncomfortable, but i would rather be uncomfortable because my friend was honest with me, than to live in the dream world of lies and dishonesty. Deceit only has deceitful friends who are really no friends at all, but honesty is grounded with the faithful and has sure steps with the Lord. The Hebrew for “deceit” literally means to “steal away the mind” in the sense of saying one thing with our mouth, when we really mean something else in our heart. How important is honesty to you and how loud is it’s clarion call in your walk?
i believe the Lord asked me to ponder and study the value of honesty a short while back. i soon discovered that we can’t talk about honesty without talking about dishonesty too. Similarly, we can’t talk about white unless we talk about black, nor can we speak of up without speaking of down. Tonight, our topic is “The value of honesty”,
i’m Social Porter with Cletus Iaoni and this is Outposts, a semi-live broadcast from the late night cascading banks of the Ockluhwahhah River, where the trees gently lean over the rivers edge and every evening is pleasant. You’re in for cool jazz and some contemplative, think-worthy conversation. Stay with me take a deep breath, get comfortable, and i’ll be right back.
In Genesis 30:33, Jacob states to Laban that his honesty will serve as a testimony of his character, to tell the truth and to do as he had promised.
2 Kings 12:13-15, “The money brought into the temple was not spent for making silver basins, wick trimmers, sprinkling bowls, trumpets or any other articles of gold or silver for the temple of the LORD; it was paid to the workmen, who used it to repair the temple. They did not require an accounting from those to whom they gave the money to pay the workers, because they acted with complete honesty.”
In other words, the workmen were steady, reliable, faithful, and practiced “moral fidelity”. i like that, “moral fidelity”. Do you think “moral fidelity” is common today in our leadership and the church, or is the lack of “moral fidelity” driving us to feelings of being disenfranchised, frustrated, and distrusting?
As in Jacob’s testimony of his character and of the workmen in 2Kings, i believe we can conclude that honesty is fertile ground for trust. To me, that would also mean, dishonesty is fertile ground for distrust.
According to Isaiah 33:15, the godly are those who have the privledge to “walk righteously and speak what is right…” or speak straight, or with straightforwardness….with honesty.
The opposite of righteousness is iniquity. A picture of the Hebrew word for iniquity could easily be understood as a “wrongness of character”, and righteousness as a “rightness of character”. Iniquity and sin are two different words. Sometimes it’s true, the translators interchanged the words incorrectly, but today we have enough information that we can know for ourselves what the Lord says to us if we’re willing to study a little. Iniquity is to sin what righteousness is to holiness.
Where there is justice, where there is righteousness, where there is a hunger for truth down to the core of our person, honesty is easy to possess and live out. When there is no justice, iniquity stands guard at the door to our house, the truth is nowhere to be found, and honesty becomes a rare character trait. Isaiah 59:14-15 “So justice is driven back, and righteousness stands at a distance; truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter. Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey. The LORD looked and was displeased that there was no justice.”
Honesty in our hearts is a sign of our character. It is our quality of sincerity, trustworthiness, and a devotion to the truth not just the facts…. and there is a difference between the truth and the facts. And on a side note, we can be honest AND transparent, but unless we are vulnerable for others to speak into our lives, we are the same old brick wall we always were.
When asked, “What is a lie?” Augustine responded: “Any statement meant to deceive another.” He also said, “No lie is ever justified for it sets up a dichotomy, a conflict, between what we say and what is in our hearts.” A mistake is not a lie – it is unintentional, a lie is an intentional deception.
Honesty: Out of all of the virtues that are available to the human character, we need to prize honesty above possessions, wealth, titles.
Honesty is defined as uprightness and fairness, truthfulness, sincerity, or frankness – straightforward. It is also seen as a freedom from deceit or fraud.
i think it is important at this point to point out that there are two kinds of honesty: Objective Honesty which is truthfulness. This implies admitting ignorance if one does not know truthfulness, and Subjective Honesty: This implies that our communication is our opinion, not necessarily truthfulness, but it is “The truth according to me.”
Due to the fact that the majority of peoples’ communications are based in subjective ideas such as emotions and opinions, Subjective Honesty is probably the most common type of honesty. The difficulty is when we begin to call our subject honesty, or our opinion, the objective truth. When we begin to see our personal opinion of right and wrong as the overarching truth for everyone, the devil has found a foothold, it’s called judgment or to level the hand at as in aiming the finger. Let me add that the weight of an aiming finger is usually more than most people can bear.
To explain the value of honesty, let’s start with the opposite of honesty – deceit, lies, and fraud. A lie (also called prevarication), is a type of deception in the form of an untruthful statement with the intention to deceive others. Not a mistake for we’re speaking of something intentional….. lies and fraud have cognitive intentionality; it is a manipulation, meaning to “leverage the outcome in our favor at the expense of others”. The first letter of the Hebrew alphabet is “Aleph”, and one definition is “the sound you make before you make a sound”, it is intentionality.
People lie for many reasons, but the primary motive is probably fear of the consequences of telling the truth. We can all think of the cliché example of your friend asking you if they look fat when objectively, they are. Do you slip in a white lie to appease their self esteem, or do you be brutally honest and tell them the opposite of what they want to hear? Maybe you tactfully shift the attention of your friend being fat to something else about them that is more becoming.
If we tell our friend “Noo, you aren’t fat,” is that a white lie?
“Wait a minute! You mean telling a white lie is…WHAT?” No matter how we work that, the word “l-i-e” is still attached to it. That’s like saying “Oh, it was just a small sin”, although it maybe small in someone’s eyes ….it still has the word “s-i-n” attached to it. i think it would be prudent of us to consider carefully before we ask some questions of others. i figure if you’re brave enough to ask, i’m brave enough to tell…. of course with all tact and diplomacy, but we can’t get lost in our tact and diplomacy to the point of not being honest, and i must add, there is also no point in being cruel while claiming to be honest.
When we are not honest, we’re simply not honest, and that’s the truth, it deprives others of something which should be easy for us to produce. As i said before, honesty begets honesty, and dishonesty begets dishonesty. Luke 16:10 “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.”
Honesty is the opposite of deceit. A dishonest heart is deception and according to Romans1, deceit and dishonesty are part of the list of “worst things”; it is personal and a breach of trust. If someone likes you when you lie and does not like you when you are honest, it is likely they qualify only as a “fair weather friend” who didn’t care for you all that much to begin with.
We shouldn’t think we are helping people when we are dishonest, no matter how innocent they may seem.
The word “judgment” has two meanings. One is in the sense of an ecclesiastical decision making authority, the other means to have a personal opinion of right and wrong, and opinions are markers of our imperfections, and they are partly what makes people be people. Opinions are good as long as we understand they are what they are: opinions.
“There are two types of secrets; those we keep from others, and those we keep from ourselves.”
i believe it is imperative that we also exercise honesty with compassion. Honesty without mercy and compassion seems to have the consequences of hurting people sometimes. i’ve got a little idea i try and live by: Be honest and kind and do no harm. Honesty may hurt someone’s feelings, but to me, it’s a better alternative to deceitfully leading people on.
In addition to compassion, humility is important to honesty as well. Not many things are as offensive as arrogance in the name of honesty.
Jesus asked why often. What do you believe was His intent in asking “why” of the disciples and others? Was He confused? i don’t think so. Was He needing an answer because He truly didn’t know or understand? No, i don’t think so. i believe His intent was that He wanted us to get at the root of ourselves and be honest about what was really going on. The Lord wants us to be responsible and accountable for our thinking and behavior, and a key to doing that is honesty, which is something i believe is in short supply in America today. Ephesians 5:1, “Therefore be imitators of God as dear children”, which means that God is honest about all things and we should imitate Him. If we find we have lives full of things we can’t be honest about, i think a paraphrase of 2Cor9:6 applies, saying, if we don’t like what we reap, we need to change what we sow.
i liked how John C. Jones in “Studies in the Acts of the Apostles,” written in 1878, speaks of the virtue of honesty. “Some people are honest in the strict sense of the word; but they habitually push bargains so hard that their honesty is suspected. They tread so near the line dividing integrity from fraud, that the public tends to entertain grave doubts respecting the legitimacy of their dealings. But it is a mandatory on every man to avoid the perilous extreme bordering on theft, and to appear honest as well as be honest. Aim at living not only above dishonesty, but above suspicion, as well. “Provide things honest.” Is that all? No; Rom12:17 says to “provide things honest in the sight of all men.” Not only be upright, but convince others of your uprightness. Let your life be honorable, entirely exempt from meanness and trickery.” God sees honesty in the sense of being “properly beautiful”.
Being honest outwardly starts with being honest inwardly. i figure if i can’t be honest with myself and the Lord, i probably can’t be very honest with anyone else.
Personal honesty involves courageously recognizing the discrepancy between what we ought to be and what we actually are; between who the Lord says we are and what we actually believe. i’m going to make a statement which i suppose more than a few would like to argue – here it is: you don’t rule what you believe, what you believe rules you. Many easily get so entangled with religion and doctrine that it seems to relieve them of the responsibility of coming to terms with themselves. If we don’t face the challenge of being honest with ourselves and the Lord, putting off the idea of facing the growing discrepancy in our hearts, we possibly consign ourselves to a life of half-awareness.
The criminal element of our society typically believes they are more than they are. More often than not and contrary to public opinion, it isn’t bad self-esteem, but arrogance and a lack of honesty that believes they are somehow above the law – that somehow the rules don’t apply to them. Unfortunately, the church has similar criminal thinking and a distinct lack of honesty. That lack of honesty within ourselves often holds us at a distance from God and the relationship with Him we each wish so badly that we had. Sad but true. Is the relationship many of us have with God really what we’ve got, or is it more something we wish we had? Can you be honest with yourself about that? Do you see the value of honesty which the Lord calls us to … if not, then what is it which constrains you?
A woman on her death bed finally admits she was unfaithful to her husband 25 years ago. In the moment it seems like a good idea to get it off her chest, it was an honest confession. But on the other hand, she was honest at the time of no risks. She waited until her risk of being honest and telling the truth didn’t cost her anything.
We give away what we’ve got, not what we think we’ve got. If i tell everyone i have measles, but the truth is i’ve really got chicken pox, it doesn’t matter how loud i tell others i’ve got measles or how insistent i am, the only thing they’ll catch from me is chicken pox, because that’s what i’ve really got.
Isaiah 57:2 states, “Those who walk honestly and upright enter into peace…” Proverbs 24:26 “An honest answer is like a kiss on the lips.” Isaiah 5:7, the Lord says, “I had hoped for honesty and for justice, but dishonesty and cries for mercy were all I found.”
This has been Outposts, cool jazz and contemplative conversation. This evening has been brought to you by Living In His Name Ministries, His Heart Missions, adventurers in Jesus Name to all the world, and Trinity Bakers, where there’s always something good in the oven.
To cap the evening off, i believe, we, as human beings, are designed to respond to real values. Not things we have created, but things we discover of the Lord, like the value of His life, His love, or the value of honesty. Let us take the time and respond to the call of Christ to cherish and practice honesty, questioning and sorting out our own hearts before the Lord, making all efforts to resolve our internal conflicts.
Be strong and courageous, be honest and stand firm in His name. Amen!