CHRISTIANITY 101: NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH
Let me preface the story I’m about to tell you by saying that I am married to the only woman in the world who would have stayed married to me for the last 26 years. I know, I know…as hard as it may be for some of you to believe, I am not the easiest person in the world to live with. For example, about two years ago, my wife got her hair cut very, very short. Everyone told her how cute it was – how cute it made her look – but I didn’t like it at all. So, when she asked me how I liked her hair cut, I told her the truth. I told her in no uncertain terms that I did not like it.
Not long after that, we were at a high school volleyball game, sitting in the bleachers with the other parents. You know how it is when your kids play sports. You get pretty close to the parents of the other athletes. So my wife and I are sitting there with some of our closest friends. And all the mothers are gushing over my wife’s new haircut. My wife then says to all those mothers, “Brian doesn’t like it.” And every single one of those mothers immediately lit into me. “How can you say you don’t like her haircut? It’s not your hair!” To which I replied, “Yes, but I still have to look at it!” In retrospect, that probably wasn’t the best thing to say. And of course, all of the fathers are there, each one wearing a smirk on his face, pretending to watch the game, knowing better than to try to enter the fray…the cowards!
Sitting right in front of us was the grandmother of one of the boys. Let’s call her Mary Ellen. Mary Ellen is a very attractive older woman – very classy and very wise – whose husband died about ten years ago. Desperately trying to dig my way out of the hole I was in, I asked, “Mary Ellen, if you’d come home with a new haircut and your husband didn’t like it, would you want him to tell you the truth, or would you want him to lie?” She said, “Oh, I’d want him to lie!”
Alas, there was no way out for me. I had no alternative but to sit there and lick my wounds. What’s more, I suspect I’ll hear it from a few more women after church. Oh well, it won’t be the first time, and it probably won’t be the last! I believe it was Shakespeare who first said, “Honesty is the best policy.” The question now is, “Is honesty really the best policy?” Keep that thought in mind as we move on.
A number of weeks ago, we noted how – each and every day – we make decisions that move us closer to a life of virtue, or closer to a life of ruin. Though the past may be written in stone, the future is more like wet cement…pliable, soft, and ready to be shaped by the decisions we make. Our goal is to develop a more godly life narrative. Our goal is to discover what it means to live a life of virtue. Our goal is to seek to discern where our deep happiness may truly be found.
We suggested that our deepest happiness is found in the kingdom of God. We noted that the kingdom of God is not just something we hope to attain in the future. As Jesus clearly stated, the kingdom of God is also a present reality. Thus, the kingdom of God of which we speak is not a place. The kingdom of God of which we speak is an interactive relationship with God…an interactive relationship that brings us peace of heart and mind.
We noted how many of us will not even consider a more godly life narrative – many of us will not even begin to seek out an interactive relationship with God – until we encounter a drought in life…until we come up against something that we cannot control. So what we did was consider a social problem that appears to be beyond human resolution: bullying in the classroom. We postulated that while we may not be able to resolve all the social ills that surround us, God is able to resolve the un-resolvable. What we need to do is recognize that fact, and be open to the movement of God’s Holy Spirit. That, my friends, is where our own transformation begins.
Then we got more specific on how we build an interactive relationship with God. The first thing we aimed at was conquering anger. We contrasted anger with Sabbath rest. Anger is a result of our need to control; Sabbath teaches us to trust in God’s strength. Anger is a result of the narrative that we need to be perfect; Sabbath teaches us that we are forgiven. Anger is a result of our fear that God has lost sight of us; Sabbath ensures us that God is watching over us at all times.
Last week our goal was to overcome lust; not an easy thing to do. In the words of Harry Emerson Fosdick, “Only by a stronger passion can evil passions be expelled,” and, “a soul unoccupied by positive devotion is sure to be occupied by spiritual demons.” What we sought was what we called the expulsive power of a new affection. We determined that if our new affection was, in fact, the kingdom of God…then lust would simply lose its grip on us. Perhaps the solution to our problem…is prayer.
Today our goal is to try to overcome lying. Robert Feldman is the author of a book entitled, The Liar in Your Life. In it, he notes that new acquaintances will lie to each other about three times in the course of a ten-minute conversation. What’s more, his research reveals that we are lied to about every five minutes, or an average of about two hundred times a day. More often than not, the lies to which we are exposed are not venomous, but rather, ways to make social interactions go more smoothly. People lie to be agreeable, or to make us feel better about ourselves. We call those kinds of lies little white lies. And there’s nothing wrong with a little white lie every now and again…or is there?
Last Wednesday afternoon, I went to Erie to see someone in the hospital. On the way home, since my oldest son had told me that my bushy sideburns made me look like Scrooge from A Christmas Carol, I decided to get a haircut. I stopped at a place called Famous Hair just off of Peach Street.
The girl who cut my hair was just bubbling with personality. It turns out, she was from Cambridge Springs. At one point in our conversation, she was telling me about how she and her family bail hay for a neighbor. I said, “You bail hay? I’ve bailed hay before. That’s the hardest work I’ve ever done in my life!” She said, “Sure, I bail hay. I’m a country girl.”
Then she added, “I even used to raise pigs. In fact, that’s why I quit eating pork.” I said, “What does raising pigs have to do with the fact that you quit eating pork?” She said, “I used to raise a new pig every year. Then my parents would tell me that they’d given the pig away. But what they really did was butcher it! When I found out I was eating the pigs I’d raised, I was devastated! That’s why I quit eating pork.”
I said to her, “Hey, my sermon this Sunday is on lying. Can I use that story?” She said, “Sure.” You see, her parents had told her a little white lie. And little white lies are okay, aren’t they? Apparently, in one little girl’s case, a little white lie had some rather devastating consequences. It ultimately came to affect the level of trust she had in her parents.
Some lies, of course, are not so innocent. Some people lie to build themselves up. Some people lie to gain some kind of advantage over us. Some people lie to cheat us out of what we’ve worked a lifetime to earn. Those kinds of lies can scar us for life. A time-honored adage says that honesty is the best policy. Thus, the question is: Is honesty really the best policy?
Jesus addressed that issue in the passage we read from the gospel according to Matthew. He said, “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’ But I say to you, ‘Do not swear at all, either by heaven or by earth.’ Let your word be, ‘Yes, yes,’ or ‘No, no.’ Anything more than this comes from the evil one.”
Years ago, some Quakers got into trouble in court when they refused to take the oath. You know, “Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” They thought Jesus was speaking against taking such oaths in general. I really don’t think that’s the point. The nature of Jesus’ words was not that we should never take an oath, but that all of our speech should be honest, genuine, trustworthy and true. When we say, “Yes,” we should mean, “Yes;” when we say, “No,” we should mean, “No.” In Jesus’ mind, I suspect, honesty is, in fact, the best policy.
What is it that incites us to stretch the truth? There appear to be two main culprits. The first one is fear; the second one is desire. In other words, we fear what will happen if we do tell the truth, so we lie. Or, we hope to gain some kind of advantage for ourselves, so we lie. The primary reasons a person lies are fear and desire.
Lying is defined as a false statement – made knowingly – with a blatant intent to deceive another person. Thus, perhaps we could go so far as to say that lying is not so much about the correctness or the incorrectness of what a person says. Lying is really about the intentions of the heart. And if our hearts are not pure, we are a long ways off from the kingdom of God.
As the Apostle Paul once wrote in the book of Ephesians, “Speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head…into Christ Jesus, our Lord.” “Speaking the truth in love,” Paul says; “Speaking the truth in love.” Perhaps the question now is: What does it mean to love?
The best definition for love I have ever encountered in my life is this: To love someone is to will what’s best for them. Lying is the opposite of love, because lying has to do with willing what’s best for us. To love someone is to will what’s best for them. Thus, to will what’s best for another person has necessarily to do with telling the truth. Honesty is, in fact, the best policy. I might add at this point, however, that willing what’s best for someone sometimes does mean telling the unvarnished truth. And, sometimes willing what’s best for someone may mean withholding the truth…or at least withholding our opinions. I’d probably have done a lot better by my wife a few years back had I simply kept my mouth shut. Oh well, live and learn, I guess.
What it all comes down to is what’s in our hearts. Telling the truth is a wonderful start. Yet as we move further into kingdom living – as our hearts become more and more transformed into the likeness and image of Christ – what we really need to do is use our tongues to bless and encourage, rather than to harm or humiliate. We need to learn to build up, rather than tear down.
Mary Ann Bird, in a book entitled The Whisper Test, tells a story of the power of encouraging words in her life. She writes:
I grew up knowing I was different, and I hated it. I was born with multiple birth defects: deaf in one ear, a cleft palate, a disfigured face, a crooked nose and lopsided feet. When I started school, my classmates made it clear to me how I looked. When someone would ask, “What happened to your lip?” I’d tell them that I’d fallen and cut it on a piece of glass. Somehow it seemed more acceptable to have suffered an accident than to have been born different. I was convinced that no one outside my family could love me.
There was, however, a teacher in the second grade whom we all adored. Mrs. Leonard was her name. She was short, round and happy; a sparkling lady. Every student in her class wanted to be noticed by her and to be the teacher’s pet. Then came the day of the dreaded hearing test. The teacher would call each child to her desk, and the child would cover first one ear, then the other. The teacher would whisper something to the child like, “The sky is blue,” or, “Do you have new shoes?” This was the whisper test. If the teacher’s phrase was heard and repeated, the child passed the test.
I knew from years past that if I cheated, I could pass the test. So I would secretly cup my hand over my good ear to hear what she would say. As I cupped my hand over my ear, Mrs. Leonard leaned forward to whisper. Mrs. Leonard did not say to me, “The sky is blue,” or, “Do you have new shoes?” What she whispered was words that only God could have put in her mouth; those seven words that came to change my life. What she whispered was, “I wish you were my little girl.”
Nothing about Mary Ann Bird’s circumstances changed that day. She remained disfigured, deaf in one ear, and the object of her classmates’ painful ridicule. But everything else changed for her that day. She began to understand herself as loved and lovable, and dared to envision a future not constrained by her circumstances, but a future that could transcend them. Following in the footsteps of the teacher who set her free, Mary Ann Bird became an acclaimed teacher herself, known far and wide for her compassion and her kindness.
What it all comes down to is what’s in our hearts. Do we lie, or do we tell the truth? Do we tear others down, or do we build them up? God gave us tongues to speak, in part, that we might bestow grace upon others. Thus, from this point forward, do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth…so help you God? Amen.
