HONESTY

Honesty must be a most misunderstood word. People think it means a lot of things that it does not. So many people think they are honest and they are fooling themselves. Get it? They are not even able to be honest with themselves. Why? What is the problem?
To be honest with myself, I must call things by their right names. For example, if I am afraid of something or someone, I may not want to admit it to anyone else, but I should admit it to myself. Still, most people do not want to think of themselves as afraid so they refuse to accept that they are, in fact, afraid. We have a word for this that has become popular in the past several years. That word is denial. We say, “He is in denial.” So, to call fear by its right name, I cannot be in denial.
If I am lazy, or rude, or selfish, or greedy, or ignorant, or even sinful, I may be in denial about all of that. I may refuse to acknowledge that one of these is a problem with me. Hey, you really can’t blame me. Would you want to go around thinking you were sinful all the time? The truth is that if you are sinful, you really should have it on your mind. If you are even just rude, you should think about it too. Otherwise, how will you correct yourself? And that’s just what is happening today. So many people have major personality defects that they are not willing to admit so they go un-corrected and the world is not a better place for it.
The first step in honesty, then, is to be honest with myself. I should take an inventory of what I am. My faults, of course, but also my good points. Get it all out on the table. Face everything. Maybe make a list. Put two columns. One for good and one for bad. Then give accurate names to all the items. Don’t be afraid. No one else needs to see the list. The only person who will be enlightened or surprised will be me.
Now, I can begin to evaluate and decide if any of the traits ought to be corrected, or maybe I can just go on as I am. If I find I want to change something, I can develop a strategy. I am too fat, so I go on a diet. I don’t smile enough, so I can figure out a way to remember to smile at certain people. There are self-help books to address such things. I know one that said that if I associate a wonderful event in my life, one that makes me smile, with a particular person’s face, I will smile whenever I see them. Try out some of these. They might work for you.
I found out some things about myself that I didn’t know. For instance, I thought that I would like to have a good selection of outerwear. I wanted a different jacket for each kind of weather I might encounter. So I bought a light windbreaker with some water-repellent qualities. I bought a lightly insulated leather bomber jacket for those crisp mornings. I bought a huge down parka for the really cold days of February and a moderately polyester-insulated parka for the moderate winter days. After the winter was over and the birds were singing in May, I took stock. I had worn the windbreaker probably twice and then the weather had turned cooler so I started wearing the lighter parka. I wore the parka the entire winter and into the spring until the weather was warmer again. I relied on just the one coat. The others still hung in the closet, rejected time and again for various reasons in favor of the moderate parka. I was amazed at what I really preferred. I preferred to wear one coat for all weather. This was plain. Socrates said “Know thyself,” and so we must if we are going to be honest with ourselves.
But if you are a Christian, you may be concerned about how God evaluates you. You may know that you are not being a good servant. You are being disobedient to some of God’s Word, the Bible. You have not wanted to admit this but now that you have gotten it all out on the table, you know it’s true. What to do?
We know that God wants us to confess. He is willing to listen mercifully to us. But going to Him about some item may be very difficult. We know, already, what He thinks of it. We know He would never give us permission to cultivate certain habits.
What to do when we are unwilling to change? Can we go to him and be honest about even this? Can we go to Christ and say, “I know that I am doing wrong but I am not willing to give it up. Can you help me to be willing?” How will He react to us if we do that? 1 John 2:1 says “We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ….” What is an advocate? An advocate is someone who takes our part. He represents us to the officers of law. An attorney. Jesus Christ has taken on himself the position of our attorney. He represents us before the Father. He stands on our side. He is the supreme authority over creation. He is the supreme sacrifice for the sins of that creation. And he stands with us. If I can’t go to him and be honest about everything that is in my heart, who then, can I go to? The answer is yes. I can go to Christ and tell him all that is in my heart. In fact, it is the only way I can go to him.
Hebrews 4:12 tells me that Christ knows my heart better than I do. He is able to see what I hide from myself. Above, I said that I need to be brutally honest with myself and speak the truth about aspects of myself which I would never admit to any other human being. Even if I want to do that, I sometimes cannot succeed. I can have such a block in my mind that I can’t see the truth about myself. Christ sees beyond this block. He knows all. He can evaluate with far greater precision than I can. This is why the writer of the Psalms said “Search me, oh God, and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me.”
So, then, it is imperative that we are honest with self and then honest with God. But there is one more direction in which to project our honesty and that is toward one another. It says in James 5:16 ”Confess your faults, one to another”. I don’t mean that we are constantly on the phone with all our friends, belaboring them with details of our latest failures. No one wants that from us. But we can go out for coffee or visit one-on-one somewhere in a quiet room with our best Christian friend and confess. Our friend can pray for us and best of all, God will know and will bless us.
That’s the bottom line: blessing. A Christian wants nothing higher. Money? No. That’s temporary. Friends? They will fail you. Power? It will corrupt us. No, what the Christian really thrives on and luxuriates in is God’s blessing. The ultimate gain of being honest is blessing. I want that, don’t you?

DECENT PEOPLE

Isn’t it true that most people are decent? Decent, as defined in the dictionary, means “conformed to the current standards of behavior; good enough; acceptable.” Even though most of the people in the news have gone out of the bounds of what we call normal and even though most of the characters in novels, plays, TV and cinema are at least dysfunctional, (in order to provide an interesting story), most of the real people around us are decent.
There are more terrorists per capita in Iraq than in most other countries, but truly, most of the people who live there are termed "decent people.” I always thought I was decent; and my mom and dad and extended family; even the neighbors. I don’t think I have ever been physically exposed to a murderer or a prostitute or a child abuser in my whole 64 years of life.
Fifty years ago, when I was an atheist, it was brought to me that maybe I was good enough to go to heaven when I died. I didn’t know much about the subject, being biblically illiterate, and I figured I was decent and probably would pass God’s inspection (if there was a God.)
Oh, I know that even decent people have a dark side. Some nice women are horrors when you get them angry. Some men are known to fantasize about other women when the mood strikes them but they would never be unfaithful. And children can be pretty bratty and spoiled but when they turn 25 they change almost overnight into hard-working, soft-spoken, courteous adults whom their teachers would never recognize. They were decent after all.
You can imagine my surprise, then, when I found out that decency won’t get us into heaven!!
You have to be better than decent. You have to be perfect. Yeah. It’s stated quite clearly in the Bible. Many of the world’s religions have rejected that idea and even some so-called Christian ones have done so. But I would guess that if you want to know something about the Judeo-Christian God and his requirements for being included in his program for eternity, you really ought to read the book his closest followers wrote about it. Moses, Isaiah, Paul, John, they all knew quite a bit about the Judeo-Christian God’s mind and they were among the many who contributed to the Bible. The Bible itself says that it was written by God, actually, using the brains and hands of the human writers. It says God moved them and inspired them to write what is there so we humans would know in black and white, exactly what is in God's mind. It’s quite clear, too, what God is saying in the Bible.
He says that sin is not only horrendous. It is sometimes “decent.” God says that as far as he is concerned a man who fantasizes about a woman is as guilty as one who cheats on his wife. Now, you may not agree, but God is the person who holds the keys to our eternity. After we die, we are pretty vulnerable. We have no defenses or escapes. We are at God’s mercy, so I think it is wise to pay attention to what he thinks.
Some other “decent” sins are things like shirking responsibilities, being addicted to food, telling white lies, disobeying traffic laws, leaving work early or sleeping on the job, or bringing ”things” (small bits of company property) home. Saying things behind people’s backs, repeating rumors, “using” and manipulating people. The list is long and everybody does these things. Decent people do them.
“Who, me? You say I am going to hell? Oh, come on. I don’t sin! Aren’t you being a little extreme? Aren’t you being simplistic?” No, no, no, no, no. I am not saying anything. It is the Bible that is saying it and therefore it is God who is saying it. I didn’t like it either when I heard it. It took me awhile to accept it. I struggled for quite awhile. Had lots of objections.
The basic message of the gospel, the good news that Christ’s apostles took to the world is that all those little white sins, as well as the big evil slimy ones are enough to keep all of humankind out of heaven. It says there is none who is righteous, no, not one. Think of that. Out of all the decent people on this earth, not one is righteous and Christ said that you have to be more righteous than a Pharisee to get into the Kingdom of God. He also said that the Pharisees would not make it either. So, where does that leave us? Without God and with no hope.
But the gospel is good news. The surprise is that when Jesus Christ died on the cross all those white sins, all the drippy, oozing, rotten ones and all the Hitler-sized ones were laid on him and he took God’s punishment for them there in the three hours of darkness that the Bible talks about on that evil Friday afternoon. He took mine and yours and everybody’s The only thing he asks in return is that we believe in him.
Believing in Christ. This is not believing about Christ. Some people don’t even do that but the Devil does. He believes. But he doesn’t believe IN Christ. If we are watching an action film and Bruce Willis is going to attempt to rescue a dying girl from a crashing airliner, he asks the police to believe in him. Not about him. They believe he is there. They can see him and touch him. But he wants them to believe in him. Believe he can deliver what he has promised.
Unlike Bruce Willis, Jesus Christ is really able to deliver everything he promised. And he promised a lot. He promised forgiveness of all my sins, adoption of me as a son of God and a glorious future beyond the present world and time-frame in eternity. He can deliver all that. He also promised condemnation and punishment to those who oppose or don’t believe in him. And he can deliver that too!
Jesus said that whoever believes in him shall be saved; rescued; from the penalty for their white sins and their greasy, filthy, foul-smelling ones too. He says all we have to do is believe in his ability to deliver. Believe that he is the Son of God and that God has raised him from the dead.
Tonight, when you are quiet in your bed. Before you go to sleep, why not do this: Ask quietly, as one would do in a prayer, maybe silently within yourself, if I am right. Say something like, “God, are you really out there? And if you are, is the guy who wrote this paper right about you? Should I read the Bible and learn more perfectly what you think about my decency?” See what happens. Can’t hurt, right?

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