Bjcorbin's Blog

Like so many other words in our culture, I believe that the meaning of the word “honesty” has changed over time.  In today’s world, I suspect that most people would define it something like, “being honest means that you don’t tell a lie.”  And while on some level that is probably true, I believe that genuine honesty goes much deeper than that.  In fact, I would submit that honesty is a lot more about our intentions/motivations than our actions/words.  Here’s an example:

A man takes a legitimate business trip to Las Vegas, and happens to run into an old girlfriend.  After dinner and drinks, they head up to his hotel room, and it quickly becomes “just like old times”.  After that encounter, they spend the rest of the trip carrying on a torrid affair.  When the man comes home, and his wife asks how his trip was, he responds, “It was good.  I ran into an old friend out there”.

Many would likely defend that he didn’t lie to his wife.  After all, from his perspective, the trip was “good”, and he absolutely “ran into an old friend”.  But clearly, his intention is to deceive her as to what really went on in Las Vegas.  And at the very least, that makes him dishonest.

To go a step further, I would suggest that if the man comes home and merely presents himself as a dutiful husband, returning from an uneventful business trip, he is guilty creating an illusion.  Within himself he has the understanding that what he’s done has the potential to massively change the context of his relationship with his family; and to pretend that things are unchanged is emotionally dishonest.  Over time, this kind of dishonesty can be more damaging than the unfaithful act that precipitated it.  While the wife might be able to get past the husband’s momentary indiscretion, she would be left to wonder whether she could ever trust a man who could look her in the eye, and lie to her, on a daily basis.

While this example may seem extreme, I believe that emotional dishonesty has become commonplace within our culture, and that we often rationalize that by not verbalizing or acting on the truth of our hearts, we’re somehow absolved of what goes on there.  We think that if we don’t use racial slurs, we aren’t really a racist; even when we consciously judge people based on the color of their skin.  Sadly, I don’t sense that church folk are any different in this regard.  We smile at each other, and call each other “brother” or “sister”, but too often there is judgement, jealousy, and slander in our hearts.  I believe that this is why the word that non-church going folk most often use to describe the Sunday morning crowd is “hypocrites”.

Before we can be emotionally honest with anyone else, we have to be honest with ourselves, and with God.  If the man in the example convinces himself that what happened in Vegas really didn’t mean anything, he’s deceived himself, and as such, he loses the ability to be honest with his family or with God.  To sustain the deception, he has to harden himself to any truth that would threaten to break that illusion, and over time he will have to build layer upon layer to protect it.  Those layers then become an impediment to having a healthy relationship with either of them.

The Psalmist wrote, “Search me , O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.  See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” (Psalm 139:23-24)  I believe that opening our hearts to God, and allowing Him to reveal what is within us, is the first step in becoming a truly honest person.  When we reach the point that we can be that honest with Him and with ourselves, I believe that He will empower us to walk with integrity before men.  Until we reach that point, the credibility of our message will remain largely compromised.