To Tell the Truth

            Truth-telling seems to be a lost art in our world, but it is at the very heart of what is required to make a society healthy, safe, and prosperous.

            Students cheat on exams and papers at their schools and colleges; schools and colleges then lie to accrediting agencies about their student GPAs or job placement rates. Journalists get caught and have to confess to making up quotes from persons they never interviewed; a husband or wife gets caught and has to confess to all the lies told over time to hide a long-standing affair.

            We appoint committees and blue-ribbon panels to investigate the adequacy of regulatory mechanisms for Wall Street. We put compliance officers in place for businesses of all types. One writer claims his research on American corporate life shows that somewhere between ten and twenty percent of the payroll of the typical corporation is spent for people whose job it is to watch its own employees, its suppliers, and its customers for fraud.

            Truth-telling as a way of life cannot be crated by laws, codes of ethics, stiff fines, and jail terms. Personal integrity as a way of life comes about only from the soul of a man or woman with character.

            If I lie to you, I demean you as a person – deliberately misrepresenting the facts or withholding from you something you have the right to know. Thus the paternalism of some physicians or families to a patient who is seriously ill.

            If I lie to you, I am robbing you of your freedom – forcing you to make decisions on the basis of false or misleading information. Thus the tactics of some salespersons or televangelists.

            If I lie to you, I am arrogant in the extreme – playing a role which says I have the right to decide when you should be given full-enough information to make your own informed decision and when I should make that decision for you instead. Thus the strategy of certain political or religious leaders that puts others at jeopardy for the sake of some end-justifies-the-means scheme.

            If I lie to you, I deny my relationship to God as the father of my spirit – and identify myself with Satan, who is the father of all lies.

            It isn’t a new problem. In Jesus’ time, people played games with truth-telling too. “Swearing” by one’s one head, Jerusalem, or heaven was less binding than an oath taken with God’s own name. The issue wasn’t vowing to speak truthfully in court but simple, straightforward honesty in the daily routine.

“Do not say, ‘By heaven!’ because heaven is God’s throne. And do not say, ‘By the earth!’ because the earth is his footstool. . . . Just say a simple, ‘Yes, I will,’ or ‘No, I won’t.’ Anything more is from the evil one” (Matthew 5:34-37 NLT).

Jesus’ words still mark the path that is right for us to travel today.

“If You Died Tonight, Would You . . .”

            My guess is that you can finish the headline of this essay. It is the opening line used for millions of evangelistic conversations. People going door to door. Kids on the beach. Bosses or workers in offices. Total strangers on subways or busses. “If you died tonight, would you go to heaven or hell?”

            I don’t recall ever using that approach with a stranger. I’m not even sure I’ve used it with people I know reasonably well. It isn’t that I want to fuss with people who use that approach, for I’m sure there will be people with Christ forever because someone used that line to get them to thinking about salvation.

            It’s just that most of us aren’t going to die tonight or tomorrow. We’ll live another few days and weeks, perhaps months and years. That’s why I think a better question might be this: “If you wake up tomorrow, do you have a clear plan for using the day to honor Christ by the way you will use it?”

            Think about it. When Jesus talked about what would happen after death, he asked people to think about what they had done for people who were sick, cold, hungry, and homeless. He even wanted to know if they had gone to people who were serving jail sentences. He didn’t ask about the sorts of things we tend to have on our lists. He wanted to know about the fruits of righteousness.

            Jesus clearly believed what his brother in the flesh wrote: “What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone? Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, and you say, ‘Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well’ – but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do? So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless” (James 2:14-17 NLT).

            See there? No mention of the Sinner’s Prayer, baptism, or church attendance – whether Sunday or special services. The focus for Jesus and James wasn’t one-time or special events. It was about a type of faith that went so deep that it actually transforms the person who has it. It makes her into a generous and sympathetic person. It produces integrity in his business dealings and fidelity to his family. It makes others glad they get to be around them.

            So let’s assume that you aren’t going to die tonight. What is in your plan for tomorrow that would count as evidence you’d have gone to heaven if you had?