Thursday: The Mastery of Dishonesty and Lies
WEEK 45
THURSDAY
THE MASTERY OF DISHONESTY AND LIES
Ephesians 4:22-25
We must now consider another mastery—the mastery of dishonesty and lies. Perhaps this should have come sooner in our study, for this mastery is basic. If dishonesty and lying in all their forms are not mastered, then nothing is mastered. All spiritual attainment and all spiritual exercises are automatically canceled. For the test questions concerning a person’s character are these: Will that person lie? Are there any circumstances under which that person will tell a lie? Is he or she trustworthy? Can that person be trusted when there is no eye upon him or her except the eye of conscience? If these questions cannot be answered with a straightforward yes, then all else is vain— and more—it is dangerous. Dishonest religion is more dangerous than dishonesty, for often the religion makes the dishonesty float, keeps it alive longer—but only longer, for in the end it sinks.
Acts is the cleanest record of honesty and truth ever described. The one departure from truth and honesty—the case of Ananias and Sapphira—was visited with immediate judgment; they fell dead. And they fell dead not by a stroke from God but by a stroke from within; they died of apoplexy. The moral atmosphere was so tense that the moment they departed from it, they had heart failure.
The moral atmosphere of many churches is so flabby that any departure from truth and honesty wouldn’t register on a cardiograph! For instance, a minister was preparing to preach a sermon attacking a fellow minister. A friend asked him, “Have you ever heard him?” He had to confess he hadn’t. “Ever met him?” “No.” Then the friend told him about this minister he was about to attack, how God was using him, and that if, as he had planned, he took random statements from the minister’s sermons and quoted them out of context, he would be distorting the facts. When the friend was through, the minister replied, “Perhaps what you say is true, but I’ve already written my sermon, and I have to deliver it.” He was a defender of the truth, by lies! In a certain country, a commission was appointed to stop rampant bribery. One recommendation was that if anyone was caught at bribery, the person had to restore the amount of the bribe. If the person wasn’t caught, he or she was ahead; and if the person was caught, he or she wasn’t behind! A flabby moral atmosphere!
O Christ, you make our consciences acute. Your honesty sharpens our awareness of dishonesty. Help me this day to expose my conscience to your mind. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: All my attitudes and actions and words shall speak the truth and nothing but the truth.