Honesty

This week's sermon is on honesty. Looking at the story of Joash, the child king of Judah, who was a good king because he was raised by the priest Jehoiada. Tom made the sermon about honesty, and I had a hard time seeing honesty in the text. Instead, I saw mentoring.

So, I was thinking about honesty in the Bible. On one hand, I can take honesty to be a moralistic message on truth telling. Indeed, truth telling is important, but the truth is everyone lies at some point. If my wife looks bad, I tell her she looks good. If someone preaches a bad sermon, I tell them it was good. It is just natural to tell these little white lies. Is that sinful? Or is brutal honesty sinful? How do you speak the truth in love, as the Bible would say?

Then if I explore the Scripture about honesty I see some different ideas. In the prayer journal, there were two troubling stories. One was from the story of Joseph in Gen 42. This is the story of his reunion with his brothers. In this story, he frames Benjamin as lies about his identity. What do I learn about honesty from him here?

Then there is the very troubling passage from Luke 16. This is the parable of the shrewd manager who lies about how much people owe him, and Jesus commends him because Christians should be shrewd. Does this mean Christians should be dis-honest?

Then there is the prophetic and wisdom literature ideas on honesty, which is having balanced scales and treating people fairly.

I think the prophetic and wisdom lit. seems to hit the idea in the center. Honesty is essentially connected to living honesty. Does our confession, Jesus is Lord match our lives? Are we honest with this confession? Or rather is our life honest?

Yet another side of this is the the idea of truth vs. lie. Jesus is said to be the one who is truth in John 14:6 and furthermore truth is said to set us free once we know it. I think this happens on two levels. First, on a real practical level, living in ignorance is never free. Instead to live in ignorance is to enslave you to whatever idea it is. Maybe you don't know abestos is destructive, just because you don't know that doesn't make it not true. The same is true for our salvation. Just because you don't know the truth of Christ, doesn't make it not true. Just because you don't believe in God, doesn't mean God doesn't exist. So, when we come to the truth and put our trust in the One who is True, then we are set free from the deceptions that enslave us. Or rather, we are set free from the deceiver who enslaves us. We don't have to buy into the lie that our purpose is to serve ourselves and that happiness is the ultimate end in life. Rather, the truth sets us free to live in a new life free of the deception that lead us away from ultimate truth and ultimate meaning.