Proverbs 11:1-8
If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.
– Mark Twain
This is the next to last Sunday of our series to name qualities which describe the way we believe God wants the world to function. Honesty and Intetegrity may not be the best-for-almost-last, but they do summarize much of what we’ve been thinking about during this project. When we are honest and act with integrity, we can trust one another. Your neighbor will tell you the truth, not try to cheat you or take advantage of you.
Let’s name some things from the news lately that AREN’T honesty and integrity…
Insider trading
Government contracts not bid
Attacking another country over a weekend break in peace negotiations
Lying about evidence
Manipulating grand juries
Suing yourself and getting a big settlement
We haven’t always agreed with our government over the years, but we have expected people to get in trouble for lying to the public. We’d be willing to go back to that standard.
Honesty and integrity matter because they build up the community rather than tearing it apart. We can disagree with one another and still have productive conversations, come to compromises, seek creative solutions. But we can’t do those things unless we can trust each other to be telling the truth about basic facts. We can’t make good decisions together unless we are dealing with accurate information.
When people in our neighborhood act with integrity, we can count on them to have our back. To share values like the ones we’ve been listing this season and to act on those values in the ways they interact with one another. Over time, the experience of honest dealings builds up trust. When we trust each other, it’s easier to live side by side - to relax into friendship. To leave our doors unlocked when we run errands. To let our kids play outside in the summer. To plant flower pots and expect them to stay put.
When we experience each other as people of integrity, that experience is cumulative. It builds up over time. We learn to trust what we read in the papers and hear on the news. We learn to believe what our leaders tell us, although we may keep a little healthy skepticism about political debates. We believe election results, even when our favorite candidate doesn’t win. All those things matter to a healthy community.
Living with honesty and integrity help us pass those qualities on to new generations. When children can expect adults in their lives to be honest, they learn to trust what they learn from them. When adults act with integrity, children learn to trust social institutions to have their best interest at heart. We build strong communities when we can rely on the integrity of schools, churches, councils, businesses. When youth are treated fairly, they grow up to be fair. We pass on our values.
It’s all too easy right now to list ways that honesty and integrity are being broken, but let’s not. Let’s list ways that we can trust people to tell the truth and act with integrity.
Here’s a start…we have more and more groups using our church, but with rare exceptions we leave the noisy offering right here in the sanctuary and it’s never been missing. Once we thought it might be, but it was a counting error, not a theft.
What else?