How important's honesty?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I don’t mean whether you tell white lie or not, I mean how much damage do you think it does to human beings and their relationships with other human beings that (if you accpet what I’m about to write) so much of life is constructed. Not just in obvious areas like lawcourts, in regard to which a lawyer friend of mine once said, of witnesses in a case, “They will all lie” (he was right), but in other areas. In many jobs staff have routinely to construct rather than tell the truth, the whole of advertising, politics and PR, as well as the law, can be said to be industries that reward those who don’t tell the truth.

So, how imporatnt is honesty? And, if you’re a Christian - and even if you aren’t - is the way we live regarding honesty acceptable to God (as in “shrewdness” or “wisdom”, qualities commended in the Bible) or will he need to purge us of this before we can commune with him?

2

Be honest with yourself and you’ll never need to.

3

Never need to what? Sorry, I don’t follow. Actually, being honest with yourself is not the point of my post. I do believe it’s possible for someone to “play the game” of life (a nit of lying here, covering things up there) AND YET still be honest with themselves. Perhaps as they spend another sleepless night, or stare into a beer bottle. BUT, how important is being honest with others, and what effect does dishonesty have, for example, on children growing up in the average household where lying and stuff is normal. Except no one calls it lying; they call it “survival skills” or shrewdness, or whatever.

4

To me honesty is a double edged sword, and often the call for honesty is made by those in authority in order to meet their own agenda. The oft quoted “Jews in the attic dilemma” is a prime example. The SS knocks on your door and asks whether you know of any Jews in hiding. They are demanding your honesty. Do you comply?

To me, being trustworthy is more important than being honest. A thief can be very honest, he can freely and honestly admit to stealing the item. He is by definition an honest man. But is he trustworthy?

Trustworthiness is a two way street. In effect you earn someone’s trust, and you end up wanting to be trusted, and to trust in return. You have a productive and honourable meeting of the minds.

Honesty is not like that. Honesty is a demand, a threat, a one way street. One person loses, the other wins, or so it seems.

5

How do you rate its importance? What kind of scale?

In my opinion, part of the foundation of a person’s life can be an enormous lie and it may shape that person’s entire life. That person may never know it.

What’s stranger to contemplate, the person may find out at about the age of fifty about the lie that has shaped his life. The consequences of 1) learning the truth and 2) unlearning the lie at that point in life just boggle the mind.

I don’t know the mind of God today. The truth seems natural and I think the two are related, aren’t they?

I tried not to hurt students’ feelings about things that had nothing to do with their education. So I wouldn’t be completely straight with them in my opinion of their clothing, for example, if asked for an opinion. I would always try to find something positive to say and skip the negative. Or I would make a suggestion coupled with something positive. “That color is really good on you. Why don’t you try draping it around your shoulders like this…”

When it came to their school work, I had to be more blunt, but I would still try to find some positive things too. That’s just good common sense in teaching.

Being honest with myself is hard work and not always accurate.

I put a lot of stock in being honest because it annoys me when others are not. So I make a point of telling people that it’s important. My husband says that I’m very consistent, yet I know that I’m human and bound to be inconsistent or tell “white lies” or exaggerate sometimes. And I’m forgetful. So I live in fear of contradicting myself and being thought to be a deliberate liar.

I’ve had a couple of friends over a lifetime that were pathological liars. It took me a while to catch on. Both were really charming, but unreliable. The first friendship turned into a disaster. The second friendship I terminated before it had a chance to become destructive.

With children, I wouldn’t hesitate to join them for a while in the fantasy world of Santa Claus and tooth fairies. I’ve never thought of “pretending” as being lies. Do you?

6

Mellivora, I read your post after submitting mine. I very much agree with you that there are times when other things are easily more important than honesty.

7

In the last book of the Christian’s handbook - the Revelation of John (Chapter 21, verse 8) - we read the following:

But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars – their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulphur. This is the second death.

Of special interest are two things: first, the fact that cowards and liars are classed with the usual suspects such as murderers and idolaters. (Interestingly, cowards are placed first in the list, as if there is felt to be a need to emphasise that their inclusion is no mistake.) Second, it is specified that ‘all liars’ will be dealt with so severely by God.

I think it is important to understand what this does and doesn’t mean. Clearly what it cannot mean is that everyone who has ever told a lie will be barred from heaven, since that would rule out everyone. What it does then mean, I believe, is that all people who have deliberately told lies in order to harm other people and who have refused to change their ways but have persisted in such lying will be shunned by God.

The juxtaposition of cowards and liars, with the two categories framing the list of evildoers (one first, one last), is interesting, and I think most of us would intuitively see a connection between lying and a lack of moral courage. Lying of course is prohibited in the Ten Commandments, or more precisely the form of lying known today as perjury: “Thou shalt not bear false witness”. The immense seriousness with which lying is regarded is also reflected in the fact that the ninth commandment (the prohibition against the bearing of false witness against your neighbour) follows hard on the heels of the sixth commandment telling us not to commit murder.

The connection between murder and lying is less fanciful or remote than one might think. (We may note that murderers as well as cowards and all liars are included in the list of evildoers in Revelation.) Satan is called the “father of lies” and Jesus says of him that he came “to steal, kill and destroy”. When one individual human being chooses to lie about another, what happens I believe is that s/he chooses to murder the other’s reputation, even the other’s soul. It is serious stuff. It can wreck lives.

8

Of course it can. I thought that was taken for granted. I just assumed that you were asking how important the “little” lies are.

I don’t know how much importance we should place on the order in which things are written. I look to the New Testament for overall importance rather than looking at the Old Testament for specifics.

Roger, do you think that the two great commandments that are given there cover the other ten reasonably well?

9

I happen to believe that deception, typically rooted in self-deception, is a cause of tremendous familial (and therefore all) human problems.

Regarding your question about loving God and loving your neighbour, and whether these cover the other commandments reasonably well, my answer would first consist of pointing out that these two commandments are themselves ranked (God first, others second). This in itself is important for a consideration of your question. My second response would be that we humans can hardly be entrusted with excuses for not doing the right thing, such as I suspect underlie some of this concern about rank-ordering on behalf of at least most people (especially Christians, I think). In sum, in theory they cover all other commandments given in the Bible; in practice, there is a tendency to find every means to avoid what CS Lewis below calls “unimpeded obedience”. Therefore, it’s good for us humans to attend to these commands, just as its good for us to focus our energies on eradicating concrete evil from the world (especially our little world) than on promoting abstract good.

Since it’s relevant, here’s what I wrote earlier today in the “Religious quiz” thread in IMHO:

"The relationship between neo-paganism and Christianity (perhaps one should include Unitarian Universalism, but I don’t know what this means) is closer than might be imagined at first glance. Perhaps this is a pointer as to why people with such divergent religious beliefs and opinions can get on so well here. From a letter by CS Lewis, dated January 1936, incidentally to a Catholic (Benedictine) monk, who had been his student:

I would say in conclusion that there is much benefit to be derived for the average modern educated American from not attending so much to facts, data as to attempting to sense the all pervading flavour of a writer or a text.