A Spoon Full of Sugar Helps the Medicine Go Down
Mary Poppins had it together. She could get those little brats to do whatever she wanted, as long as she coated it with what they thought they wanted. She made them speak the truth even when it hurt, and she pushed them to live with integrity, even when the old mean guys are trying to get your penny..Plus, she could fit that 6 foot lamp into a bag that was the size of a laptop. She knew how to get the job done - and teach meaningful life lessons at the same time! But really, if we were to be honest, who wouldn’t want to learn about how to be a better person while sailing across the London sky under an umbrella?
Today I joined our road team as they performed in a school in downtown Toronto. They did a great job (yay!) and we got a great response from the staff and students. I closed the show with my own life story (see my May 2007 post for the whole story) and it was well received…However, after the show, two teachers came up to me and were saying thanks for coming to their school, etc. They told me how they were both weeping as I was sharing my story, and then one of them asked me how I deal with loss. But before I could answer her, she asked me if my story was actually true!
It took me back for a moment, as I didn’t quite know what to say, and then she quickly replaced the question with a statement that was something to the effect of her just wondering because it would be ok if we made up the story for dramatic effect…
No, I am sorry, but it wouldn’t be ok if we made up the story for dramatic effect. It’s not ok to blur those lines, even if there is an intended good outcome.
One of the topics that we are dealing with this year in our high school presentations is the character value of honesty. The video segments that we are using is from an amazing company called Make You Think, and the statistics that they highlight about honesty are quite disheartening: the average person lies about once every 7 minutes; 51% of high school students admitted to cheating on tests; fake ID’s run rampant. Am I getting old, or does it seem like there is so much more open acceptance for dishonesty in our culture? People we trust seem to lie to us. National leaders seem to twist the truth. Spin doctors are actually getting paid great salaries for professionally spinning the facts. Vows made are easily broken. Where is that line where truth is drawn and embraced-even if it isn’t comfortable to face?
All over the word right now, as I type this, we can only imagine some of the pain and anguish: young women murdered because of a hatred for their sex, people dying for their faith, children losing their parents to diseases that could be so easily prevented, families choosing who will eat tonight when the few tablespoons of food are prepared, and we are cheating on mid-terms because we couldn’t be bothered to get help or study a little more and we are lying to save face and try to win the approval of a group of friends that will probably change in a few months anyways…hmmm….I can totally see the equality in that!
There is a verse in the Bible that says let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ be ‘no’. What would the world look like if you and I chose to actually not assimilate into the relativity of our culture but instead chose to take the high road, to be honest, and to not give any room for interpretation according to what we felt was best for us? The real face of dishonesty is actually selfishness, because it is about getting my own way, no matter what the cost. No one would like to say that they are selfish, yet we would be willing to stretch the truth or blatently cheat to get our own way, and if it came down to it, we would probably even willingly compromise many things just for our own personal comfort…And sadly, somedays when I examine my own life, I am not much different. I have to continually examine my own motives, thoughts, words, and actions, and sometimes I fall terribly short because I, too, am painfully human.
But I am finding that character is not something that is given to me; it is something that is worked out in me. The only way I can see my character is to have it tested. I want to be someone who is known as being a person of integrity, and who is known as being honest. We all fall short many times, and like you, I am nowhere near where I wish I could say I was- but that isn’t a good enough reason to not try.
And that is the honest truth…