HONESTY

ABSOLUTELY

ONE EVENING I received a phone call I will never forget. It was from Allen Hitchock. “You won’t believe what just happened to me!” he said.

“I went to my local petrol station and pumped $10 worth of petrol. When I asked for a receipt, the attendant made the receipt for $15. When I pointed out this mistake, the attendant replied, ‘Oh, just turn in the receipt to your company, and you’ll make a fast five bucks.

After all, a lot of the mailmen do that.’” Like Allen, all of us—the executive, the employee and the homemaker—have to make daily decisions about whether or not to handle money honestly. Do you tell the cashier at the grocery store when you receive too much change? Have you ever tried to sell something and been tempted not to tell the whole truth because you might lose a sale?

HONESTY IN SOCIETY These decisions are made more difficult because everyone around us seems to be dishonest. For example, employee theft in the Every man did what was right in his own eyes. JUDGES 17:6 workplace is approaching $1 billion a week. Byron was reading the morning paper while his wife, Peggy, prepared breakfast. “Well, would you look at this. Another politician got caught with his hand in the cookie jar,” he said. “I’ll bet there isn’t an honest one in the entire country. What a bunch of crooks!”

Just a few moments later Byron was smirking as he told Peggy how he planned to pad his expense account in such a way that he would get more money from his employer than he was entitled to receive. Byron was not aware of the incongruity between his own behaviour and his disgust with dishonesty in others. As he told Peggy, “The way the economy is going, you’ve got to be shrewd just to survive.

The company doesn’t need it, and besides, everyone does it.” We live in an age of “relative honesty” in which people formulate their own standards of honesty which change with the circumstances. The Bible speaks of a similar time which was a turbulent period in Israel’s history. “Everyone did whatever he wanted to— whatever seemed right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6, LB).