August 11, 2024

“Mostly, What We Need”

There was a popular song some time ago that went like this:

“Honesty is such a lonely word;

Everyone is so untrue.

Honesty is hardly ever heard,

But, mostly, what I need from you.”

Ain’t it the truth?   Gerber claimed that their Good Start Gentle formula prevented children who took it from developing allergies. A lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission ended with Gerber agreeing not to make any similar claims for the product or imply the government authorized such a claim.  Sensa claimed that its powdered additive – that you sprinkle on food – enhanced the smell and taste of food, thus making users feel full and eat less. The FTC ruled that the claim misled consumers and made unfounded weight-loss claims. The organization was forced to pay $26.5 million for a settlement, and was also charged for failing to disclose that they had paid customers for their endorsement.  In its ads, Lumos Labs claimed its app, which offers users access to games and brain training exercises, that it would help prevent Alzheimer’s disease or help students perform better in school, though it had no proof. The company was fined $2 million by the FTC.  A television ad showed a Nissan Frontier pushing a dune buggy up a hill – a feat the truck is unable to pull off in real life. The company was forced to stop airing the advertisement, or any commercial making similar unfounded claims in the future.

Such outrageous commercial claims wash over our heads daily.  We rarely object.  We quietly tolerate such lies.  Why?  Because we know that they’re nothing more than “sales-speak” – putting together pleasant sounding words in a way that makes us feel good.  So it doesn’t matter to us any more if advertisers lie to us night after night in our living rooms; we really don’t expect anything more from them.

The credibility crisis in the American market place is a very quiet disease.  But don’t be mistaken, friends, it is malignant.  Every time a car is described as “the ultimate in styling and performance,” every time a can of beer is promoted as having the power to completely alter reality as we know it, or a bottle of soda pop is heralded as a fountain of youth, or the best way to lose weight and look like a fashion model, every time a telephone company portrays itself as the sole custodian of down-home family values, our entire social contract is cheapened a little more, and so are we.

I remember watching a movie in which Dudley Moore played an ad-writer who decided to start telling the truth.  He wrote an ad for Volvo that called the car, “Boxy, but good.”  Several other ideas he came up with were equally honest and to the point, so they locked him up in a mental institution.  It’s a hilarious premise for a movie, but it’s also a telling caricature of the advertising industry, an industry from which we no longer anticipate a single honest word.

But if we’ve gotten used to dishonesty in advertising, we’ve come to expect it in politics.  Tell me, would you, how we got from the America that treasured the little folk legend of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree and saying, “I cannot tell a lie . . .” to the America in which “politician” is a four letter word?  How did we reach the point of acceptance of public deception and duplicity as standard practice for political campaigns?  How did we reach the point that legislators try to get a bill passed or defeated in Congress by saying absolutely anything, no matter how outrageously false or exaggerated, to get the public on their side?

We live in a world now where you are well advised to believe almost nothing you read, especially if it comes across your computer screen.  I’ve been told that I need to download someone’s product immediately because I have a non-existent virus that will take over my computer and wipe out my hard drive.  Then, this email: “Permit me to inform you of my desire to introduce to you into this humanitarians work. . . I am writing to you now from my sick bed here in the hospital. . . .There is Eighteen Million Five Hundred Thousand United State Dollars my husband has in an account with the Guarantee Trust Bank of which I am the next of kin. With my health condition and because my husband and I have no child, I decide to contact you so that I will pass the right of next of kin to you.”  What’s so disturbing is that I suppose there are people who actually respond to these things.

But, as troubling as all this is, there are issues of truth-telling that are far closer to home than advertising, politics and Internet schemes, aren’t there?  In our families, even within our own hearts, honesty is often difficult and, at times, not even welcome.

The lighter side of this malady is, I suppose, illustrated by the case of little Sarah who decided to help get ready for company.  She set the dishes out on the table and helped make everything just right.  Uncle Jake arrived for dinner.  Everything was fine as they sat down to eat, but then Dad noticed that something was missing.

“Sarah,” he said, “you didn’t put a knife and fork at Uncle Jake’s place.”

“I know,” she explained, “I thought he wouldn’t need them ’cause Mommy said he always eats like a horse.”

Well, there are times when we would be just as happy with a little less honesty.  But most of the time we find ourselves needing more.

The Bible offers what, at first glance, looks like a very simplistic answer to a very complex problem: “Speak the truth.”  That’s it.  It’s the same phrase in  both Ephesians and Zechariah, even though the two passages are written in different languages.

But there is a larger context of Biblical theology in which this phrase is set that unlocks the door to some valuable insights.  It goes something like this:  What you nurture in your own heart, and speak with your own lips, has consequences not only for yourself, but for the community and the world around you.  And, truth is not just good policy, it is at the very heart of Divnity and of the message of Christ.

I’ve tried to take the biblical context and attendant observations about truth-telling and deceitfulness, and boil them all down into a few basic principles, none of which hold any claim to absolute truth, but they are my best shot.

First, truth is a way of life.  Pascal said that we have to love the truth in order to know it.  I think he was close, but I’m not so sure that truth is something to be known, so much as it is something to be lived!

There are a lot of folks around who are sure they know the truth.  Turn on any radio talk show and you’ll hear them.  But people who are convinced that they know the truth (a group which, I confess, at times includes yours truly) have a tendency to use that presumed “knowledge” to bludgeon others into seeing the same “truth.”  The problem being that sometimes it “just ain’t so.”  And when everyone goes around speaking the same lie, it passes for the truth.

Living the truth, on the other hand, is a life quest that refuses to be satisfied with simple answers, and is therefore always ready to decipher and expose the lie, whether it comes from the lips of another, or from one’s own.  Living the truth is a body involving, mind absorbing, heart consuming commitment – a commitment to asking honest questions of life and of one’s self, and not settling for the expedient lie, to avoid embarrassment, shame, or responsibility.  It is a commitment to gently suspending judgement of other people in the absence of absolute understanding of them.  It is a commitment to seeking that in life which is positive and productive and up-building, because such things reflect the truth of our common bond and common destiny as children of Divine Promise. Truth is a way of life.

The second principle I offer for your consideration is this: Truth must begin as a personal commitment, and it must become a communal bond.  Nothing could be more personal than these words from Ephesians that call for hands that do honest work, mouths that offer words of grace, and hearts that are tender.  Nothing could be more personal, especially when you realize that what we translate as “tenderhearted” is, in the Greek, literally, “of healthy bowels.”  We think of the heart as the seat of emotion; the ancient Greek and Hebrew cultures saw the bowels and kidneys as the residence of love and passion and hate.

I can’t imagine a more appropriate image for agenda-driven, ulcer-plagued, twentieth century America than the very personal note that honesty within and truthfulness without might have some connection to a sound digestive system.  The truth – living the truth and speaking the truth – begins as a very personal matter.  But it leads to so much more.

The reason to speak the truth with your neighbor is that, as Paul writes, “we are members of one another;” the reason to do honest work is to be able, as he says, “to give to those in need;” the reason to speak words that are good and up-building is, in Paul’s words, “that they may impart grace to those who hear.”

We are responsible to and for each other.  But we sit here in this place today as those who know the tie that binds us is more than a social ethic, it is divine identity!  Because we are the body of Christ.  And as such, we have no greater calling than to live for truth – truth which begins as a personal commitment and becomes a communal bond.

Which brings me to my third and last principle:  Truth is irrepressible, and contagious.  John Jay Chapman referred to absolute truth as like perfect pitch.  He says that if a perfect “A” is sounded by enough people, then those folks who are sounding a “G-flat,” or who have been “caterwauling and murdering the scale for years” will be gradually drawn to that perfect “A.”

Is there a potential for honesty and truth-telling to prevail in our national life?  How far will the American public go in accepting the premise that falsehood is a necessary political expedient, or that deception and exaggeration are the only ways to do business?  Do you and I have any responsibility for setting limits on public deception?  And if we could, might we begin to change the mind and heart of our nation?  Is it indeed possible that, if a note of truth is sounded long enough, then the lies with which we live will ultimately be drowned out?

I believe it is possible.  Because when one person finally decides to get honest with himself, others take note.  When a group of people finally commit to living the truth, others are drawn to them.  When a nation finally speaks what it means, and stands behind its words, the world is grateful.  Truth is irrepressible, and contagious.

We need a revolution in our world, a rebellion against the tyranny of falsehoods that fill our airwaves, and our minds, an uprising of social conscience that turns over the rocks which conceal the purveyors of the lie – the lie that tells us we are nothing more than helpless pawns in the big games of commerce, governance, and war.

If, in fact, such a revolution is in the offing, it will begin with individual hearts and lives, and grow through the ties that bind us in community.  It will begin with a commitment to truth – truth with ourselves, and truth with one another.  It will be marked by honesty – honesty on our lips, and honesty in the work of our hands, honesty that can drive the market, and reshape our political landscape.

Honesty.

It’s an ambitious agenda;

it’s a scarce commodity;

it’s hard work; and it’s, as the song says, “mostly, what we need.”