Is Honesty the Best Policy? -- FPC sermon excerpt
Being the parent of teenagers is one of life’s biggest challenges — I can tell you that I have earned every single one of my gray hairs. You all know the difficulties: High school parties where alcohol is served, driving on hazardous Northern Virginia roads, pressure to be sexually active.
My wife and I know the dangers, and we take them very seriously. We don’t expect our children to be saints, but there is one thing we demand of them: Honesty.
When it comes to drinking and driving, for example, they know that they can get a safe ride home from us if they call us and ask for a ride. If they are honest, there is no penalty and no punishment. But if they drink, drive, and lie to us — goodbye driving privileges.
In our house, honesty is more important than perfect behavior. But I also know that we live in a society where honesty is not always the best policy.
On the one hand, we admire George Washington for saying, “I cannot tell a lie.” And we look up to Abraham Lincoln, calling him “Honest Abe.” But on the other hand, we tell our children that there are instances in which we should not be honest.
We say, “Tell your grandmother you like the gift — even if you don’t.”
Or we make the comment, “That doesn’t look like a toupee at all!”
Or we say to young parents, “What an adorable baby!”
These lies are designed to please others, says Robert Feldman, a social psychologist who studies lying in everyday life. Experiments have found that ordinary people tell about two lies every ten minutes. Some people get in as many as 12 lies in the same amount of time.
But here’s the interesting part, according to The Washington Post (February 19, 2007): Liars tend to be more popular than honest people. Knowing when to say something, and when not to be completely blunt, is, in fact, a social skill. People say they want the truth, but do they really want to hear a list of everything about them that is really annoying?
I don’t think so.
All of which brings us to Luke 16 and the parable of the dishonest manager. Jesus tells us that there is a rich man who has a manager, and the manager is found to be squandering his master’s property. So the rich man fires the manager, and the manager panics, knowing that he is not strong enough to dig, and much too proud to beg (Luke 16:1-3).
So he comes up with a plan. He summons his master’s debtors, and gives them deep discounts on the amount they owe. A debt of a hundred jugs of olive oil becomes fifty, and a debt of one hundred containers of wheat becomes eighty.
The manager does this to please people, so that when he loses his job as manager he’ll have some friends that he can stay with (vv. 4-7). He would rather be popular than honest!
The story’s big surprise comes at the end, when the rich man commends the dishonest manager for his shrewdness (v. 8). This compliment strikes us as odd, because it seems strange that the master would be happy about losing money to his debtors.
But maybe the manager didn’t cheat his master very much at all. It could be that the manager was taking these discounts out of his own commissions, and was only giving the impression that he was stealing from his boss.
Scholars have discovered that it was a common practice of first-century lenders to write debt obligations in such a way that there was no differentiation between the principal and the interest. They may have done this to avoid revealing that they were charging high interest — there were no “truth in lending” regulations in those days. We all know that it can be a shock to see how much interest you are paying on a 30-year mortgage, or even a 4-year car loan.
If this is the case with the dishonest manager, then what he is removing from the bill is his own commission, plus some of the interest that would have accrued to the master.
So he is dishonest, yes — but not quite the cheat he first appears to be. The master gets his principal back, and the manager makes some friends that he can stay with when he is out of a job.
If this is the case, it suddenly makes sense that the master would commend his manager for acting shrewdly. As a businessman, the rich man would admire the manager for using the money under his control to make some friends for himself.
My wife and I know the dangers, and we take them very seriously. We don’t expect our children to be saints, but there is one thing we demand of them: Honesty.
When it comes to drinking and driving, for example, they know that they can get a safe ride home from us if they call us and ask for a ride. If they are honest, there is no penalty and no punishment. But if they drink, drive, and lie to us — goodbye driving privileges.
In our house, honesty is more important than perfect behavior. But I also know that we live in a society where honesty is not always the best policy.
On the one hand, we admire George Washington for saying, “I cannot tell a lie.” And we look up to Abraham Lincoln, calling him “Honest Abe.” But on the other hand, we tell our children that there are instances in which we should not be honest.
We say, “Tell your grandmother you like the gift — even if you don’t.”
Or we make the comment, “That doesn’t look like a toupee at all!”
Or we say to young parents, “What an adorable baby!”
These lies are designed to please others, says Robert Feldman, a social psychologist who studies lying in everyday life. Experiments have found that ordinary people tell about two lies every ten minutes. Some people get in as many as 12 lies in the same amount of time.
But here’s the interesting part, according to The Washington Post (February 19, 2007): Liars tend to be more popular than honest people. Knowing when to say something, and when not to be completely blunt, is, in fact, a social skill. People say they want the truth, but do they really want to hear a list of everything about them that is really annoying?
I don’t think so.
All of which brings us to Luke 16 and the parable of the dishonest manager. Jesus tells us that there is a rich man who has a manager, and the manager is found to be squandering his master’s property. So the rich man fires the manager, and the manager panics, knowing that he is not strong enough to dig, and much too proud to beg (Luke 16:1-3).
So he comes up with a plan. He summons his master’s debtors, and gives them deep discounts on the amount they owe. A debt of a hundred jugs of olive oil becomes fifty, and a debt of one hundred containers of wheat becomes eighty.
The manager does this to please people, so that when he loses his job as manager he’ll have some friends that he can stay with (vv. 4-7). He would rather be popular than honest!
The story’s big surprise comes at the end, when the rich man commends the dishonest manager for his shrewdness (v. 8). This compliment strikes us as odd, because it seems strange that the master would be happy about losing money to his debtors.
But maybe the manager didn’t cheat his master very much at all. It could be that the manager was taking these discounts out of his own commissions, and was only giving the impression that he was stealing from his boss.
Scholars have discovered that it was a common practice of first-century lenders to write debt obligations in such a way that there was no differentiation between the principal and the interest. They may have done this to avoid revealing that they were charging high interest — there were no “truth in lending” regulations in those days. We all know that it can be a shock to see how much interest you are paying on a 30-year mortgage, or even a 4-year car loan.
If this is the case with the dishonest manager, then what he is removing from the bill is his own commission, plus some of the interest that would have accrued to the master.
So he is dishonest, yes — but not quite the cheat he first appears to be. The master gets his principal back, and the manager makes some friends that he can stay with when he is out of a job.
If this is the case, it suddenly makes sense that the master would commend his manager for acting shrewdly. As a businessman, the rich man would admire the manager for using the money under his control to make some friends for himself.
posted by Henry Brinton | 6:23 AM
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