Alone among God’s creatures, it seems, we are obsessed with whether things are true, and we want truth. We despise liars. We fire journalists who make up stories and scientists who falsify data. We reject historians who don’t do their research. And in our personal lives, nothing is a more sure-fire relationship-killer than dishonesty. Now, I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right. We don’t live up to all this. I said that we value honesty; I didn’t say we were good at it. We all give a pass to liars who say things that we agree with, we all eagerly accept things that we want to believe without bothering to examine them too closely. But even as we do these things ourselves, we get outraged when we see others doing them. Dishonesty and hypocrisy infuriates us, at least in other people. So it seems that, despite our own hypocrisy, we are hard-wired to want truth. We establish all our most important institutions, from marriage to government to justice, on keeping our word: promises, vows, contracts, and pledges. We don’t just want truth, we need it. Without it, all we value in society becomes meaningless.
Sermon Notes