Glimpses of Truth

Honest Hypocrisy – Part III . . .

“It’s all right as long as you’re honest about it.”  This idea about this kind of honesty has simply become an easy escape from our responsibilities before a Holy and Righteous God.

What or who is responsible for our seeming lack of accountability?  Why must we excuse ourselves from accepting the standards of God and thus failing to stand broken before Him?  Why do we continue to reject that which brings happiness and peace to all of us?

Remember 1979, a large impatient crowd jammed the west gate of Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium.  The rowdy, drugged youth waited eagerly to grab good seats for that night’s rock concert.

When the gate finally opened, the crowd surged so fiercely that many were trampled.  After the press through the doors slackened, police discovered 11 dead and 8 injured.

Later, a Time magazine reporter objected to those who blamed the audience.  More thoughtful commentators, he said, pointed to the ticket system.  There were not enough entrances and too few reserved seats, security was understaffed, etc.

The fact that a group of young people thought it necessary to trample 11 human beings to death didn’t seem an issue.  Moral responsibility dissolved before the inadequacies of the ticket system.

During the reign of King Josiah, moral anarchy flourished.  Judah had drifted a long way from God’s covenant.  When the Book of the Law was rediscovered and read to the king, he responded with remarkable openness.

Realizing how far he and his people had fallen from God’s ideal, Josiah tore his robes, wept and “humbled himself before the Lord.”

He didn’t blame the ticket system.  He didn’t make excuses like, “Look at my morally deprived environment.  I can’t help the way I am.  This covenant is all new to me.”  Josiah accepted the law’s legitimate claims and immediately began to reform Judah.

When we have done wrong before God, go ahead, admit it.  Get alone with God.  Be really honest.  “Who can say, ‘I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin’?”  Proverbs 20:9.  “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves”  I John 1:8.

Paul understood how easily men fool themselves when “hardened by sin’s deceitfulness”  Hebrews 3:13.  Peter warned against the “sinful desires, which war against your soul” I Peter 2:11.

Without such instruction, we subject ourselves to all kinds of deception.  You know, we could all profit from a more honest dependence on the “wisdom that comes from above.”  That’s Real Honesty!