A New Kind of Honesty - Part I

Recently God has been teaching me a lot about honesty, openness, and truth. Then this morning, this is the chapter from a book I read (from "The Relationship Principles of Jesus")....

Groucho Marx once said, “The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” That’s funny because it reveals our universal struggle with honesty. Most of us value honesty; we want honesty to be a part of our lives and relationships. Yet when it comes right down to it, we often find it easier to be dishonest. Whether a “little white lie” or a blatantly selfish deceit, we cave in to dishonesty because we’d rather not give the conversational time and energy it would take to be honest. Suppose you’re having a problem with a friend at work. He or she walks by your desk and says, “How are you doing today?” At that moment you have a choice. You can say, “Fine,” and the conversation is over. No time, no energy, no potential misunderstanding or blowup. Or you could choose to be honest: “Actually, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about. Do you have a few minutes at lunch?”

Here are a few of the honesty questions all of us must face: How many times last week did I give the “fine” answer? How many times did it just seem easier to not be honest? How many times did staying silent leave a relationship where it was when a moment of honesty could have deepened the relationship?

As I read through each conversation of Jesus and asked myself what I could learn about communication, the most striking lesson for me came in these two words: Be honest. Jesus’ conversations have a different kind of honesty than most of us ever practice or experience. Because Jesus wasn’t constrained by others’ opinions of him and his love wasn’t strained by selfishness, Jesus is refreshingly, strikingly, wonderfully honest.

Because he is honest, Jesus’ words are often surprising. He commends an enemy of his people for his “great faith” (Matthew 8:8-10), and he rebukes his own disciple Peter for his “little faith” (Matthew 14:28-31). He calls the Pharisees hypocrites and snakes (Matthew 23:29, 33), and then he prays, “Father, forgive them” (Luke 23:34). He rebuked his friends sternly, yet he taught them compassionately and loved them sacrificially.

Based on Matthew 16:21-23 “Jesus and his followers are warming themselves by a fire and talking about the future. The conversation is not going as the disciples had hoped. In the back of each of their minds, there have been growing thoughts of glory. As they’ve watched the miracles of Jesus and listened to his words, these men have become more and more convinced that he is the leader their nation has been waiting for. Jesus is headed for national glory, and they are going with him. He is the king they’ve been looking for, and they will rule with him. But Jesus isn’t talking about ruling; he is talking about suffering, about dying. And every one of those men felt deeply uncomfortable with what Jesus was saying. It didn’t fit their image of what should happen – it just felt wrong. Peter is the one who finally said it. Someone needed to set Jesus straight, and Peter was just the one to do it! So he called Jesus off to the side. “Never, Lord,” Peter said in a passionate whisper, just loud enough for the others to hear. “All this talk of dying – it’s just not going to happen to you.” Jesus turned to look Peter straight in the eye. In the brief pause before he spoke, it was obvious this was a supremely dramatic moment. Jesus uttered these unforgettably honest words: “Get behind me, Satan?! You are a stumbling block to me. You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”