2020 Maryland Men of Faith Conference: True and Honest

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Maryland Men of Faith

Shane Anderson

Freedom in Honesty and Truth

This media has been presented to you by the Maryland Men of Faith, where men are challenged and encouraged to form the character of Christ.

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It happened when I was 12 years old, but I can remember it like it was yesterday.

I was on my grandparents' farm and I was staying at my grandparents' house there, as I often did during the summer times when I would come and help to bale hay and paint fences and chase cows and all the other kinds of things that a guy does on a farm.

Well, this particular day, there wasn't much for a 12 year old to do.

The larger farm hands, they were off doing their thing, but I was kind of left at the house mowing a little grass here and there, not much to do.

But fortunately, my cousin Bruce was also without much to do, and Bruce had just received as a gift a brand new BB gun.

Now, my folks never let me have any guns of any kind and so this was kind of a novelty for me and he said, hey, let's go out and shoot my new BB gun.

We went out in front of my grandmother's house and began to find things to shoot at.

At first a fence post here and maybe then a something that had fallen to the ground, a piece of wood or something like that.

Now isn't that what you're supposed to do when you have a gun?

You're supposed to find cans, put them on posts and see if you can shoot them off.

Well, Bruce had just found a big number 10 can, 1 of those big things, and he had set it on a fence post and we backed up, oh, probably, I don't know, 30, maybe 35 feet, and began to shoot.

Sure enough, it wasn't too difficult to hit.

And I said to Bruce, you know, what if we put something smaller on top of that number 10 can?

So he went over to 1 of the sheds that were near my grandparents' house there to try to find something.

And a novel thought entered my head, sheer genius.

I thought to myself, I wonder, as I looked back towards grandma's living room windows, I said I wonder what would happen if I aimed the gun at that window and pulled the trigger.

Fascinating, who knows, it'd be great things undoubtedly would come from this move, right?

And so while Bruce was still away looking for something smaller to hit, I turned around and I aimed the gun And I pulled the trigger.

And for an instant, I thought, well, nothing much is going to happen because the window didn't shatter.

As it turned out, it just put a little hole in it and kind of this concave thing popped out on the other side.

But what I had failed to reckon on is that both my grandmother and grandfather were sitting in the living room.

Grandpa always came in from the fields for a brief lunch, maybe a brief nap, maybe read something in his chair just briefly before he headed back to the fields.

They were both in the living room and they levitated out of their chairs.

And they rushed outside the steps, came down the walk to where I was standing there holding the BB gun and they said, what happened?

And in that brief moment I had a decision to make.

Could I tell the truth and pay the consequences or could I lie and just maybe, maybe avoid any sort of punishment.

I chose the second option and I looked at the can that we had been shooting at, which was directly opposite of grandma's window, again about 35 feet away, and behind me was grandma's living room window which is probably a little further away than these windows here where maybe another 30 feet or so it's about a 60 foot gap here and I said oh I'm so sorry grandma and grandpa I shot at the can and it must have hit the can and ricocheted back and broke the window.

Grandma and grandpa did probably what you just did.

They kind of looked at each other and weren't quite sure what exactly to do and they said, are you sure that's what happened?

I said, yeah, I aimed towards that can and I can hit it, I'm pretty good, but it must have ricocheted off of that and bounced back and put the hole in the wire.

Grandma and grandpa were gracious at that moment.

Maybe grandpa figured he had to get back to the field, didn't have time to worry about this.

And he went back inside without saying a word and Grandma said something about, well, be careful then, and she went back inside too.

You know, we can kind of chuckle and say, well, that's a 12-year-old boy, right?

That's a 12-year-old boy doing what 12-year-old boys do, right?

But if we're honest, the fact of the matter is that grown men in many walks of life choose to be dishonest as well.

For instance, dishonesty in politics is not a new thing.

In fact, it's probably been around for as long as there's been politics, but there have been some watershed moments that moved dishonesty into the mainstream, whether we wanted it to or not.

For instance, how many of you can remember the phrase, I am not a crook.

That of course was President Richard Nixon back in the 1970s with the Watergate scandal.

He said, nope, that's not me, I'm not a crook.

And of course he was not telling the truth.

Later on he would have almost certainly been prosecuted had he not been pardoned by his then Vice President, Gerald Ford, but it marked a turning point in which the American consciousness now, whether we wish to or not, took in dishonesty as a normal thing.

And dishonesty these days is so rampant that regardless of your political affiliation, it can be challenging to tell when someone who is in politics is telling the truth or not.

But before we get too smug, Let's be honest and point out that dishonesty is not only found in politics.

I'm not going to name names, but if you've been watching the news recently, you know that on the national level another church leader recently fell from grace.

They were dishonest with their spouse, with their coworkers, with their institution, and the result was once again, a diminishing in the eyes of the nation, Christianity and the Christian church.

And if we're honest, and we should be, it's not just at the national level that these things happen, even though they're the ones that grab the headlines.

The fact of the matter is, is that even in the local Christian church, we can find a lack of transparency and downright dishonesty amongst local church leaders.

And that should make us scratch our heads at least a little.

The Bible says not many of you should presume to be teachers because those who teach will be judged more strictly.

In other words, there is a higher standard to which local church leaders are called, which all church leaders are called to.

It's not that we expect behavioral perfection from them.

But nonetheless, they are called to be examples in some sense, genuinely a step above what we would normally expect in other situations.

So why would we find dishonesty amongst church leaders?

Well, I suppose God is the only 1 that knows all of the reasons.

I think probably 1 of the most common reasons that I have found is simply this.

The reason that we find so many church leaders that are dishonest in the church is because so many church leaders are dishonest in their own homes, in their own personal lives.

In other words, what we see when it comes to dishonesty in the church or in other places begins at home.

Now, I don't know all of the reasons that men choose to be dishonest in their personal relationships with their families or spouse or co-workers.

It's probably a multitude of reasons, but certainly 3 come to mind.

First of all, some men are simply carnal.

They do not have a relationship with the Lord, they don't care to, and so dishonesty is just part of the expression of their sinful, unredeemed selves.

Secondly, I think there are some men who believe that if they are dishonest, it will help keep the peace.

For instance, minor example, your wife says to you if you're married, honey tell me, does this dress make me look fat?

Now At that moment, some men believe that dishonesty is the best course, because it will keep the peace.

You take that minor example of, does this dress make me look fat, and expand it maybe into much broader issues.

A lot of men say, well, if I'm going to keep peace in my home, I'm going to have to fudge a little bit, just have to tell a few lies.

Nothing big, but just enough to keep the peace.

And thirdly, and I think probably most commonly, men don't tell the truth because they're afraid of what will happen if they do.

Maybe they're afraid to admit to themselves the kind of person that they've become.

Maybe they're afraid to admit to their spouse the things that they have been doing.

Maybe they're afraid to admit to their boss what's actually been going on for fear of being fired and other repercussions.

Fear drives many a man to not tell the truth.

And yet, Jesus Christ himself said, John chapter 8, verse 32, which is kind of our theme, I think, for this particular Maryland Men of Faith.

Jesus said this, You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

In other words, when we live in dishonesty, when we do not live in the truth, we are, in a very real sense, not free.

Maybe it's as simple as, well, you gotta remember the last lie you told so that when you speak to that person again, you have to keep up the same lie, right?

Maybe it's just the deep fearfulness that has been with us ever since the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve ate the fruit.

We fear the truth and so we stay away from it and we are therefore in prison.

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Freedom in Honesty and Truth

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