Hope on the Street

Talk from Hope Café, Leighton Buzzard 19 July

‘ Why Bother with Honesty?

 

‘Honesty pays but it don’t seem to pay enough to suit some people” (Frank McKinney)

 

Words, so easy to use in a way that they lose value:

“I’ll start my diet tomorrow”

“One size fits all”

“Your call is important to us”

“My age is….”

 

How many of us have had one of those calls that start, ‘I’m not selling anything’. Lies seem to be part and parcel of our society.

 

The film ‘Liar Liar’ really highlights how lies eat away at relationships. Max, a little boy is let down time and time again by his bad father, so he makes a wish at his birthday party that his dad will not be able to tell a lie for a whole day. Fletcher, the father, is a lawyer and his life falls apart as he becomes incapable of lying. He loses a court case, offends work colleagues, makes his secretary quit and his mother will never speak to him again. This film shows how corrosive lies are and unfortunately our society has a love affair with the them- the business man who thrives on creativity on his expensive sheet, the popular newspapers thrive on dishing out the grimiest dirt and biggest rumours, the white lies of infidelity celebrated on TV soaps time and time again.

 

Some years ago when working in sales with BT one of my customers was called Talk is Cheap. They lived up to their name as time and time again they unashamedly said to me face to face that they could afford to pay for expensive telephone systems, mobiles etc, eventually leaving hundreds of thousands of debt. Their drive was to make personal gain and they thought lies would further that aim.

 

Lying can also become a way of hiding how we really think. I remember one company I worked for insisted that we had a monthly call with the director. Sometimes there were up to 10 people on this call. The director was very pompus and quite rude at times and wanted reports on our successes, but things were not going well for many of us. A lot of truth stretching was going on. On one call in the middle of a particulary patronising comment by the director, we all heard a strange sound- someone was blowing raspberries! The weird thing was noone said anything and the director kept speaking, with muffled giggles in the background. My team was made redundant a few months later, I’m sure there was no connection!

 

What is the cost of dishonesty ? Financially, massive companies fail(e.g.Worldcom, Enron), markets are distorted and even stagger near collapse, Insurance increases because of bogus claims. The concept of an absolute truth and standard to live by is slowly disappearing. The philosophy popular is that there is no truth- every individual lives their own truth and there are no absolutes. This is contradicted by science, medicine, engineering which are based and operates on the basis that there is one truth to be discovered.

The erosion of honesty affects relationships, family, friends and work.

 

So how can we choose to live a lie free life if we want when the culture is against us?

 

In the book ‘10’ by J. John is the suggestion that we should speak the truth but only when it is spoken in love. A good test of this is to ask ourselves the following questions:

T- is it true?

H- will it help?

I- is it inspiring

N- is it necessary?

K- is it kind

 

So easy to build life on lies and Jesus has something to say about this, he says ‘ I am the way, the truth and the life’. We can choose Jesus as our benchmark and the example of how to live honestly and to no longer live to please the world.

 

A tribute to a man I got to know on the Leighton Buzzard market. Here was a man with a terrible degenerative disease but with amazing courage and determination to give hope to others. I meet a lot of people at the weekly community stall that I run on Tuesdays in Leighton Buzzard. I would not describe many of them as inspirational; but Ed was.  I have known Ed for sometime as a regular visitor to the stall. Our stall is run by a group of Christians and is a community ‘swop shop’ where people can exchange books. games, children’s clothes/toys etc; we also offer prayer and other support. Ed was an enthusiastic visitor to the stall, browsing around the stock, looking for games and puzzles and bringing along the following week his stuff to donate to others. For a long time I thought Ed was just shy, as he said nothing, then he wrote some notes explaining his illness. So sad. But here I could see was a man not defeated, a man with great resolve and purpose- always moving on to his next task- taking each day at a time.

I was particularly inspired to see how Ed was determined to give hope to others with Motor Neurone Disease (MND). Ed wrote me a note explaining how he was involved in a research programme for MND. Over the three years since he had been diagnosed with the disease, Ed had been to see Dr Martin Turner, consultant neurologist at Oxford University. Every 6 months Ed had an MRI brain scan and an intrusive procedure to extract spinal fluid. He was part of a large group study to improve diagnosis of MND and to understand the disease more. Ed took part in this study because he wanted to give hope to others, that they might benefit somehow from what he was going through. Another person might have given up or become inward looking, but not Ed. He was determined to get something out of this terrible trial, even donating his body to science at the end.

So what can we learn from Ed’s life? One quote that seems apt is from Martin Luther King, “ If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that keeps you going in spite of it all”. Ed certainly never lost hope and had so much courage. Ed not only gave hope to others fighting this dreadful disease but to all of us- a challenge to each of us to live life with courage the best we can and not to lose hope. To live each day at a time like Ed. So often we can become fearful, inward looking, we can hold grudges against others and give up on them- and ourselves. These attitudes stop us enjoying and living life to the full. Here is the invitation:- live life as best we can. When the crises of life come as undoubtedly they will, feeling fear is normal but I like a quote I came across from John Wayne, “ Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway”.

 

Ed saddled up and it was a privilege to have known him.