Is Honesty the Best Policy?

When in doubt tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends.”

Mark Twain

God is love, but God is also absolute truth. That means that God has to be either black or white. God cannot be grey — He just is what is. We don’t have a manual on what is right or wrong, or do we? We do have a Bible that all the religions in the world have tried to interpret. Rabbis continue their debate among themselves on all the grey details, but will we EVER come to a place of unity about it all? Or will we just end up agreeing to disagree? There are many things about who we need to be that is not so clearly defined, so what are we supposed to do now?

Both Judaism and Christianity can agree with the golden rule, love God and love your neighbour as yourself:

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Mark 12:30-31

When Jesus said that he was quoting the Jewish bible in Deuteronomy 6:4-9:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Love God? How do we do that??

We know that God is good and we know that God made humankind. That means, within each and every one of us is a piece of God. Currently, we are a mixture of all the good and bad that we have defined in our self. United we are grey since we all have our own religion or specific beliefs even if we all belong to the same religion. We all have developed our own unique perspectives and opinions on what is right or wrong. We are like computers that are constantly absorbing data as we go about our day. No matter what we are doing we are processing information and compartmentalizing what is good and what is bad to what we are perceiving to be good or bad. We are constantly making judgments and choices whether we are even consciously aware that we are — That is just what we do.

We are intelligent beings that all have a unique physical look as well as a unique spiritual look. We are all are uniquely defined by all our individual journeys that have made us who we are.

Each of us are a piece of the puzzle that reveals the bigger picture of who God is.

All we have to do is search deep within ourselves to a place of integrity to make a choice that represents our best, honest position in how we are understanding things with God in that moment. In love and respect to others we need to express ourselves from this place to eventually understand the more difficult questions about life that we have a hard time understanding as a whole.

Love God First

If we love God first, that means being completely honest with ourselves as we honestly understand Him to be. Knowing that God is a good God we can believe in His truths that are who we need to strive to be. We need to recognize what is God in ourselves and what is our ego and separate the two to reveal the qualities of God. God wants to reveal the true you when you deny your ego to interfere with what is the truth about yourself. By refusing to allow your ego to train you to be anything that does not line up with God’s truth is the way to truly understand who you are.

We are all good at heart since goodness created us. Sometimes, life has us in the grey about what is the right path to take or what is the right decision to make, but if we operate from a place of integrity, each decision we make will be our best choice.

God will never give you more than you can handle, so if you are challenged by something, you can be sure that the challenge came from God. God never gives you challenges that you can not handle even if you think you can’t. God knows the strength that you have even if you don’t believe in that strength yourself; otherwise, he wouldn’t give you those circumstances.

Believe in God to believe in yourself.

Love Your Neighbour Second

When we know our place of integrity then now we just need to be honest with others because honesty is God. God is always truth.

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

Jeremiah 31:33

More Bible versus on honesty