Honesty Pays!
A customer who ate at Randy’s Southside Diner in Grand Junction unluckily left $3,000 in a bank envelope at his booth. Fortunately, his busboy was Johnny Duckworth. Johnny gave it to his boss, who through the ATM bank slip in the envelope was able to track down the rightful owner. That unnamed person gave Johnny a $300 tip, but strangers started a “gofundme” page for the struggling Duckworth and have raised nearly $4000 for the young man. In an interview, he said he did not for a moment consider keeping the money, adding, “I work for a living.”
You’ve not likely had honesty pay so well for you. At least not financially. But, as the proverbial adage goes, “honesty does pay.” How?
- In reputation. Honestly builds businesses, friendships, leadership, and the like, when people have implicit confidence in your word (cf. Proverbs 14:25).
- In relationships. People trust you and are closer to you when you are honest with them. The opposite is true, too, that people keep their emotional distance from you if you are dishonest (Ephesians 4:25).
- In righteousness. Your character is built through dedication to unconditional truthfulness (Proverbs 12:17).
- In reliability. Who will people come to, lean on, and go to? The honest. They know where they stand with such a one (Proverbs 12:19).
- In respect. While you may fear hurting feelings and alienating others through courageous honesty, you gain the admiration of most through transparency and scrupulous speech and behavior (1 Kings 22:13-14).
Sadly, doing the right thing was once routine, but now it merits newsworthiness. May the tribe of Johnny Duckworths increase. When we as Christians are renowned for our kind honesty, we will draw a world in search of goodness and trustworthiness to the One who “cannot lie” (Titus 1:2).
Wall Street Ethics
Byron Sherwin, in his book WHY BE GOOD, sarcastically recalls, "Once I was browsing in a bookstore when I saw a huge volume with an intriguing title: WALL STREET ETHICS. I opened it eagerly only to find that each of its hundreds of pages was blank."
When we read this at IE, we were skeptical. So we did a little research and it turned out the book is real. It's entitled THE COMPLETE BOOK OF WALL STREET ETHICS by Jay L. Walker and was published by William Morrow & Co., April 1987.
Writes one reviewer, "If you are not familiar with this book, it is a joke, and a pretty good one. The pages are all blank. … Today, after so many new Wall Street scandals, it probably needs to be updated with a new edition with more blank pages."
How would a book that recorded all of the things that you have done to earn your place in heaven read? The only possible answer is that its pages would all be blank. Not only that, but no matter how hard you tried, all of the updated editions would only add more blank pages. That's because nothing that we do with the motive of self-justification will ever be acceptable to God. Rather, earning the prize of heaven requires a righteousness that is perfect, not only in every action, but in every motive behind every action. It requires the righteousness of Christ.
"As the Scriptures say, "No one is righteous--not even one" (Romans 3:10, NLT).
Even Small Acts Of Honesty Can Be Huge
Back in 1997 a Brinks armored truck was involved in a crash. It ended up dumping hundreds of thousands of dollars onto a street in Miami, Florida. Witnesses and spectators rushed to the scene — not to help, but to steal! Onlookers, grabbing fists of cash from the street, sidewalk, and gutters, ran from the area, never to be seen again. Others simply found cash and coin after the fact, not knowing when or how the money was deposited there. Police, in desperation, put out an offer of amnesty for any who would return their take of the dumped payload.
Only two people steppef forward:
MIAMI (CNN) -- A mother of six and a school boy are the only ones to have returned money they found in the street after an armored truck overturned in a Miami neighborhood Wednesday.
Only Faye McFadden, who returned $19.53, and 11-year-old Herbert Tarvin, who gave back 85 cents, took advantage of a police offer of amnesty for anyone returning money by last weekend.
Little Herbert said that he had to "do the right thing and turn the money in becuase it doesn't belong to me."
Eighty-five cents. Eighty-five cents out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Doesn't sound like much, does it? And yet it might as well have been millions. Herbert didn't "steal" the change he recovered from the street; he simply found it there. But his heart was to do the right thing.
Sometimes "the right thing" comes in small acts of obedience. It's in the daily, small gestures of honesty and obedience that character is forged.
“One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much" (Luke 16:10, ESV).
"His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master'" (Matthew 25:23, ESV).
"You shall not steal," (Exodus 20:15, NIV).