Life in White Water
by Gordon MacDonald
But you desire honesty from the heart, so you can teach me to be wise in my inmost being. (Psalm 51:6 NLT)Let's talk about laws -- at least a few of them. Take a regard for truthfulness, for example. Respect for truth is something that should be established at the very beginning of childhood. It was an issue that God said was important when he first confronted Israel with his plan of righteous living.
My youth was marked by the emphasis that my father placed upon telling the truth -- whatever the consequences. In my earliest childhood, he made it plain that lying would be met with the severest of punishments. Truthfulness, on the other hand, would be enthusiastically affirmed. I soon found out that he meant what he said. It was better, I learned, to own up to bad behavior than to attempt to cover it up -- Watergate style. He had a way of finding things out, and improper behavior compounded by lying was the ultimate in family crime at our house. If such an occasion arose, he threw the book at me. I'm glad he did.
My father did see this thing both ways, and he was equally diligent about accepting, affirming, and rewarding me when he knew that I had faced the truth, even when it was painful.
By the age of five or six, truth telling had become an automatic thing. I remember the day when the observance of this basic rule of family conduct really paid off. Someone had set the underbrush on fire in an empty lot near our home. Before long, the firemen arrived with their hoses and went to work. Right behind them were the police with their questions. Someone pointed the finger of suspicion at me since it was apparently known that I had been seen that day with matches in my hands. It didn't take long for the policeman to become quite sure I was guilty.
I remember my father taking me aside and saying, "I'm just going to ask the question once: did you have anything to do with the start of the fire?" My negative answer was all that he needed. He never asked a follow-up question. He never demanded any kind of proof. He never had to. My word was sufficient. He informed the police that I was not guilty, and they resumed their investigation. Later in the day, another boy confessed to the arson, and I learned the inestimable value of establishing my credibility.
I would like to suggest that my father was a foresightful man. He had known that there would come times when truth telling would be absolutely essential. In order to avoid impulsive reaction when a crisis arose, he had ground into me a regard for truth and the habit of facing it, no matter what the result. When the moment came in which truth was all important, he could trust my word. That was my dad's day when foresight paid off. Mine too!
Posted: 02/01/2003
URL: http://www.heartlight.org/articles/200302/20030201_life.htmlExcerpted with permission from The Heart of a Father, a compilation of great stories about fathers, edited by Wayne Holmes.
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