Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Friday April 25, 2008

The other day Jerry Nash sent an email note to me with the following statement by Madison Sarratt in it:

"Today I am going to give you two examinations, one in trigonometry and one in honesty. I hope you will pass them both, but if you must fail one, let it be trigonometry."

Trig is a neat tool for numerous things in life. In the old days when I started flying the use of trig was part of the training and you did have to know how to use it, at least the part that was important for flying from place to place called Spherical Trigonometry. Most of the modern tech equipment on small and large planes, even the space shuttles, is based on trig with instruments that do the trig for you. Talk about answered prayer.

I know of no one who has a working knowledge of trig, but doesn't use it that is of any less value as writer, farmer, or public speaker. I have heard some sermons where the preacher failed to use trig to find the cutoff point.

I speak in jails and prisons often and I know of no one in prison, even death row due to a lack of knowledge concerning trig. In all these no one has told me through a slot in a cell door on the max wing, "Hey man, you know why I'm here?" When I answered, "No, I do not," the prisoner responded, "I failed trig." I mean you're on death row because you failed trig?

I know of no one in jail, prison or probation who did NOT fail the honesty test, by some degree. Even the smallest degree of dishonesty can lead to a set of dominos falling one after the other and your life is on the rocks.

When you muse on the subject, dishonesty rises to the top of the musing cream as somewhere near the top of the pile in blights on civilization and is at the top of failed marriages and broken families, to say nothing of devastating church divisions. I spoke with a woman about the current election facing our country and as she rattled on and on, I asked the honesty question, "On a scale of one to ten, how do you rate the candidates on the honesty scale?" She is a woman of rare insight, though she seldom uses her gift, and after a moment she replied, "You know we are really in trouble aren't we?"

All of us take some comfort in the knowledge that we personally know several people who are not AS honest as we are. There is that gremlin, the degree of honesty. We all seem to settle for our degree of honesty as the standard and therefore the acceptable level of honesty in a civilized society. Yet, when we pause and think about our relationship with Christ, we know in our deepest being that we need some work, for we are plainly told we must not measure ourselves by ourselves, but by a perfect benchmark, the Lord and His Word, the Bible. I am either honest or I am dishonest, with only degrees of dishonesty separating the most honest of us from the most dishonest.

Please take this in the spirit it is offered. Compared to me, you are probably in much better shape on the honesty scale. Compared to Christ, you need some work and a lot of it. Honestly.

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2008 Use with credit.

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