Scripture: Paul said, “For in him we live and
move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, “We are his
offspring.” Acts 17:28, NIV
Sometimes partial or inaccurate
information can be worse than no information at all. A report of a
news story with the names of those involved mixed up, or the events distorted,
may not only confuse people, but also bring long-term agony to the subjects
of the report.
We’ve all seen or read them - maybe! “Corrections”
notices buried deep within the newspaper that most people miss. Perhaps
it was the reporter’s error for not getting all the information. It may
have been one of the subjects interviewed for the story who gave misleading
information; after all, people generally want to give a good impression
of themselves, and many have been known to ‘stretch’ the truth a little
- in their favor, of course.
Perhaps you have watched one of those advertisements
for some tool or “wonder” gadget. “It slices, it dices . . .” - you know
the type. The marvelous device is not only described in glowing terms, but
demonstrated right before your eyes! “Got to have one of those,” people say.
The real wonder is why you bought the
wonder gadget in the first place!
Incomplete information. Mis-representation. Just
sloppy reporting. All can have a detrimental effect on the person looking
for “the facts, sir, just the plain facts.”
We expect the truth in a court of law. If you’ve ever
sat on a jury, especially a domestic relations case, you know one side isn’t
telling all the truth. “The whole truth” is sometimes missing.
It is said that figures don’t lie, but liars can figure!
Now, we wouldn’t deliberately mislead people would we? Of course not. After
all, we are Christians, and we know that Christ didn't lie. Hmmm!?!
We trust that statistics illustrate
the truth, yet President Harry Truman said that statistics is one of the
most outrageous forms of lying.
When a hen cackles, does it mean she is laying an egg,
or is she lying? We have had a rooster who cackled just like a hen. While
he might have been proud of his ‘ladies,’ it wasn’t his egg. He told a good
story, but he was lying!
So when a Christian ‘cackles,’ are they lying or laying?
Are we truthfully making known The One whom we are representing? People
eventually ‘read’ all of our life, not just the events we include, and
not just the way we wish they would read it. We can describe our Christliness
in glowing terms, we can point to Christ as the Lord of All, but unless people
can read our story fully and openly without causing either of us to blush,
we have sadly missed the mark!
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