Honesty

Quality of the month for February

Dictionaries show that the concept of honesty has a wide range of closely related meanings. It has both a rather narrow focus ("adherence to the facts: freedom from subterfuge or duplicity: truthfulness") as well as a more general one ("estimable character" and "fairness and straightforwardness of conduct: integrity").

The PCC Resources Work Team leans more in the first direction:

"The people who practice honesty honor the truth (thus they do not lie); they honor the commitments made to others (thus they do not cheat); and they honor the right of others to enjoy their property (thus they do not steal)."

When asked, What does it mean for you to be an honest person? one PCC member replied:

"It means driving back to Kroger when they give me 13 cents too much in change. It means guiding my kid to call the school counselor when he tells me copies of an upcoming test are floating around school."

Another said:

"For me to be an honest person means that I will not violate in private the commitments I have made in public."

A Worthington high school student affirms the importance of honesty for her own life:

"Honesty is an essential quality in my daily life. I do not cheat, lie, or steal. What I tell people is the truth. . . . Most importantly, I think that a friendship is something to cherish and honesty will make that relationship grow stronger. I stress honesty so much because this trait makes everything realistic, not false, and most of all, trustworthy."

The theme of honesty has been a recurring one in the writings of sages across the centuries. We do well to listen to them:

	Exodus:		"You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor."
	Juvenal:		"Honesty is praised and starved."
	Shakespeare (in All's Well That Ends Well):		"No legacy is so rich as honesty."
	Alexander Pope:		"An honest man's the noblest work of God."
	Martin Luther:		"If all who are thieves, though they are unwilling to admit it, were hanged on the gallows, the world would soon be empty, and there would be a shortage of both hangmen and gallows. . . . A person steals not only when he robs a man's strongbox or his pocket, but also when he takes advantage of his neighbor at the market, in a grocery shop, butcher stall, wine- and beer-cellar, work shop, and in short, wherever business is transacted and money is exchanged for goods or labor."
	George Washington:		"I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy."
	Thomas Jefferson:		"He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. The falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time, depraves all its good dispositions."
	Thomas H. Huxley:		"The foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying."
	George Bernard Shaw:		"I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy."

What does it mean for you to be an honest person? What does it mean for your family to be an honest family? Your institution an honest one? Your community?