Marketplace Ponderings (8)

Telling the Truth (3)

There is a story of a new employee working in the executive office of a major department store in the UK. The phone rings, he answers it, and the caller wants to speak to the employee’s boss, the owner of the firm. When the employee informs the boss of the call the boss tells him to say that he is out of the office. When the employee returns to the phone he tells the caller that the owner is in and that he’ll transfer the call. The owner, seething with anger, takes the call and then comes out of his office to the employee’s desk and begins berating the new employee for not following instructions. The new employee looks at the owner and says, “Sir, if I will lie for you, I will lie to you.” This truthful employee will spend his entire career with the firm, becoming a top executive.

Unless our lives are grounded in the Truth it is unlikely that we will be able to resist the pressure to lie to clients, customers, supervisors, and fellow employees. Lying can become the pressure-release valve in difficult situations; we may lie so that we do not have to deal with unpleasant realities, and we rationalize our lying by thinking we can fix the problem so no one will know, or that we must lie to protect ourselves, or our company, or our client, or to get the customer off the phone or out of the store - our justifications can be endless. Sadly, the idea that “perception is reality” is often used to justify lying - this idea itself is a lie. Yes, perceptions are realities in the sense that they are ways of thinking and understanding and seeing things - but they are not Real Realities if those ways of seeing things and understanding and thinking do not correspond to verifiable facts. Perceptions can be delusional and in our world of virtual reality they often are mirages.

The problem is compounded because so much of life in the West is lived in relational isolation and so many “relationships” are electronic and so we “see” things in our minds that aren’t really there and the mantra that perception is reality feeds our lives of virtual reality. We often don’t stop to consider whether a statement is true, or whether our understanding of a situation is true - because the perception is what matters; if we can change the perception we think we can change the reality.

Against the above, the Christ-follower must love Jesus above all else and learn to meditate in the Word of God day and night. The Christian is called to live in visible community (not electronic community) and to live in deep relationships with other believers. While Christianity may have its philosophical elements, loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength remains the Great Commandment. Our Biblical philosophy may be correct, but it will be of no avail if our hearts are cold toward God. A husband who has a deficient understanding of marriage but who loves his wife with all of his heart is a husband for the long haul. If we love Jesus and are tempted to lie, pressured to lie, we need to consider Jesus who loves us with all He is - to the Cross - shall we push away the cup of our Beloved and drink the cup of His enemy? When we are tempted we are tempted on the stage of the cosmos, we are on display - shall we deny Jesus or hold fast to Him? Shall we recall the three Hebrews before Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace and declare that whether we come out alive or not, that we will only worship the True and Living God? For make no mistake about it - to lie is to take up the words of the enemy, of the one who has brought death and destruction and sorrow to humanity and creation - to lie is to bow the knee to the serpent. There is no need for a visible “666” if our hearts and minds are already stamped with the image of rebellious man worshipping the beast.

When we are honest with clients and customers the possibility of building a long-term trust-relationship is greater than if we lie to them. A relationship built on trust is more likely to work through difficulties, it is one in which there is a context for difficult conversations and decisions. If we tell the truth to a client we never have to remember just exactly what we said and how we said it because if what we said corresponded to the truth then we will know. (Yes, it is prudent to memorialize conversations and decisions in writing). The clients we want to do business with are those who either already value the truth, or who will come to value the truth based on our influence. There are clients who may never come to value the truth as Truth, but who will nevertheless trust those people who tell them the truth - whether they enjoy what they hear or not.

When God is our source of security, when we seek lives of contentment in Him, then we can say, “The LORD is my helper; I will not fear, what can man to do me?” (Hebrews 13:6 - note the context). When the Bible tells us over and over again that the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, it means among other things that when we fear God that we can learn to have no other fears and are able to learn wisdom from Him and live lives of truth and truth-telling. We need not fear men or women, no matter what their position, no matter what their temporal power may be - respect them yes, fear them no.

Telling the truth without fear, but with respect, and telling it unashamedly can transmit a particular grace and foster relationships in difficult situations. Daniel and Joseph both had key relationships with powerful rulers who were not, as far as we know, worshippers of the True and Living God; yet these rulers respected the wisdom and truth-telling of Joseph and Daniel (and consider that Daniel served under not only with his first firm, but also with the firm that did a hostile takeover!).

Of course there will be clients and customers who do not want to hear the truth; of course we can lose clients and customers; of course there can be negative consequences in telling the truth. On the other hand, we may have longer-term clients and customers if we treat them truthfully and equitably. Better to have a small shop with integrity than a huge shop built on lies and deception. Better to have holistically healthy organizations than organizations fraught with toxicity. And to be sure, if we model truth-telling to our own employees, and insist that they learn to think and speak truthfully and responsibly, we will have much healthier organizations, more innovative organizations...and we will have to wonder much less, if at all, whether our own people are telling us the truth.