Be Honest and Fair
Deuteronomy: 16:18-20; 19:14-20; 25:13-16
“Daddy, that’s not fair.”
“Professor, that’s not fair.”
“Honey, that’s not fair.”
When my children were small, my wife took every opportunity to teach fairness. When there was a candy bar to share, one child would get to divide it, but the other one got first choice of the two halves. You can bet that the candy bar was carefully divided.
Our struggle with fairness is illustrated by one of my favorite stories. A reporter was investigating rumors of widespread cheating at a nearby college. Cheating was reported to be rampant except in one professor’s classes. When the reporter inquired about this situation, the students said, “It would not be fair to cheat in her class. She’s blind.”
Fairness is an elusive concept to capture. From the beginning of our existence, men have been concerned with issues of fairness and justice. The Hebrew children are no exception. Cries of unfairness led to God telling them to select judges from each tribe. The judges would determine the right course of action in any dispute. The judges and witnesses were warned against taking bribes. Bribes cloud fair judgment. Two or more witnesses were required to validate a charge. Truthful testimony was the requirement. If a witness gave false testimony, he would receive the punishment that the accused should have received. Property boundaries were to be honored and weights were to be true.
Christians are to be truthful and fair in their dealings. They are not to engage in “truthiness,” a word coined by comedian Stephen Colbert in 2005 to describe what we wish were true instead of what we know to be true.
The 2006 Merriam-Webster Word of the Year is not the biblical standard no matter how badly we wish it were. Judges are to uphold the highest standards, never showing partiality.
Trust is a major issue in the workplace. Survey after survey reveals that employees value supervisors or managers that they can trust. Rotary International has fairness as part of its Four Way Test: “Is it fair to all concerned?”
Our national history can be described as a continuous search for justice from the time our forebears came to these shores to escape oppression down to the current struggles over immigration. All of us want to be treated fairly. It is imbedded in our national Pledge of Allegiance: “With liberty and justice for all.” The advent of terrorism within our borders has presented us with new challenges to our ideals of fairness and justice. Recent events have caused many to abandon those ideals for the illusion of security. The Bible permits no wavering. The biblical standard is justice, only justice.
Carnell– Lessons in the ETB series for the winter quarter are being written by Mitch Carnell, member of First Baptist Church, Charleston.