Scripture
No one can say, “I am innocent; I have never done anything wrong.”
~Proverbs 20:9, NLT
Quote
We can’t fool God ever and we can’t fool others forever.
~Max Anders
In His book, What Jesus Said About Successful Living, Hadden Robinson tells the story of the man who married a woman who owed a cat. She loved her cat. The man did not share her affinity for the felines. His wife went out of town for the weekend and the man seized this opportunity. He caught the cat, put it in a bag with some rocks. He tied the top of the bag securely and dropped it over the Hudson Bridge. When she got home and found the cat missing, she was devastated but not without hope that the cat would return. To show his love, he said, “Look honey, I know how much the cat meant to you so I am going to put an ad in the paper and offer a $500 reward for anyone who finds your cat.” Needless to say, his sweet wife was impressed. A week went by and no cat came back or was found, so he said, “Honey, I know how much you loved this cat and I am upping the reward to $1,000.” A friend of this insincere husband saw the ad and said, “You must be nuts, there is no cat on the planet worth a thousand dollars.” The shrewd dude said, “When you know what I know, you can afford to be generous.”
There is a lot in proverbs about duplicity and insincerity. The man in the story above did not tell a lie but he shrewdly avoided telling the truth. It really doesn’t matter what we say, when we deceive others, we are guilty. The man professed to have his wife’s best interest at heart but in fact, he was looking out for his own interest. The man had a hidden agenda. Shrewd people have a way with words. A wealthy woman decided to have an autobiography written that included her family tree so she hired a professional writer. In his research, he discovered that her granddaddy had been electrocuted at Sing Sing for murder. So he simple glossed over the truth by presenting some of the facts in a different light. Here is what he wrote: “Her grandfather occupied the chair of applied electricity at one of American’s best known institutions. He was so attached to his position that he died there.” He didn’t lie but neither did he tell the truth. Any time we hide our true motives, we are guilty of duplicity and it is a sin. Why do people pretend to be sin free? Why do we pretend to have it all together when the bible declares the truth…no one is innocent. We are all sinners.
God wants us to be real and so do others. Intimacy with others is impossible when we practice deception. Duplicity is a worship stopper and a fellowship breaker.
June and I have tried to watch a little MARCH MADNESS but there are too many commercials and I can’t take it. We have resorted to checking the scores. It looks like six of the eight SEC schools will advance to the second round. Auburn did not have a good game but they still won. Arkansas and Missouri didn’t show up.