“When in doubt, tell the truth.” -Mark Twain

(Guest Writer - Katie Corbett, VA) As a teacher, I have students who either lie about me or lie to me on a daily basis. I suppose it just comes along with the job. I have one student in particular who will lie to me almost weekly. I’ll call him “Dan.” It is not that Dan is being malicious or anything like that; I think that he finds it much easier to lie. He will lie about silly things, like his pencil being broken or what he did when he went home the night before that prevented him from doing his homework. If he would just tell the truth he would be totally fine, but Dan has to lie and in the end winds up with a detention and a phone call home because he felt he could not or simply did not tell the truth.

But why should we expect our children to exhibit patters of honest when celebrities and politicians are on TV all the time telling lies. Take Barry Bonds, for instance. In 2003, Bonds was questioned about using steroids. Bonds was not on trial and was not going to necessarily be in trouble if he told the truth, but, in order to avoid embarrassment, he denied under oath that he ever used steroids. On November 15, 2007, Bonds was indicted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice and could face up to 30 years in prison. So why, when he had so little to gain and so much to lose, did Bonds find it so hard to simply tell the truth?

As with my student Dan, the truth always seems to come out and trouble is almost around the corner from a lie. So why do we find telling the truth so difficult? Is it because we are afraid to face the truth or because we want to appear to be more interesting or more important that we really? Thomas Jefferson said, “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.” Often times when we tell a lie it snow balls into another lie, which becomes another lie, which leads to another lie. It reminds me of what someone once said: “it is easier to tell the truth, because then you never have to remember what you said.”

Imagine if we lived lives full of complete honesty and truth. James 5:12 says, “ But above all my brethren, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath. But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’ and your ‘No’ be “No.’…” God is basically asking us to live an incarnational life of honesty and integrity. Not only will you be more at peace, but as your conscience gets clearer, your relationships get deeper.

You see, If we mimic Christ in what we do and how we live and where we go and what we say, then phrases like, “I promise” or “I swear” become unnecessary. Our friends and our families will always know we are telling the truth to them. I don’t know about you, but that thought makes me feel very good.

Do you know someone who struggles to tell the truth?

How does this affect your friendship?

Got any good stories?

What Would Jesus Wear?

This week, I ended up in the dreaded Sahara of retail. I am convinced that Walmart is where all bad items go to die. You know what I mean. The huge bins of 1.99 DVDs ranging from Denise Richard's workout videos to leftover copies of Edward Scissorhands, the rolled up shirt-and-cap combo screen-printed with the local AA baseball team's logo, and don't forget about all the marked-down left over popcorn barrels from Christmas. After experiencing the typical mayhem of a typical Walmart, I sometimes find myself on a cliff's edge revving my car engine.

This trip to purgatory-on-earth, however, was a little different in that the shopping was served up with a side of laughter and reflection. While walking through the markdown-littered aisle next to the men's clothing, my eye couldn't help but catch a display filled with Christian t-shirts. This shocked me for two reasons: First, I couldn't believe that Walmart actually sells blatantly religious apparel. Second, I couldn't believe how ridiculous some of these shirts actually were.

Unlike modern Christ-wear of the "Jesus is my homeboy" persuasion, this stuff was neither funny nor hip. "Jesus: Without Him, Life is Hell" and the classic "WWJD" placed second and third in the kitsch category, but got beat out by "House of Jesus"--a clear knock off of the "House of Blues" logo. (I mean, seriously, what does that even mean?)

Next to this aisle was a rack of a different kind--shirts much more vulgar, likely transferred from the Panama City store. Many of these shirts were too vulgar to even repeat in this forum (email me and we can have a good laugh), but some of them were just trashy sayings like "Beer...Cheaper than School."

As my mind began processing these two polar opposites, it occurred to me that both lines of clothing were no more than pop culture. One represented the redneck-who-buys-airbrushed-sandollars-on-spring-break pop culture and the other represents the Christ-versus-culture, Christian separatist pop culture. Neither communicates its message very effectively.

If followers of Christ are to live incarnationally, I don't think we need to chastise non-believers with bawdy, sarcastic billboards that are signed God but resemble a sarcastic old man more than the One found in Scripture. If we are living out our faith like Christ did, people will know we are set apart and we won't have to resort to cheeseball Christian t-shirts.

It is very difficult to imagine how Christ is exalted by kitschy, marketed, meaningless, awkward expressions of Christianity like "House of Jesus" shirts printed on a .40 Gildan. Why can't Christians just do what Jesus did and participate in culture like everyone else while letting our lives serve as an invitation to salvation? Wouldn't it benefit the cause of Christ more if we sent our people out into culture rather than retreating into an awkward Christian subculture like a turtle attacked by a toddler?

Are you a devotee of the crazy Christian sub-culture? If so, do us all a favor: STOP.