Honesty is essential to the human mind and to the development of the human conscience. Honesty is the discovering what reality is. Honesty is not what most people think. It is not just the negatives: not stealing, not lying, or not cheating. Honesty is more than that.
Some people believe that white lies do not affect humans in a negative way when in actuality they eat away the trust within people. These white lies may become habitual and commonplace. When they become commonplace it becomes harder and harder to accept and it’s where people begin to lose trust.
Honesty meant to deliver truth and nothing but the truth. If questioned of choosing between a lie and a truth in critical circumstances, you would probably answer ‘truth’. But, are you really not lying?
Defining honesty would mean looking into such aspects such as moral uprightness, respect, integrity, virtue, personal principles and the like. It could be that honesty is the most essential thing to a pastor but most strange to a thief. Honesty can be the way of life of a monk but the greatest obstacle for a lawyer.
Honesty is equivalent to sincerity. Honesty is more than just “spilling it all out”. It is believing that the unpredictable outcome after you have said the truth will be for the better of everybody. You don’t have to worry of making such stories that will only add to the fiction category. You don’t have to remember and recall what you have said last time if you had said the truth. Being honest frees a person from enormous anxiety building up inside his/her conscience.
Being honest is not always beneficial. Honesty is willingness to march into hell for a heavenly cause. The biggest challenge for us humans is to overcome our fear of rejection, when we feel like no one would believe us if we tell the truth. Honesty comes with responsibility. It is taking the responsibility for your own actions.
An honest behavior means a behavior which is free from cheat and deceit. Honesty is based on truthfulness, transparency, sincerity, and integrity. It is free from all kinds of evil motive. If we live with honesty, we likely to gain TRUST easily. But of course, being honest is easier said than done. Like Patience, Honesty is a virtue.
Being honest has many benefits. In the Bible, it states many times that ‘honest people are blessed’…‘when a man is honest he will receive love and kindness’ (Psalm 112)…. ‘people who tell the truth will be respected, and will please both God and people’ (Proverbs 3: 3-4). And so, in whatever context, we can never tell the truth and the lie at the same time. Believing “white lies” is just deceiving ourselves. It’s a gradual way of losing dignity, self-respect and worst is never be TRUSTED by anyone. Therefore, a lie is a lie.
