My grandfather, Dave Walker, was one of my heroes. He died at age 67. He was a simple man who could neither read nor write; yet, he was perhaps the kindest, wisest, and most honorable person I have known. The memory of an incident during my childhood recently resurfaced.
I was about eight years old. Granddaddy asked if I would like to walk to the store with him about a mile away. He bought me a candy bar along with his purchase of a bag of flour. After we were almost back home, he counted his money in the change purse he carried in the pocket of his overalls. He discovered the clerk had given him a nickel more change than he should.
“We have to go back to the store,” granddaddy said. “I have to return this nickel.”
“But it’s just five cents,” I said. “He’ll never even know he gave you too much!”
“But I’ll know,” he responded. “You’re only as good as your word,” he added.
The most frequently heard compliments at my grandfather’s funeral in 1961 were these:
“He was honest as the day is long!”
“His word was his bond!”
“If he promised something, you could count on it.”
“He never lied; he always told the truth.”
“You could trust him with your life.”
I’ve thought a lot about my grandfather during the current climate of runaway dishonesty. Lying is being normalized, justified, trivialized, and weaponized in high and low places. Distortion of truth has become a contrived means of achieving desired ends.
In the current political climate, character has been disjoined from policy, as though favorable policies override personal integrity. Without character-embedded honesty, however, promises related to policy are fickle, hollow, and manipulative.
Granddad considered honesty the core of character and dishonesty as symptomatic of a malignantly diseased character. He learned that from Jesus! “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much” (Luke 16:10).
Fred Craddock shared an experience while in the buffet line at an airport food outlet. Dr. Craddock saw the man in front of him slide a small pad of butter under his plate, hiding it from the cashier. The butter only cost five cents! A harmless or inconsequential dishonest act! But Dr. Craddock commented that he kept his eyes on his own luggage when that man showed up at the same boarding gate. Trust was gone!
Dishonesty is a deadly infection of the soul that poisons every aspect of life. It destroys trust, corrodes character, fractures relationships, undermines community, and subverts the common good. Lies are like termites eating away the foundation or malignant cancer cells destroying vital organs, within individuals and society.
Would you trust your children with the man who hid the pad of butter under his plate? Would you hire him as your financial advisor or banker? Give him a key to your car or house? Buy a used car from him? Give him the combination to your safe? Vote for him? Provide him with the nuclear code?
Albert Einstein is reported to have warned, “Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.”
Character matters! Granddaddy was right: “You are only as good as your word!” He not only believed it; he also LIVED it. He was as good as his word. I would trust him with my life!
