The Bible on Trial

Honesty~

"When a person who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, they will either quit being mistaken or cease being honest". ~ Richard Humpal, J.D.

We have all made mistakes. Well, you say, 'No Kidding'!  Alexander Pope said, "To err is human, to forgive is divine". This intimates that as humans we simply cannot keep from making a mistake from time to time, and need to be able to forgive self, even as we forgive others. This idea in one sense is true. Humans learn how not to do something detrimental to their existance by recovering from that particular mistake and learing to not do that same mistake again. If you make a mistake once, say you have learned from it, and then do it again, it now becomes a choice.

Dealing with truth in this environment requires the application of a very difficult concept to aquire, and that is Self-Honesty! Conflating self-honesty with dealing honestly with others is easy by comparison to learning to be truly honest with yourself. One is an exterior identity, where you would never think to harm another human being, especially someone you know and love, by lying to them for personal gain. This is admirable, and necessary to the growth of any friendship. But it is an entirely different senario when it is only yourself that would be affected by that same 'stretching of the truth'. 

We like to think of ourselves as being better in truth than we really are, because then we don't have to admit we don't have all truth, That fallibility exposes the warts and blemishes of our understanding, and it hurts. It is easier to be forgiven by others than to forgive ourselves, especially when we know we are going to do 'it' again and again. Growth in the Spirit of Truth comes from seeing the flaws ourselves, admitting it, and not make that same mistake again by believing lies as truth. This self-honesty is the key to the Kingdom.