The Best of Jack’s Winning Words – Originally sent August 3, 2018. Reposts from the blog of the late Pastor Jack Freed.
“Never lie to someone who trusts you and never trust someone who lies to you.” (Mark Twain) I read that 60% of people will lie at least once during a 10-minute conversation – little white lies, mostly. Whatever…truth is taking a beating these days. We used to believe: “A man’s as good as his word.” Where’s that man gone? If we’re to have a culture of believability, it has to start with us. Lying, as a norm, is unacceptable. We can do better than that. 😉 Jack
We have lots of new terms to cover lying, especially in the current political environment – misinformation…disinformation…fake news…and more. Twain would have simplified them all as lies. Although often attributed to Arthur Schopenhauer, Twain is also credited with saying, “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” We have certainly witnessed a lot of the ridicule and violent opposition stages in recent years.
I think the key takeaway from Jack’s post is that if we want the culture to change it has to start with us. We can and should be doing better in our own day-to-day loves by embracing and living in an honest and ruthful way. We must be honest not only with others but with ourselves, too. There are no “little white lies”, there are just lies, especially when we are lying to ourselves.
The lies that we tell ourselves are especially insidious because they encourage us to lie to others about things such as how we feel or what we believe. Many times, the lies that we tell ourselves are really just excuses – excuses for failures, excuses for things that we have done and for things that we have left undone.
In the prayers of confession that start our church service each week we pray for forgiveness for things that we ‘ve done and things that we’ve left undone. Perhaps we also need t forgive ourselves in order to move on with life. I wrote about forgiving yourself back in 2022 – see https://normsmilfordblog.com/2022/10/08/forgive-yourselffree-yourselfmove-on/
So, stop lying to yourself and to others. Forgive yourself for things that are in your past and move on. You will have no need for lies. The creation of a culture of believability starts with you. Jack asked where has that man gone? Answer by saying, “He is here, I am him”. We can do netter than that and it starts with us.
Posted by Norm Werner 
passages that they felt might ferment rebellion. The result was a Bible that was about ¼ the size of the actual Bible and one in which slaves were advised to mind their masters in Peter 2:18 “Slaves, in reverent fear of God submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh.”
“reservations” that took place. These are ugly scars on our history, and some would just remove them from our school history books, in an attempt to protect our children from the ugliness of the truth.
written out of our history. We also have intolerance and bigotry against those whom we somehow judge to be “different” – the LBGTQ community, those who are mentally or physically challenged, or those look or speak differently. We cannot write them our of our lives and our history.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where snap judgments based upon shaky and unproven “facts” are the norm. Just saying “my bad” later, when your rush to judgement has been proven to be baseless, does not repair the damage that might have been done to someone else and certainly not to the damage that it has done to your own reputation. Once you become known to others as someone who makes hasty decision or acts upon unproven rumors or allegations, you will likely be labeled as 
be corroborated and substantiated. It is that validation that you are seeking when you seek the truth and it is usually the absence of validation that causes you to doubt those who purport to know the truth.
erroneous assumptions and conclusions by the intelligence community – essentially fake truths. The real truth later came out that there were no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq. So, was that fake news? Not really. It was news fabricated out of false or bad information (fake truth) that was provided by normally reliable sources and embellished a bit by politicians eager to justify a decision that likely had already been made. The news media, always hungry for a good story, took it and ran with it.
intelligence reports and more of them are bound to come out as the truth struggles to the surface. It is not hard to imagine a bunch of Russian hackers (be they military, the intelligence community or civilians) deciding to see what they could do to influence the election or undermine our concept of democracy. It is also not hard to imagine that a contact within the political apparatus of any of the candidates would find a receptive ear to anything that might give them an advantage. After all, politics is not practiced to the highest of moral standards. However, it might prove to be as false as the weapons of mass destruction news to jump all the way to conclusions about collusion or conspiracy. Stupidity, yes. Poor judgement, most certainly. Self-serving, of course.
first two definitions before we form our beliefs about what the truth really was. The good news is that Buddha and William Shakespeare were both right and we will eventually see the truth come out. Let’s all hope that Jack Nicholson was wrong in the movie 
– as seen on the 
with a grain of salt or do they take your words as a commitment that they can count upon? Do you casually toss of commitments that you later find easy to blow off? How many pairs of shoes do you wear out between the saying and the doing?
something without any real sense that you are actually going to do it. It makes you feel good at the time that you “commit” – Yeah I signed up, I joined the group, I’m part of the “:in-crowd”. But, when it comes to actually do what you committed to maybe you are the one that always has that last minute conflict or change of plans that prevents you from being there.
upon; the person who is always there when needed; the person who is so reliable that we begin to take them for granted. Those are the people that hold things together when the going gets tough. That person wears out many pairs of show doing, rather than just talking.
Some people take great pride in always being “truthful”, even it it may be unkind, such as truthfully answering the question, “Do these pants make me look fat?” What value is there in your truthfulness in that situation, if it is unkind or causes pain.
how small, is ever wasted.” The same cannot be said about the truth, which often falls upon deaf ears. So, perhaps today you will have one of those choices to make – to tell “the truth” to someone or to be kind. What will you do? Why did you make that choice? Do you think that telling the truth will somehow make the situation better, make the other person feel better or just make you feel better?
cloth yourself with those virtues before you begin encountering people and situations that will challenge you for a response. You’ll feel much better that the end of the day if you have responded with kindness, rather than smugly responding to all questions and situations with what you perceive to be “the truth.” So, the best answer to the question in paragraph 2 is that “those are really nice looking pants and they look great on you.”
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