When Honesty Is a Way of Life

WHAT would you do if you found a bag lying on the street containing $25,000 in small denominations? A truck driver in Brooklyn, New York, recently faced this very situation. The bag had fallen unnoticed from an armored security car during a minor accident.

For turning this sum over to the police, the truck driver took a lot of ribbing from his fellow workers who reminded him of what they could and would have done with the money had they found it. Detectives investigating the incident stated that the truck driver’s honesty was “amazing for this town.” One further stated: “I’ve been on the force for eighteen years and I’ve never seen anything like it. And if I’m on the force another eighteen years I don’t think I’ll ever see it again.” Yes, for is it not true that hardly a day passes without reports of widespread dishonesty, cheating or corruption by all kinds of people?

Last year massive international bribery scandals shocked Italy, Japan, Belgium and the United States, among other lands. Former prime ministers, cabinet members and even a European prince were charged with extensive corruption. Hundreds of cadets at a prestigious U.S. military academy were exposed as cheaters and were expelled.

Wealth and status seem to have little to do with such dishonesty. Several prominent entertainment figures were prosecuted for using electronic devices called “blue boxes” to make lengthy long-distance telephone calls without paying. The head of a giant electronics firm resigned after admitting his failure to file income tax returns for five years, and a wealthy socialite pleaded guilty to charges of drastically reducing an invoice price to reduce customs duty on dresses from Paris.

It appears to many that opportunities for dishonesty seem to strike a responsive chord in just about everyone. When Clerks at a Paris supermarket recently staged a wildcat strike, for example, over a thousand customers walked off with more than $30,000 worth of merchandise before they could be stopped. The American Library Association estimates that about $250 million worth of books are stolen annually by all kinds of people, but the worst offenders, they say, are “student doctors and student lawyers”​—the very ones expected to be examples of integrity.

Among many workers, reports the New York Times, “collecting unemployment compensation checks while avoiding employment appears to have become a way of life.” As one widely read news columnist puts it: “Everyone, it appears, is getting while the getting is good.”

“Sickness of Character”

But what about religion? Do the churches tend to restrain dishonesty among their members? Hardly, notes George Plagenz, religion editor for the Cleveland Press. “Cheating and other questionable conduct . . . takes in even esteemed members of the average church-going community.” Plagenz also makes the revealing observation: “It isn’t that they don’t consider cheating to be a sin. It is that they don’t consider what they are doing to be cheating.”

Hence, many who practice some form of dishonesty do not feel that what they are doing is actually wrong. Said one aircraft executive convicted of accepting bribes: “It’s in the framework of the job . . . it came naturally.” Those who make inflated accident-insurance claims often reason: “Insurance companies expect this sort of thing. They have it figured into their premiums. A person is a fool not to make a high claim.” But who pays in the end?

Some students feel that being honest puts them at an unfair disadvantage when everyone else is cheating. Other people believe that cheating your employer or the government is just correcting an injustice. Big business and big government cheat the average person, they reason; so why not get even with those who are always robbing you? “Anyway,” many believe, “they are so big that they will never miss the loss.” But, again, who pays in the end? Does not everyone pay through the higher prices such dishonesty causes?

Revealing the way some view their dishonest practices is an angry statement from a doctor convicted of making huge fraudulent medicaid profits. He told a U.S. Senate subcommittee that he had taken “advantage of a lousy system, and one that turned its back and didn’t look.” His attorney added that “they’re here to complain about a system that is so bad that it virtually invites those acts.”

But why should the system have to watch everyone? And is not complaining that the system “invites” dishonesty somewhat like a youthful thug who complains that the elderly people he attacks “invite” him to commit crimes because they make themselves such easy targets? No, the problem is not one of poor watchfulness by the system. “Somewhere is a deeper, more troublesome explanation,” observes a well-known news columnist. “This is a sickness of character, and God alone knows how we treat that.”​—Atlanta Constitution, Sept. 2, 1976.

Curing Dishonesty

The fact is that God does know how to treat this rampant “sickness of character,” and is doing so among millions of people. Take, for example, the Brooklyn deliveryman who found that $25,000 bag of money and took it to the police. What was it that caused him to do so? The report in the Long Island Press quotes him as saying: “As a Jehovah’s Witness, I try to uphold the teachings of the Bible in my daily life. We point to Hebrews 13:18.” There the Bible says of Christians: “We trust we have an honest conscience, as we wish to conduct ourselves honestly in all things.”

Hence, the motivating power of the Bible’s principles can overcome the dishonest “sickness of character” that prevails among so many. People from all nations and backgrounds who truly make these principles their way of life are known for their honesty. For example, under the headline “Watchtowers Are Honest,”. Zambia’s leading newspaper, the Times, reported that the “Zambia Trade Fair management engages members of [Jehovah’s Witnesses] to man the gates because of their honesty.”

An official explained that, in the past, shortages as high as K500 ($769) occurred, while under the Witnesses the shortage was an “astounding 40n [62c].” “You can understand why the management prefers the Watchtower people,” noted the official. “They are so honest that for the past three years the management has had no problem with the takings.”​—July 4, 1974.

It is not that these are just born as naturally honest persons. Many formerly were just the opposite. But these people are making their lives over to conform to standards of honesty that will soon prevail earth wide when God brings about his promised righteous system of things. The difference in personality of people living then will be so great that the Bible calls that system a “new heavens and a new earth” wherein “righteousness is to dwell.” Why not find out how this body of people have learned to make honesty their way of life?​—2 Pet. 3:13.