Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Deceit

Peter tells us to put away deceit. Sometimes those who are called Christians have a since of pride at being able to fool someone without telling a lie.

My work requires I publicly post an agenda 72 hours prior to meetings. To my embarrassment I posted the wrong time for a special meeting and it had to be canceled because we would not have a quorum. As I was informing the president of the company about my error, she commented, “Now you are not going to make that mistake again are you?”

Her question seemed unnecessary. The definition of a mistake is much like an accident. One does not intentionally make an error. How could I guarantee I would not make the same mistake again, however unlikely.

But to my chagrined, I again made an error. This time I put the wrong day of the week, though the date and time were correct. I was not aware of the error until the day of the meeting, so there could be not corrections.

Someone I knew suggested I repost the agenda with the correction and if I was asked I could simply say, “I changed it as soon as I saw my error,” which would be perfectly true. However I knew this was a way of being deceitful.

The temptation was great but the Lord was gracious to me. The error did not cause the cancellation of the meeting because the date and time were correct.

We are not always allowed to escape negative consequences of our errors, but the cost of being honest is worth our integrity.