How to be Honest | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 2, 1882

How to be Honest.

A CORRESPONDENT of the Christian Union vigorously denounces the idea that a man must free himself from all pecuniary indebtedness before performing any benevolent acts requiring the expenditure of money. We can heartily indorse all he says, and much more. The following is an extract :—

The most important question to be answered is—"Are we free from liability when we say we owe no man anything?"

Have your correspondent and those he represents paid all their debts when they have obeyed the above quoted injunction? Probably not. The error of all such as your correspondent seems to be the leaving out of their calculations the fact of their "indebtedness" to God for everything they have, even to the breath they draw. In return for all that they receive, they now and then indulge in some act of benevolence and call it giving, when really they are but paying in a very small way what they owe and are indebted to God for, just as much as they are for rent, groceries, or bread; and so long as such a view of the matter is taken no blessing need be expected to come from their acts. Such people may think they are prospering, but the time is coming when their eyes will be opened to their mistake. God's denunciation of his people through Malachi was not because they did not pay their debts to one another, but because they were sorcerers, adulterers, false swearers, and because they oppressed the hireling in his wages, the widow and fatherless, and turned away the stranger from his right, and withheld the tithes due to God himself. These qualities of character so hateful to God may be characteristic of some, if not very many, of those who at the present day so boastfully proclaim that they pay all their debts and owe no man anything. It seems from Malachi's statement that because a man pays his debts to his fellow-men, it is no proof that he is an honest man, and yet your correspondent implies this. Job's protestation as to his integrity and the confession of Zaccheus are much stronger proof, in my opinion. I look in my dictionary and find the following: "Honest, just; frank; chaste." "Honesty, integrity; candor." "Candor, dazzling whiteness." It would seem from these definitions that freedom from liability to our fellow-men does not of itself necessarily imply honesty.

There are hosts of men free from debt whose characters are the farthest possible from dazzling whiteness. The view taken in the article referred to is narrow and cowardly—too often a subterfuge for refusing to aid good and needy objects. No reasonable person doubts the propriety and rightfulness of paying what is due to our fellow men, but the first thing to be done is to honor God; to pay him; and he will never allow such as sanctify his name to want for means to pay their debts. It is a great mistake to say that worldly debts are to be first paid. The injunction is, "Honor the Lord with thy substance and with the first-fruits of all thine increase. So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses burst out with new wine."

There is nothing here to show that we are to honor God after we have paid our debts, but it is emphatically stated that he is to be honored with the first-fruits.