A New Year’s Resolution That Could Spark Revolution
It’s that season again, that time for New Year’s resolutions, when we put our minds to perhaps giving up junk food or engaging in regular exercise. Yet while this is all well and good, even better is to add to it the aim of purging the spiritual junk food of sin from one’s life and exercising virtue. And while the virtues are many, one that perhaps warrants some special attention is honesty.
British anthropologist Thomas Henry Huxley once stated that “veracity is the heart of morality.” It makes sense, too. Just as we can’t understand what is proper tennis instruction or medical care if we imbibe lies relating to the endeavor’s principles, how can we know what is proper morality if we’re subject to lies relating to it?
Robert Welch, the founder of The John Birch Society, emphasized honesty’s importance as much as anyone. As he wrote in 1970, “If all men (and women too, of course), from diplomats to drunken bums, would simply resolve tomorrow always to be truthful, about everything — to the best of their knowledge and understanding — and would then abide by that resolution, I believe that fully half of all the troubles and grief of the human race would disappear within six months.”
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