I just saw an advertisement for a diamond ring, the slug line above the sparkling stone said something along the lines of "Ethical Diamond Rings"...
It got me thinking, how funny is it that we have to put words like "Ethical" into advertizements about diamond rings... I know specifically that there is the whole concern that people don't want to be buying blood diamonds, but this isn't the first time I've seen something like this and it's not always for diamonds. Why is it that we have to put words like "ethical" into our adverts? My theory is because people are no longer trusted on their word. We have fought more and more to find a way to make our products look important and cool and healthy. We do anything that we can to make that happen, including twisting words and truth.
Many people these days say that truth is relative, but is that really correct? Are there not some things that we all agree with deep down inside our hearts? Let's take the blood diamond for example. Am I right in thinking that most, if not all people, recognize that blood diamonds are wrong. The movie Blood Diamond had all of us in the western world demanding jewelers to tell us their product was blood free. We all agree that it is wrong. This is truth and it's not relative. It's solid. Truth is truth. What's true for me, is true for others. Not "What's true for me, may not be true for you."
I'm not going to launch on a big spiel about what truth is and what it is not. The only one who can really tell you what truth is or not is, is God. I will leave the issues to Him. What I do want to talk about is how our culture today is searching for things that are real and solid to their core. Could it be that we are looking for people, businesses, etc to be truthful?
There used to be a time in history, when you could walk into a store, grab what you need, turn to the owner and say, "Put it on my tab." Neighbors could come and ask to borrow a cup of sugar, because you knew they would give you back sugar when they could. What people said was what they meant.
How far has our world come from this? We hesitate at lending things, we hesitate on trusting that a person will show up when they said they would. Why? Because our word is no longer our word.
Being a person of your word is one of the most important things to me. When I tell people something, I want it to be something they can trust. I can't even begin to tell you how angry I get if things change and my word becomes something that is no longer truth. One of the reasons this is so grounded in me, comes from a story I read from the Bible...
The Israelite's were told not to make alliances with any of their neighbors and when one of their neighbors disguised themselves as a nation that had traveled far to come and make an alliance with them, they readily agreed, not taking time to seek the Lord. After entering the agreement, it was revealed that these were their next door neighbors. Immediately, the Israelites wanted to break their alliance and fight their neighbors for their deception, but God told them that they had to be men of their word.
There is so much more to this topic that I want to discuss in future blogs, but for now, I want to challenge you to join me in my goal to see our word be our word. If you say you are going to show up somewhere, be there. If you promise to do something or return something, do it. Let your "yes" be "yes" and your "no" be "no". I know I still have far to go for this to be something I live by, but how different would our world be if we all lived this way...
Think about it.
