Yes Means Yes

“Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’” Matthew 5:37

That is simple enough, isn’t it? But when I was young, my mother, sisters and I attended a Bible Study every week. Then one night the teacher said that if we had a visitor we wished to avoid, it was all right to say we were not home even if we were. He said, “You are only meaning you are not home for that person.” I sat there shaking my head, and the teacher called upon me to say something. Of course I said that was lying, and there was a short argument. I started crying and he asked me why I was crying. I answered that it was because he was my Bible teacher and he was teaching wrong things. Well, the Bible study group broke up after that. 

Today, people do not take their words seriously. A famous boxer promised that if he was elected Senator, he would not enter the ring again. And then he did. Many people deceive because of their love for money like Bernie Madoff, a former chairman of NASDAQ. He was an accomplished and respected expert in the financial field when he was found out to have perpetrated an elaborate lie about his investment firm. 

Another reason for lying is the desire for power. Perhaps the biggest liar of all time was Adolf Hitler who reasoned that everyone tells small lies but few have the temerity to tell colossal lies. He and his minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, were able to eliminate six million Jews by convincing the German people that the Jews were the enemies and the cause of all their country’s problems. 

It is so sad to hear a leader say that honesty should not be an issue in elections. “Lahat sila sinungaling, lahat ng tao sa mundong ito sinungaling,” she claimed (All of them lie. Everyone in this world is a liar.)  No wonder our country, our world, is in such a big mess, if we cannot depend on the word of the people leading us! 

If we want to see change in the world, we have to be the change. We have to tell the truth, and we have to teach our children to tell the truth.