Tag Archives: duplicity

Facing truth makes us change, October 8, 2018

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Today’s Podcast


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Pastor Rob Ketterling wrote this about change, “Encountering truth always results in a need to change.” What do you think?

We are usually very happy to go along in the same path we have always traveled because it is easier than changing. Change is hard. Change is challenging the norm. Change means displacing habits and that is never easy. Change, as Ketterling implies, means facing the truth and doing something about it.

God is truth. He is never duplicitous. He always works in our best interest. But he also works to fulfill his plans, not ours. He will use us to further his plans and make us into what he created us to be, but he will never sacrifice his goals for ours because he is God and we are not. He knows and is truth. We are scarred and damaged and considerably limited in our understanding of almost everything.

Just look around. Think back through a little bit of history. It’s easy to see just how arrogant and wrong we are about things. Look how many millenia it took for people to understand that the universe does not revolve around us. In our arrogance we thought we were the center of the universe. But we are just a speck in our solar system and our sun, the real center of our solar system is just a speck on the outer edge of the enormous galaxy we call the Milky Way. And that immense galaxy we call home is fairly small in comparison to the billions of galaxies that comprise the universe we think we know.

In reality, we know so little about the universe in which we live. In fact, we can’t say we even know our home planet very well. We haven’t made it to the deepest parts of our oceans yet. We try to explore it, but have only begun to see into those dark regions below the surface of the seas. Only a very small number of people have made it to the tops of our highest mountains. And when they reach those summits, they don’t stay there to explore or make any scientific studies of those places. They can only live there for a few minutes before they have to make the climb back down or they will die on those peaks.

We make great strides in figuring out how to heal the body, yet medicine is still not a strict discipline. It is a practice and an art. Why? Because every person is different. No one react exactly the same to every drug or treatment regimen doctors prescribe. We each contain minute differences in our anatomy. And some of us have fairly significant difference, like someone with situs inversus, in which every organ on the opposite side of the body. On the outside they look like everyone else, but on the inside, every visceral organ is a mirror image of most people. Were they built wrong? No, just different. They are often very healthy and often never know they are different on the inside until they need an x-ray or have some sort of surgery in which the surgeon is surprised by cutting on what should in the correct place but finds what he’s looking for missing in that spot.

Truth. Do examples like those mean there are different shades of truth? No. It means we, as frail and faulty humans, have a hard time getting to the truth. Our brains are not capable of understanding all there is to know. No matter how intelligent one might be, he or she can never know it all. And our understanding of so many things is limited to what we have learned in the past and how we approach things to understand them in the present. What do we really know about cancer? Quite a lot more than we did twenty years ago, but not enough to contain it.

So what do we do when we face something that changes our perspective of truth? How do we face information that runs contrary to what we thought we knew was right? It’s a question we must face almost every day because if we are alive, we are gathering information from around us through those five senses God built into us. And those five senses give us information that sometimes contradicts what we thought we knew about the world around us.

We thought the world was flat…until Columbus proved us wrong. We thought we could never fly…until the Wright brothers took that contraption into the air the length of a football field. We thought smallpox would always be a deadly disease among our children…until vaccines have effectively eradicated it from the world. We thought going to the moon was just the fantasy of science fiction writers…until Neil Armstrong made a footprint on its dusty surface.

With each of those truths, the world had to do something with the discoveries. We could not ignore the truth. Ships don’t fall off the edge of the earth because it’s not flat, it’s round. We not only can fly, but made it a multi-billion dollar industry. We took that one disease and created other vaccines that have almost wiped out other diseases that took our children from us. We use some of those space inventions every day that came out of those moon explorations. And if you have a really good telescope, you can see the glint of sunlight on the equipment those moon-walkers left up there on the moon.

Those truths deal with science and discoveries hard to dispute when you can see the evidence. But what about the things of God? What about the truth God reveals when he speaks to us about our relationship with him? What do we do with the truth someone shares with us about our eternal soul? How do we deal with the truth that may not be visible to the naked eye?

It’s a simple answer. Pastor Ketterling has it right. When we face truth, we must change. We can change for the better or we can change for the worse, but we will change. We cannot let it go. God wants an intimate relationship with us. He gave everything to give us that opportunity. He reveals himself to us and makes a way for us to come to him. But God does not change. We must. God is truth. Real truth does not change. A flat earth is not truth, it is only a perception. The inability to better ourselves through invention is not truth, it is only a perception. Our inability to eradicate some deadly disease is not truth, it is only a perception.

We may not understand the how and why of these things now, but they are still perceptions because we do not understand the majesty and power of God. God did not introduce those things into the world. Adam and Eve invited evil and sin and chaos into the cosmos when they disobeyed God. Satan’s deceit crept into the universe because of their disobedience. They no longer knew truth. They sought it, just like we do, but they no longer knew it. Just like us. We see shades of truth, perception, but only in God can we see truth. Because only he is truth. Everything else is at best a shadow of truth.

When we see things that are closer to the truth than we what know, our perception must change. Our belief must change. Our attitude and behavior and understanding must change. We become more aware of what is real and what is fantasy. Satan would love for us to live in this fantasy world around us, but his methods for seeking happiness or pleasure or success or peace or harmony among men only leads to more suffering and sorrow and chaos. We know that because we see the truth of it every day in our news reports.

God, however, brings peace to our hearts. He brings order to the chaos around us. He brings calm to the storms of life. He brings harmony into relationships. God, as the author of truth, the personification of truth, the epitome of truth, will stand in judgment of us one day and ask the question, “What did you do when confronted with my truth?”

Our answer will determine our eternal destiny. We will change when he gently calls us to him in this life. When we follow him, he will help us change into his likeness. When we run from him, we will face the consequences he outlines in his word. I’d like to say there is no hell, but that is not truth. His word tells us there is and he is truth. So now what? How will you change when he confronts you?

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn’t, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved. In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.

Integrity and duplicity, May 14, 2018

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Today’s Podcast


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The subject of today’s podcast includes two terms that are mutually exclusive. Integrity and duplicity. The two can not coexist in the same person. We try awfully hard these days. We try to make things fit the way we want them to fit. We want what we think is best for us regardless what it might do to someone else. We want what we want and we want it now. But that’s not how integrity works.

Solomon said in Proverbs 11:3, “The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity.”

So what exactly am I talking about when I talk about duplicity in the context of integrity? We’ve already determined that integrity is about oneness with our Creator. It’s about his truth, not anyone else’s. Integrity isn’t defined by our norms, but by God’s. We’ve said integrity requires accountability and how important a partner and mentor can be in helping us stay on track, keeping us from straying from the path we’ve set out on.

Duplicity is defined as deceitfulness or double-dealing. It comes into play in this setting when we talk about integrity but then don’t live up to what we say. It reminds me of a public service announcement that was aired on the Armed Forces Network when I was stationed in Germany several years ago. The camera panned on a soldier called to his home because his teenage son had been caught shoplifting. The soldier did a pretty good job of chewing out his son, telling him how wrong it was to steal. How he had learned in church that was one of the Ten Commandments God gave us. He asked how in the world he could stoop so low as to steal something that didn’t belong to him.

All the while the soldier carried on this conversation with his wayward son, the camera moved position and drew the lens back to focus on a handful of black skillcraft pens laying on the soldiers desk at home. Those of you who have worked in the government know what that means. No one had those black skillcraft ballpoint pens except Uncle Sam and he bought hundreds of thousands of them. And why did the government buy so many? Because people like that soldier stole them from their offices.

You might think to yourself, taking a pen from my employer isn’t such a big deal. And maybe one pen isn’t. At that time they were about $1.50 a dozen. But this soldier along with probably 50% of the rest of the 5 million people employed by the federal government had two or three or more of those pens at home. If my math is right, that’s about $625,000 of theft. That’s a well organized gang conducting grand larceny. You probably never thought of it that way, but someone had to pay for that pen or pencil or notebook or pad of paper or whatever it is you might bring home for personal use. Is that duplicity? You bet.

Or how about that cell phone ding to remind you of an email or a facebook message that you just have to answer at work? Or the website you need to explore for just a few minutes at the office. Or a bill you need to pay from there because your internet speeds at home are so slow? Does your employer want to pay you for being completely unproductive when you’re supposed to be working for her? Stealing part of your paycheck by failing to give that time to your employer as you agreed when you were hired is called duplicity, deceitfulness, double-dealing. It certainly isn’t integrity.

Am I saying that I am perfect in these area? No. If you scoured my house, you’d probably find one of those long lost skillcraft pens in a box in the garage. And to be honest, once in a while I’ll answer or make a personal call or see a personal email pop up on my screen and answer it while I’m supposed to be doing something else. But I try to stay very conscious of my time and what I do with the equipment and supplies entrusted to me. I learned because of those skillcraft pens that I kept having to buy out of my meager budget as a company commander in the army almost forty years ago how just one innocent pen can suddenly add up to dozens, then hundreds, the thousands. And no one really notices until someone at the top of the chain coughs because more than half a million dollars in black government pens have gone missing.

It’s not that big a deal. Except it’s duplicious. It’s no big thing. Except it breaks commandment number eight. It’s nothing really. Except God says don’t do it. No one cares. Except it means your integrity is at stake.

Our society is trying hard to turn all these things into various shades of gray. Just a pen. Just a pad of paper. Just a box of paper clips. Just a few copies for my kid’s school work. Just a few messages during the day. Just a little me time during my work hours. Just a little here and just a little there. No big deal. No harm done.

The latest figure I could get comes from 2012, so this data is six years old and has only gotten worse since then. But listen to some of these facts from six years ago. 60% of workers spend at least some time on social media during work hours. The average college student in 2012 spent 3 hours on facebook and two hours studying. Which explains why college students who use facebook regularly have a GPA a full point lower than those who don’t.

In the US that year, collectively we spent 12,207,423,487 hours on social media. Twice as much time on social media as in any form of exercise. 10% of us spend more time on social media than we do at work and 60% of us connect with our social media at work. Workers are interrupted every 10.5 minutes by things like twitter, IM’s and facebook. Then studies show it takes 23 minutes to get back on task after an interruption. No one can really multitask by the way. Your brain will only let you do one thing at a time. If you think you’re multitasking, you’re fooling yourself and turning out poorer quality work that you are able.

So what did all that cost? When you do the 2012 math, social media cost companies almost $4500 per employee. And it cost the US economy about $650 billion. But it’s just one message, right? It doesn’t hurt anything? It’s only a few minutes, right? No one cares. It’s not like I don’t get my job done, so I can do this on the sly, right? Take a look at the number once more. The social media mafia successfully stole $650 billion dollars from everyone’s pocket.

Why everyone’s pocket and not just those C-suite executives? Because those C-suite executives didn’t have the money to give employees the raises they  might have been able to give otherwise. They didn’t have the money to improve health benefits. They didn’t have the money to hire new employees. They didn’t have the money to build new facilities or new plants. $650 billion can do a lot of stuff, and collectively in the workplace…How did Solomon put it? “… the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity.”

Integrity and duplicity can not exist in the same person. But we need God’s help to maintain our integrity. The world makes everything shades of gray instead of God’s black and white. The problem is that the world won’t be our judge when Jesus returns. God set the rules and God will judge us based on his rules. Not the world’s. Not ours. His. So how is your integrity meter running today?

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn’t, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved. In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.