Spin and Non-Commitment

Morning friends. Glad you guys are here. Thanks for joining us. Anyone in here heard of the spin room? The spin room. It has nothing to do with stationary bikes or pelotons or instructors that yell at you through screens. The spin room is a special place designated for media members following political debates. Here's how it works. After a debate concludes, candidates and their teams go into a room to field questions from reporters, oftentimes thousands of reporters, depending on how big the election is. And then reporters will ask particularly pointed questions to candidates about the debate. They'd say, how do you think your debate performance went? What did you mean when you made this promise? How are you going to keep that promise? And also, the facts don't match up with the claim you made. Can you clarify? Those sorts of hard-hitting questions. But here's why they call it the spin room. Without fail, every candidate and their team will try to spin the perception of those in the room. So things like facts or truth, remaining true to their word, owning up to what they said or claimed, clarifying ambiguity, those things aren't really important. What matters to candidates in that room is that anyone listening believes they are smarter and more capable and more talented than everyone else, which is why in the spin room, every candidate has an amazing debate. It's remarkable. There's never been a political candidate who had a bad debate. It's crazy. Every candidate keeps promises, nice and ambiguous. They don't make things up. They don't make things specific, because then they'd have to hold up the word. So they use cliches that they know will resonate with their base. Every candidate kind of walks around the false claims that they made in the debate. And no one is primarily interested in truth or keeping the word or being held accountable. They just want to spin things for their purposes, for their power. And as I was thinking about that, for many of us in this room, we're like, oh, yeah, that's politics. I mean, that's kind of how we understand politics to work. But reflecting on those dynamics, I actually don't think that spin is a strictly political thing. I think it's actually born out of our culture. I think the reason we spin things in politics is because we are people who spin things. We aren't trained in our culture to simply speak truthfully. We aren't trained to commit to our word. We aren't trained to be accountable for what we say or claim. We're trained to warp or manipulate or to strategically communicate, to avoid anything that will actually tie us down or commit us to anything. We're constantly spinning. An example of this, resumes. According to a recent study cited by CNBC, 60% of Americans outright lie on their resumes. 60%. And those are just the ones willing to admit it. study also showed that men are more likely to lie on the resume than women. Ladies are like, yup, uh-huh, makes sense. I said I'd call out the guys this week. I called out the ladies last week. But in general, more than 50% of both men and women still admit to lying regularly on their resumes. Here's a fascinating thing from the study. One in six people hired family members, friends, or actors to pull out their resumes. One in six people hired family members, friends, to portray references or old bosses on their resumes. So if they got calls, they could look good. And what's fascinating about this is it's not just that our working world continues to prolong this, but it's actually that it gets encouraged. There's a guy who wrote a whole book on this. His name is Frederick George Bailey. His book is called Humbuggery and Manipulation, The Art of Leadership, which is just an incredible title. And in the book, he shows that lying is often a requirement for occupational success. And that those who lie less are less successful in their careers. And it's not just our work that this happens in, friends. This leaks into every part of our lives. We are constantly manipulative in our speech to one another. We embellish stories to make them sound more impressive. The fish was how big? big, Tobin. We make ourselves the heroes of our own stories. We make ourselves the victims of our own stories to gain sympathy sometimes. We say things like, I'm good, I'm fine, when we're definitely not good or bad. We say things like, I'm good, I'm fine, when we're fine. We say I'll be there or I'm in when we won't be there or we most certainly won't be there and definitely aren't in. We're constantly using our words not to cultivate truth but to spin. And social media doesn't help, right? Our lives are literally and figuratively filtered and spun. Did you ever notice families on social media? They're not just families. They are perfectly photographed models in white dresses and shirts being windswept on the beach like they are in the middle of a tide ad. The blues and greens are more vibrant. The captions more clever. The poses, perfectly postured. And even on social media, this is something I've noticed recently, even when people are trying to be vulnerable, it's often, not always, but often about getting more attention for themselves. It's not actually about vulnerability or humility. It's a posture of vulnerability and humility to get praise. You guys, to fake humble is just a corny way to be arrogant. It's not truthful. It's spin. And our Christian subculture is rife with this. How often do we fight and struggle with our kids or our spouse or someone else on the way to church, and then as soon as we open our car door, we get to the connect table, somebody asks us how we're doing, we're like, we're great. Life is so good, hashtag blessed, right? We're filled with this. We have a habit of projecting an image of piety or contentment or goodness or holiness to others that is disconnected from the truth of our lives. And I've talked to countless folks who find the church really difficult to step into because it feels like you have to project an image. It feels like you have to wear a mask. It feels like you have to look a certain way or be a certain way. And these aren't just harmless white lies, you guys. Our tendency to spin actively harms us. It's created a culture right now in the U.S. that doesn't know how to trust one another. Another recent study found that only 30% of people in America agreed with the statement, most people can be trusted. We're the sort of people who become skeptical of everything. We don't believe what each other says. We're defensive or standoffish, and everyone in authority is a bad guy. Think about it for you. What's the first reaction you have when someone comes and knocks on your door unexpectedly? You cower in terror. Don't pretend like you don't do this. You run to the other room, you look through the blinds to see who it is, right? I'm not answering that door. From an early age, we're mistrustful. You guys ever make pinky promises growing up? Why do we make pinky promises? Because, well, okay, they're kind of fun and cute. They're also a way to say, hey, I just got to hedge my bets. I got to make sure you're not lying. I got to make sure I can trust you because a pinky promise will make me trust you. Gen Z gets this, too. Gen Z has it. Hey, is that story you told true on God? No cap. No cap. We say it all the time. We try to hedge our bets. We have to make sure that we can trust one another, and so we make oaths and commitments like this. We don't trust one another. That's what lack of truthfulness does to us, and it also ultimately, friends, causes words to lose their significance. In a culture of spin, the words we say lose their meaning. We are all used to things like broken promises and half-truths and lack of commitment. That's just par for the course. People don't mean what they say. No one lives up to the words. They RSVP and then don't show. Our words are often empty, and when that happens, it dehumanizes us. It removes one of the essential parts of our humanity, which is that our speech can be reliable. Frederick Buechner talked about this. He said, there is perhaps nothing that so marks us as human as the gift of speech. By speaking, we can reveal the hiddenness of thought. We can express the subtlest as well as the most devastating of emotions. We can heal. We can make poems. We can pray. All of which is to say we can speak truth, the truth of what it is to be ourselves, to be with each other, to be in the world, and such speaking as that is close to what being human is all about. What makes lying, spin, and evil is not only that the world is deceived by it, but that we are dehumanized by it. A world of spin destroys us, friends. It's a con. And the truth is that our tendency towards deception actually isn't anything new. It's something that Jesus spent a lot of time talking about. In fact, it was a central part of his ministry. He found that his life, death, and resurrection were primarily, amongst many things, about addressing a lack of truthfulness in the world and about revealing to people what truth really was. He exposed the deceptive world and then said there is a path towards truth. And you can see it in his words. Look at John chapter 8. If you abide in my word, you truly are my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. And then just a few chapters later, he makes explicit what the truth is. He says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. If you're ever wondering what it means to live a true life, it's in Jesus. That's what he exemplified for us. And his strongest condemnations were for those who are deceptive, for those who spun things. And when I hear Jesus' words like that, and when I hear this, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, all week I've been asking, how? How do I do this? What does it really look like to overcome spin and deception? How do I become a person of truth? How do I become set free by truth? We're continuing in a teaching series here at Midtown. We're calling it The Great Con. We're going through the book of James, verse by verse. And each week, we're looking at a different con, a different lie that our culture has handed us. We're looking at the ways that James, every time, speaks to those cons and says, guys, you've missed it. That's not wisdom. That's what it means to be here. That's not what it means to be here. That's not what it means to be here. human. And today, we see how James responds in his time to the human tendency towards spin, towards deception. He actually borrows almost verbatim from the words of his brother Jesus. He shows us a pathway towards lives of truthfulness and commitment in a world of deception. So friends, if you have a Bible, open it with me to the book of James. We're going to be reading a grand total of one verse today. James chapter 5 verse 12 is where we're going to be. Because we're just reading one verse, I'm actually going to read it twice because I want these words to sink in. So as you listen, if you have a Bible open and you're following along, or if you follow along on the screen, just listen to these words and allow them to strike you where they need to strike you. This is James chapter 5 verse 12. Above all, my beloved, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your yes be yes and your no be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation. is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Over the last few weeks in this series, we've seen James dealing with some really serious and personal and seemingly obvious things. He's talked about greed and materialism. really obvious to us in our culture, as we talked about last week. He's talked about abuse of the poor, which is something that we universally agree is a bad thing. He's talked about anger and violence. And now, to top it all off, he seems to set us up for a pinnacle. In verse 12, he says, Above all, above all these things that I've been talking about, here's what you guys need to focus on. Oaths. Oaths, which I was like, that feels like a letdown, James. Like, you've been talking about these major things. Now, oaths? Above all, my beloved, do not swear either by heaven or earth or any other oath. And for me, I'm just like, well, that sounds actually pretty easy. I have sworn to heaven exactly zero times this last week. I don't have to worry about what James... I'm good at this, right? The rest of James' teaching are really convicting. This is... I'm a pro. I got this nailed, right? And maybe you feel the same way. Maybe you're like, man, this feels archaic and old, and I don't really swear oaths. If that's in your mind, just know that as your pastor, I am here to squelch all of that little joy in you this morning. This has incredible implications for us today. James is... speaking about a specific problem in his context about oath swearing. We have to remember, though, that this is wisdom literature. And great wisdom literature always uses examples that speak beyond themselves to every context. And when we better understand what James was addressing to people in his time, we'll find that these words actually pierce us just as powerfully. We've just got to do a little digging to get there. So today, in America, in the year 2024, the year of our Lord, we live in primarily a written... culture. Not an oral culture. So, when we make oaths, when we make commitments or promises, it's often through signing documents. In our time, we find that when you sign a contract, and that signing is witnessed by other people, it's more binding than your word. And we're signing contracts all the time. Housing contracts, payment agreement, those endless iPhone terms and conditions that really probably could say you've sold your soul to Steve Jobs, but we never read them, so we don't know, right? We're always signing things. But in Jesus' day, it was an oral. So, public oral promises were the way all of that went down. Just an example story to illustrate this. Imagine, Philip the Pharisee lives next door to Joshua the Jewish man. And Philip has some amazing donkeys, because he's a wealthy guy. And these donkeys help him with his work, they help him with his transportation, and so forth. And Joshua, his neighbor, not as wealthy, doesn't have as great of donkeys, and he gets a summons from the Roman Empire that's going to require him to travel two days, and his donkeys ain't going to get him there. They're going to have a flat tire, like, two days into the journey, or a day into the journey. And so, he approaches his neighbor, Philip. He's like, hey, Philip, my man, I don't have donkeys that can get me here. Can I borrow your donkeys? And so, Joshua and Philip would strike up an oral contract. They wouldn't sign terms and conditions. They'd make a claim, an oath. Joshua would swear with other witnesses present to bring the donkey back, and also to pay for the money that Philip lost along the way, and oftentimes add a little bit, like, an eighth as sort of a good faith statement. And to seal the deal, they'd, they'd, vow something. They'd make an oath. I swear by the Lord to bring your donkeys back to you, as some people would say. And so, in that time, oaths and vows, they were methods to hold people accountable. They were ways of invoking some larger authority to show that you meant business and could be trusted. And the Old Testament actually speaks regularly about how important it is to keep your oaths and vows. Deuteronomy 23, put it this way. If you vow to the Lord your God, do not postpone fulfilling it. For the Lord your God will surely require it, and you would incur guilt. But if you refrain from vowing, you will not incur guilt. Whatever your lips utter, you must diligently perform, just as you have freely vowed to the Lord your God with your own mouth. And notice in that passage, it's not required to make an oath. You don't have to. Ideally, your word can be trusted. Ideally, you can make dealings with your neighbors for their donkeys without having to make an oath. But the reality is, the Bible knows that humans can be deceptive. So it says, as an accountability measure, make an oath. If it's helpful, make an oath, and then live up to what you say. You can keep going in the Old Testament. You see this. Ecclesiastes 5. When you make a vow to God, do not delay fulfilling it. For he has no pleasure in fools. Fulfill what you vow. Psalm 50, 14. Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and pay your vows to the Most High. There are countless more passages like this, references to oaths and vows. They were standard practice in the ancient world. But then, something started to change a few centuries before Jesus came onto the scene. Out of respect, for God's name, Israelites stopped saying God's name, Yahweh, out loud. Which meant they had a problem. I can't swear by the Lord anymore. I can't swear by the name of the Lord, so what do I swear by? And they started coming up with God-adjacent things to swear by. That's what James mentions here. I swear by the heavens. I swear by the earth. Jesus mentions it in another passage. I swear by the hair on my head. Whatever it is, they found alternate things to swear by. But because those things weren't swearing to God directly, people started to take advantage of them. They had differentiation in truth. They started to come up with loopholes. They were like, well, I swore, but I didn't swear to God. So I'm not really that bound to it. I swore by the hairs on my head, and I'm actually bald. So it's fine. I don't have to live up to that vow. Degrees of truthfulness started to come into the culture. Your word only mattered in certain situations under certain conditions which you defined. I only have to tell the truth if I swear to God, and if I'm on another oath, it doesn't matter. I can fudge the truth. I can hedge my bets. I can find a loophole. And so oaths in Jesus' time became consistently abused. People's words became deceptive and untruthful. And they'd swear to all sorts of things to make themselves look legit or to get their way on the front end, and then they'd back out because those things weren't really binding. Oaths became sort of the ancient version of crossing your fingers behind your back or hiding something in the fine print. Became like that mafia boss in the movie who you know is untrustworthy, but still makes the claim, I swear on my mother's grave, right? Like that sort of thing. You know it's not legit, but it still happens.

I was working on that all week. No, not actually. Not actually. Not actually.

But that's what James is so concerned with here. People saying things and making claims and committing themselves to something and then backing out. He's concerned about truthfulness and commitment because they're flying out the window. And he's actually echoing a statement of Jesus almost verbatim. Jesus says the same words, in the Sermon on the Mount. I say to you, do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king. Do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your word be yes, yes, or no, no. Anything more than that is from the evil one. Dallas Willard beautifully summarizes Jesus' words and the problem that started to exist at the time in his book, The Divine Conspiracy. He says, the essence of swearing that Jesus targets here is about indignation. Invoking something or someone else, especially God, to make your own words more significant or weighty. The aim is to impress others with your seriousness or piety so that you can get what you want. It's a device of manipulation designed to override the judgment or input of others in order to possess them for our purposes. It's manipulation. Or, as we say in our culture, spin. And Jesus says it's evil. Instead of loving and honoring others with truthfulness, the intent is to get one's way by verbal manipulation of the thoughts and choices of others. Oof. Big yikes. Manipulation of my word and truth at your expense to get what I want or to look a certain way or to back out of my commitments. It's not just white lies, friends. They're actively destroying trust and relationship. And the results spoke for themselves. Jesus' culture became a culture of spin. Truth no longer mattered. People said one thing and lived another. People used spiritual knowledge. People used spiritualized language to manipulate their neighbors. People communicated an image of themselves that was not aligned with reality. People had words that were meaningless and no one could trust anyone else. Can you imagine living in that type of culture? Can you imagine what it would be like to live in a culture of spin?

Guys, it's just as pertinent for us. We may not make oral contracts to borrow donkeys anymore, although if you're doing that, I'm fascinated to know the life that you're living. But we are just as prone to spinning the truth. We're just as prone to lying and deceiving, using empty words that we don't really mean. We're just as prone to falling through on our commitments. There's a reason that after talking about big things like adultery and murder and anger, Jesus talks about this. It's just as important in our lives and just as important for us in the 21st century. David Brooks, who's a columnist for the New York Times, actually wrote an amazing article on this not long ago. He said that we live in the golden age of bailing on commitments. That we are bailing sorts of people. He wrote this. All across America, people are deciding on Monday that it would be really fantastic to go grab a drink with X on Thursday. But then when Thursday actually rolls around and they realize it would be more fantastic to go home, flop on their bed, and watch TikTok. And so they send the bailing text, which we've all gotten, and I would say many of us have sent. So sorry, I'm just going to have to flake on drinks tonight. Overwhelmed. My grandma just got bubonic plague. Whatever else. Bailing is one of the defining acts of the current moment because it stands at the nexus of larger trends. The ambiguity of modern social relations. The fraying of commitment. The ethic of flexibility ushered in by the smartphone. And he goes on to describe how all of this can be traced back to a lack of honesty. A lack of honesty with ourselves and a lack of honesty with others ultimately destroys our integrity. He says, bailing begins with a certain psychological malady. With a person who has enthusiasm for other people but a limited self-knowledge about what his or her own future desires will look like. And so in the abstract, the offer to meet up with an interesting person seems great. Or at least marginal. And the people pleaser wants to make everybody happy so says yes to every invitation with the unconscious knowledge that they're going to just back out later. And the moment of cold reality doesn't hit you until you look at your calendar and you find you have five different commitments at 4 p.m. on Tuesday next week and not a free evening until 2027. And a fog of anxiety descends and good intentions are dashed and the bailer starts bailing. In other words, friends, we aren't honest with ourselves about our own capacities and desires. Which makes us dishonest. We become dishonest with others. We become not committed to what we say and we just throw words around because we want to appear a certain way, we want to look nice, we want to feel nice, but don't really mean what we say. And when it comes time to own up to what we said, we bail. We need a solution. Us bailing people to spin and non-commitment and empty words. And James gives it to us alongside Jesus. They both say, let your yes be yes and your no be no. Two basic truths in this. Basic characteristics they're saying we need to embody. First, truthfulness. Become people who tell the truth. Simply. Stop trying to spin things. Stop trying to hide important things through half-truths. Stop saying things that you don't mean. Stop using language as a tool to benefit you at the expense of others. And the second thing in the yes, be yes, and no be no command is commitment. We need to become people who stick with what we say. We need to stop pretending like certain commitments don't matter because we said them in a certain moment or a certain context. We need to stop waffling back and forth based upon our feelings or our momentary desires. We need to be committed people. Truthfulness. Commitment. Tell the truth and stick with it. That's the solution to spin. And at first, when I read that, it seems a little obvious because I've been told not to lie my whole life. I've been told the importance of integrity my whole life. Right? You guys remember the 90s motivational posters? Remember these guys? One random word and then like pictures of trees? This will make kids behave well. Integrity. It's on the wall. Right? That's how it works.

No, the truth is just knowing something doesn't mean we're able to do it. And no matter how much we repeat it in our classrooms, it's very clear in our culture it's not working. And so in this teaching this week, when I was pouring over this verse, I kept thinking, how is this going to speak to me? How does this need to speak to my heart right now? And what I found is that these teachings are far more than motivational posters. I'm not going to give you integrity on a poster to take home today. These are foundationally important topics and we need to dig into why they're important. We need to know the why behind it and then we need practical ways. Once we've understood the why, we need to know practical ways to implement it. So that's what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about three reasons that commitment and truthfulness are so important and then four quick tools. Three reasons, four tools for you to start to implement this in your life. Reason number one, that truthfulness and commitment are so important, they are easily overlooked. There are lots of issues in our lives that are obvious. Anger towards others is something that is very clearly and outrightly visible. Our materialism, what we talked about last week, it's evident in every commercial and every purchase. Adultery, obvious thing, right? No one wakes up and says, you're not my spouse, right? They know. They know what they've done. We know it's obvious. But this, truthfulness, it's not so obvious. It goes down a little easier for us. We sort of just learn to live with spin and manipulation, especially in our culture. When everyone's spinning truth or misrepresenting things or bailing, we sort of just expect that's how it's going to go. It's the water we swim in. But that's precisely why it's so dangerous and why we need to call it out on a consistent basis in ourselves and others. Because if we're not careful, we'll become frogs in a kettle. You guys familiar with that experiment? Back in the 19th century, researchers found that if you boil a pot of water and try to toss a frog into it, they won't stay. It's too hot. But if you toss a frog into non-boiling water, just kind of tepid water, and then start to turn up the heat, slowly, they won't recognize and they'll cook. The reality is that the conditions, if they're calm enough and just slowly increasing enough, nothing will change in us. We need, that's how our culture works, and we need to remember how boiling the water of untruthfulness really is. Most of us live in a culture of spin and slowly over time we just get acclimated to the water and we get cooked. And I'll speak this from my own life, personal example. When I was in my early elementary years, first, second grade-ish, I distinctly remember my favorite T-shirt. It was this cool textured black shirt and across the right chest it had the inscription, insignia in script writing, Hawaii. Okay, it wasn't actually that cool, but I thought it was the sickest thing ever, first, second grade. And I loved it so much. It was also around the time that Lilo and Stitch came out. You guys remember Lilo and Stitch? So Hawaii was on my brain. I thought Hawaii was the coolest place. I'm like, you know what? I'm going to start telling people I'm from Hawaii. That's where my people hail from. And I started wearing a puka shell necklace, too. I was a surfer from Hawaii and quickly my teachers and classmates found this out, called me out, talked to my parents like, hey, Clint's not really being truthful here about where he's from. And that seems really small on the front end, but in hindsight, I now see there was something in me that wanted to present a certain way. And because I wanted to present a certain way, I started to spin my life. And over time, friends, that habit developed in me. That habit was long cultivated. In high school, I'd exaggerate plays I made in sports when retelling the stories. The fish was how big, Tobin? This big. I'd start to lie to people about, this is a legit thing I do, I lied to people about my senior year batting average because I knew they couldn't find out. I wanted to look better. I'd regularly snag answers on calculus homework at the last minute from folks and turn it as my work. I'd hide my sinful behavior from folks or I'd half share to look vulnerable but not too vulnerable. In college, some of the most important relationships in my life had no idea some of the hidden things that I had and it led to some of the hardest conversations that I've ever had. Years of my life, I was like a frog in a kettle, bit by bit, developing untruthfulness, developing deception and the water temperature just kept rising. And friends, I can say this with complete confidence, without the grace and love of Jesus and a community of people who encouraged me bit by bit to tell the truth, I would still be posturing today, I'd still be spinning today in the same ways because that's how it works in our culture. We get praised by the public image that we present. There's a brilliant psychiatrist named M. Scott Peck who wrote about this. We often think that, oh, children are really innocent. M. Scott Peck, who's a psychiatrist who had thousands of hours of research, he said, no, no, it's not true. In his research and experience, he found that children always lie naturally. And so it always confused him when people were like, why is there so much evil in the world? He's like, this is how the world works. We're evil from the start. Psychiatrists know this and physicists know this. In the physical world, things continue to decay. It's the second law of thermodynamics. Things break down. He said the same thing is true in our moral lives. If we aren't intentional, he wrote this in his book, People of the Lie. He said, the tendency to lie is absolutely natural in the child. And if not checked, leads to deeper and deeper evil. That children lie and steal and cheat and want to make reality what they want it to be is routinely observable. The fact that some people grow into honest adults is absolutely remarkable.

If we're not careful, you guys, we will become frogs in kettles. So let James' words send you into some reflection. Think back through your week. Where were you prone to spin? Where were you prone to half-truths or exaggerations or withholding truth? Don't discount even the smallest things because they grow into the biggest things. That's actually the second reason that truthfulness is so important that we see in this passage. The small things matter just as much as the big things. See, in James' day, people were discounting their oaths because they were like, well, it wasn't that big of an oath. I didn't swear to God. It was to heaven or earth or the temple or just my bald head. It wasn't binding. But the principle that James and Jesus lay out here is clear. This is a false distinction because everything is God's. Everything you swear to is a swear to God because God owns everything, your body and your speech. There is nothing you can swear to that's not God's. The heavens, that's where his throne is. The earth, that's his footstool. There's no word you can utter that is not in some way already God's and seen by God. Every word is observed. I'll put it this way. If you knew that tomorrow, on Monday, a camera would follow you everywhere, see and record what you said, and then on Tuesday, play the tape to 20 million people. Would your Monday be different than every other Monday?

That's the situation we're in before God. Even the smallest parts of our lives, even the little words and relationships are gifts from him and so the ways we treat them are of eternal importance. There is no such thing as levels of truth because everything we say is part of our eternal being and is influencing eternal beings around us. Dallas Willard famously liked to remind his listeners and readers of this truth. Everyone in this room and the scriptures remind us of this too. You are an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God's great universe. You are an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God's great universe. That's what the scriptures say about us. And if that's true, then every word has eternal significance. Our truthfulness and our commitment to our word is shaping us moment by moment into certain types of people. And our capacity to tell the truth and the big stuff is always going to be dependent on our ability to tell the truth and the small stuff. You cannot grow a capacity for truthfulness in the big matters if you don't already do it in the little matters. That's why Jesus said this in Luke 16, whoever is faithful in little is also faithful in much. And whoever is dishonest in little is dishonest in much. And finally, the third reason, the truthfulness and commitment are so important. They're the only way we can have a lasting identity. Friends, we only know who we are based on our truthfulness and our commitment. That flies in the face of our culture. Our culture tells us that you find your identity when you are free from obligation and commitment. When you are a free agent, the way to find your identity is to place your feelings and desires in the driver's seat of life. Which means don't commit to things because what if your feelings change later? So don't get married. Just live together and if your feelings change, you can dip out. Don't join a church. Just visit when it's convenient. Don't commit to friendships. Just be around for a little while while it's convenient for you. Keep your options open. That's what it means to live a free life. A free and full life. And that feels freeing initially but in the end, friends, it's a prison because it means you're constantly subject to your fickle feelings which will change from day to day, even moment to moment. If you never make a commitment, you can never know who you really are and each day you have to wake up and decide based on your feelings who you are again. That is captivity, not freedom. Every day is an identity crisis because you're not committed to anything beyond what you feel. But when we make a commitment, when we speak the truth and follow through on it, we find that we can stay consistent even when our feelings change and we remember who we are. We have a solid identity.

Example of this. Since Emily and I got married, she has lived with five different men. All of them are me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Held in tension.

In our seven and a half years of being married, my feelings, my goals, my capacities, my desires have all changed. And if I didn't commit to her, if we didn't commit to one another in the way we did, if we didn't commit to say that our lives were about illustrating the love of Christ, to others, about encouraging one another to grow in Christ-likeness and giving ourselves away for the sake of our neighbor, if we didn't agree to that together, oh man, we would have bailed long ago because we've changed. We're different people than we were. But because of our commitment, we can stay strong even when feelings change. We remember who we are because of the commitments we make, because of our speech, because we've said we're going to be this and not this. That gives us an identity. Lewis Smedes, a great theologian and author, put it this way. Just as forgiveness is the one way to be free from your painful past, so promising commitment is the only way to be free from your unpredictable future. But it's not only that I know myself in the mirror of my promises. My people, the ones who belong to me, who depend on me, also know me by the promises I make. What I promise is what I am and will be to them. Only if they really know what I am can they live with me in trust. They know me in the important way, not by reading my therapist notes, but by knowing my power to keep promises. the only way we can be truly human, friends. That's what separates us from animals. Animals are compelled by instinct, by visceral desire. Computers are controlled by programming. To have a real identity, to claim and make a stake on something is to be committed. You have to show up. You have to be truthful. You have to be committed or else you will never have an identity.

Truthfulness and commitment. Because they're easy to overlook, because the small things matter as much as the big things, and because they are essential to having an identity, we need to learn how to practice them. So here's four tools we can use, four quick tools that we can start to integrate into our lives to practice truthfulness and commitment. Tool number one. Set a humility time in prayer. Once a week for 30 minutes or once a day for 10 minutes, set aside humility time. Sit briefly in God's love for you. Remember that you are an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal identity in God's great universe. Remember that's who you are. You are beloved by God. And then from that place of love, look back on your day or your week and reflect on what you said, did, or committed to. And be honest. Be honest before God. Did you exaggerate? Did you go back on something you had said you'd do? Did you embellish the truth? Did you use the truth as a weapon against others to appear a certain way when that's not really how you are? And then confess those things to God. He promises. He forgives you. And when you confess those things to him, you receive forgiveness. You can now live out of a different identity. And you can say, God, by your spirit, make me into a truthful person. We need to do this sort of reflection in our lives. Prayer is not just asking God for things, friends. It's reflecting on who we are in God, being honest and open and humble before him. When we do that well, we can start to see truthfulness grow in us. That's tool number one. Tool number two, make a commitment card. Set aside some time to write out the things you are most committed to, the things that determine who you are. So write out, I am committed to following Jesus. I am committed to being a part of a community that follows Jesus. I am committed to loving my kids well. I am committed to loving my neighbors well, to serving others, to using my gifts in the workplace, whatever it is for you, to studying hard. Write out the things that you have committed yourself to and then post those commitments somewhere where you will see them every day. Post a note on your mirror, index card in your pocket, a note on your phone, whatever. And look at them every day to remember who you are and who you aren't. That will enable you to live truthfully. If you don't, eventually some other messaging about who you are will infringe. You need a commitment card. You need to remind yourself again and again who you are. Tool number three. Simplify your speech. Pay close attention to the words you use and simplify them. Don't use your words flippantly and loosely. Be sure that when you say yes or no, it aligns with the yes or no that's going on in your heart. Don't say, I'll pray for you unless you're going to do it. Don't say, I'll be there unless you've already blocked it off in your mind. Don't over-calendar. Live the same way when people aren't looking as when they are. And another big one. This is one that the church always needs to hear. Don't over-deify your language. Don't put too much God talk in your speech. That's what a lot of people were doing back in the day and Jesus is saying it's deceptive sometimes. We love over-deifying our language because it makes us look a certain way. God has called me to this.

God led me to break up with you. I don't know what it's been. Stuff can be damaging. That doesn't mean that God doesn't call. That doesn't mean that God doesn't speak to us. He definitely does. But we should be really, really clear that he is before we start throwing that language around. And if he hasn't, it's okay to say, you know, this seemed like the wise thing to do based on my prayer and my reading of scripture. This made sense. It's okay to say, I'm pretty satisfied with this choice. You don't have to say, God has given me peace on it if you don't know for sure. Simplify your speech. And tool number four, friends. Return your gaze to Christ. For all of us, the example and power of Jesus is what enables any truthfulness to happen. Because it's Christ who lived truthfully. It's Christ who was committed to a life of wholeness and restoration even when it cost him everything. He lived a life of love and truth and commitment. The life that we have all failed to live. And in his death, he put to death untruthfulness and spin and flakiness. In his resurrection, he shows us the same power that he had can live in us. When we draw near to him, he draws near to us. When we put our trust in him, he strengthens us. It's Christ, the truth teller, who says this about you, friends. You are loved by God.

Deeply beloved. Let that truth speak to you. And let it shape you in a person who tells the truth about others in the world. You can live simply as the beloved of Christ. Return your gaze to him. Let his life, death, and resurrection compel you to live your heart. Melt your heart again. Because the spin ain't worth it. It's a con. Live truthfully. Because Christ is clear. The truth will set you free. Let's pray, friends.