The Value of Truthfulness

Truthfulness is a most neglected virtue. There can be no fairness and no justice without it, not any real agreement. It is the basis of all honest relations, but no condition is as systematically violated. Falsehood is the chief agent in festering every kind of strife and playing on men’s passions. 

Selected facts, one-sided evidence, half-truths, distorted meanings, these are the habitual weapons of controversy, smoke clouds, and poison gas all in one. They embitter all human relations and are conspicuously active in the industrial and social fields. Surely the church can take a stand against this or is truthfulness not a Christian virtue? I sometimes wonder. But of this I am convinced, unless there is more regard for truth, there will be no improvement. It is the test of sincerity, and without sincerity, other virtues are vain, and social agreements are empty forms.