Honesty IS the Best Policy!

This past week in the United Kingdom, we have witnessed the most extraordinary scenes in our Houses of Parliament. Members of Parliament (MPs) have been rushing to pay back money to the Government that they should never have taken!

All MPs are rightfully entitled to claim for necessary expenses in doing their job, but for years there has been a culture of dishonesty in the seat of government. Many MPs, of all political parties, have been caught red-handed claiming money by way of expenses which had nothing whatsoever to do with the job they were doing. And the nation is outraged.

These people, who are responsible for putting laws into place which other people have to obey, have been systematically and dishonestly milking the system for their own benefit. But now they’ve been exposed (by a national newspaper), they are all desperately trying to pay the money back, thinking that if they pay it back they can get away with keeping their reputation. Never before have I seen such public hypocrisy.

I fear for our nation when such unrighteousness is at its core. As our scripture for today says, thrones (governments) are established through righteousness. The converse of this is that governments are destroyed by unrighteousness.

But before we all get on our very high horses and come down with a heavy hand of judgement upon these men and women, who have certainly acted without integrity (not all MPs are implicated, many have acted with total honesty and not claimed moneys falsely), let us examine our own hearts.

Is it not possible that there could be many things in our own lives (things we think about, say or do) that are ungodly? And I wonder how we would be behaving now if a ‘Kingdom Newspaper’ were to publicly expose these things for everyone else to know about? My guess is that we might be moving very quickly to try and put things right!
One day, at the end of time, everything will be exposed. So perhaps we should all learn from this sad episode in our parliamentary history and seek to put things right in our own lives now, and not wait for the public exposure of eternity. In that way our lives, our families, our churches, our cities and even our nations can be established in righteousness – and be strong.

Prayer: Lord, we are sorry for the deceptions operating in both our nations and our private lives. I ask that you will forgive me for the hidden things in my life, and help me to put things right now, simply because you tell us in your Word what is right and what is wrong, and not because we have been forced to act because someone else exposes the reality. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.