THE PRICE OF ACCOUNTABILITY

Numbers 30:1-31:54; Luke 4:1-30; Psalm 63:1-11; Proverbs 11:20-21

 “A man who makes a vow to the Lord or makes a pledge under oath must never break it. He must do exactly what he said he would do.”

“Then Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan River. He was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where he was tempted by the devil for forty days. Jesus ate nothing all that time and became very hungry. Then the devil said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become a loaf of bread.’ But Jesus told him, ‘No! The Scriptures say, ‘People do not live by bread alone.’”

 “But the king will rejoice in God. All who trust in him will praise him, while liars will be silenced.”

“The Lord detests people with crooked hearts, but he delights in those with integrity.”

There is a clear message from Scripture today: we need to stick to our commitments.  Don’t make promises lightly, because their price is always answerability. But a person who chooses integrity regardless of the cost of accountability is a delight to the Lord. This is an especially relevant word in our present world of regrets and bailouts. Much, if not most, of our current situation has grown out of the fact that trust has been breached and faith has been lost. Certainly, we are reaping the results of putting our faith in the wrong things. More fundamentally, though, we have overreacted and now seem to be training ourselves to trust no one. With few willing to accept liability for their words and actions, there is little worthy of confidence.  However, a life without trust and faith is a cold, hard world indeed.

As a child and young teen, I had a speaking familiarity with integrity. My parents modeled it unflinchingly. But while I admired it in others, it didn’t fit my lifestyle particularly well. It was just easier to do what was comfortable, what I wanted, rather than what I’d previously promised. That was a frustrating time for my folks, as they punished, instructed and cajoled me into some semblance of responsibility. I just didn’t understand all the fuss. After all, I was not pathologic; I simply had a decided preference for the convenient and expedient. Then, I met my future wife. (I broke a date to go out with her – that should have been a warning sign, right?) We began getting to know each other. She trusted me. I went home for the summer and spent more time than I should have with an old female friend from high school. And when I returned to college, I had to face the look of hurt in my wife-to-be’s eyes as the truth eventually came out. She forgave me, but that was not the point. She needed me to change. She needed me to be the Christian and man I pretended to be.

That’s a lifelong project, not one I claim to have achieved. Nevertheless, I did finally face one truth: my saving grace is that I am a lousy liar. Even as a child, after uttering a lie, I would hyperventilate, a few times to the point of actually fainting. (True story!) So, the choice of trustworthiness eventually came pretty much by necessity. But the catalyst was actually seeing how much pain betrayal can cause…. And realizing that one of the toughest things to do in this life is to restore lost confidence. I am not sure trust ever can be fully re-earned once it has been lost.  It may be a gift only the injured can bestow through forgiveness.

When we injure or betray another by failing to do as we promised, we train that person to know trust is dangerous and sometimes painful. Many of the brokenhearted feel the risk of trust no longer worth the vulnerability.  That’s a lousy way to live, and Christians should have no part in causing it.