"HONEST 'TO!"

A four-year-old boy came out of the bathroom rushing on his feet as he would bawl.  His father learned subsequently the boy dropped his toothbrush in the toilet bowl.  So, the father fished the toothbrush out and threw it in the garbage bin.  His perplexed child just stood idly nearby while thinking for a moment.

Then he ran to the Master’s bathroom and came out with his father’s toothbrush.  And with chivalrous resolve and a charming little smile, he said as he held it up:

"We better throw then this one out too, 'cause it fell in the bowl a few days ago!”

What can I say?  What an honest lad.  We need more people like him so bad.

Meanwhile, I laughed at myself after I nearly fell off my chair in surprise yesterday upon reading the heading of a front page news item of the Inquirer, a respected national daily.  It said that, finally, there were two honest persons in the House [of the Representatives], but when I continued reading, I horribly found out they happened to be janitors “only.” 

(My apologies to janitors, my “only” doesn’t mean to demean or debase you.  That’s why I put it in quotation marks, I knew it you’re more honest than a CEO.) 

Considering the natural covetous character of a human being plus financial humps he would hurdle every day, the exemplary deeds of those two honest janitors should be consistently treated as great news on any given day. 

But it would have been much greater news if the honest two were bona fide members of Congress, so-called wielder of power of the purse, in cash or in kind.  Yeah, if so, then it would be truly sensational, a real scoop, and not quite a few citizens could expect that for weeks, the news would simply grab the headline.

For there’s a traditional belief that finding two honest congressmen anywhere within the Lower House’s area, would be like finding ten just persons in the then notoriously popular cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.  But of course, let me say here such kind of belief could also be mistaken.  There may have not just two, who knows, there could be three of them.

I think, like what is believed by everybody, an honest man is a good man to me.  Or, better man, or better yet, best man, simply because honesty is the best policy.  To be best, err, honest, a Christian is definitely not a Christian unless he is honest.  Others may never know he’s telling a lie but God sees the heart, to say the least (I Samuel 16:7).

We can fool other people but not Him, as what every believer knows full well.  For “the eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the [good and the evil]” (Proverbs 15:3).