(50)Clearing Our Minds…Sincerely Yours?

by Eugene Higgins

Sincerely Yours?

My very much older sister Lois (Thompson) and significantly older brother Sandy (Dr. Higgins), together with their spouses, are the kind of godly, gracious, generous siblings and relatives that anyone could wish to have and would be wise to emulate. We had parents who feared the Lord and did their best to bring us up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord while, simultaneously, bringing us up in the city of Philadelphia, where Elysian fields were rare. Consequently, theirs was a task of Brobdingnagian proportions. Their home-calls, in 1980 and 2000, left us saddened, of course, and taught me the truth of Proverbs 14:26 (“his children shall have a place of refuge.”) More than likely, “his children” is a reference to the previous statement and means that “the children of one who fears the Lord” will have a place of refuge. It is a great source of comfort (a refuge) to be able to look back on the reverence and spirituality of parents when they are taken to glory.

However, there is this to be said about our childhood experience in that home in Philly: whenever we children got the bazaar notion into our heads that the family was a democracy, my mother quite firmly, (as only an Italian mother can), reminded us that it was actually a monarchy (in fact, she may have considered it a monocracy!) She would do this with a phrase that I thought horribly unfair and terribly iron-fisted. It was, “Because I said so!“ Those words were “an end of all strife,” allowing no dialogue, discussion, or deal-making. Either we dutifully did what we were commanded to do or we faced dire (physical) consequences. For some reason, of all three of us children, I know this the best, experientially. For many of my adolescent years, I believed (viscerally) that those words – “Because I said so!” – were appallingly unjust and annoyingly dictatorial. Then I became a father. It was amazing how quickly I came to view that parental fiat in its true light. How could I have been so blind! Now the saying seemed so wisely judicious, so unquestionably fair, so beneficially sapient, so undeniably sensible that I marveled that my own children could not see the insurmountable logic involved.

But obey we did as children – not because we were lower down on the food chain and they had the keys to the kitchen – but because they were our parents, they loved and cared for us, and we knew they were sacrificing to try to provide us with the best life possible. And, most important of all, there was no hypocrisy in their life. They didn’t send us to meetings, they took us. They didn’t applaud divine truth, they applied it in their lives. They didn’t simply like the Gospel message they lived it and spread it. (Many times I watched my father come home needing to clean the Gospel sign he had worn at some parade or large gathering in the city. The sign, and sometimes he, would bear the marks of things that had been thrown at it and him.) It’s that undeniable reality, that absence of hypocrisy in them, that I wish were better mirrored in my own life.

And it is the presence of hypocrisy in high places, so vividly on display today, that is galling. Politicians have warned us that it is the heights of irresponsibility for us to leave our houses … and then they slip away to exercise at health clubs. Scientists have decreed that we must isolate or perish … and then violate that rule for their own personal pleasure. Mayors and governors have shut down cities and whole states … only to be seen golfing or engaging in activity forbidden to the masses. We are constantly told that we must make sacrifices and metaphorically tighten our belts while the ones pontificating to us are literally tightening their grip on golf clubs and lat machines.

How important is sincerity! It is a Christian trait – or at least ought to be. The preachers of a past day, from whom we benefitted immensely, taught us that “sincere” meant pure, undiluted, and “without wax.” They taught us that customers in ancient agoras would hold up vessels to the sunlight to gauge whether there was any wax “filler.” If that generation of ministering men knew that modern linguists have doubts that that is the true etymology of the word, they would (to quote a marvelous malapropism) “roll over in their grave if they were alive today.” We may not be clear where the word came from; we are clear what it leads to – a life that is free from pretense or deceit and that therefore can stand the scrutiny of critical eyes. I tend to think the old preachers might have been right about that “without wax” definition, since one of the Greek words used for our English word, “sincere,” means “judged by sunlight.” It suggests a life with no darkness, nothing hidden or duplicitous. A wonderful example of that is evident in Paul’s words: “But [we] have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God” (2 Cor 4:2). It is what people mean when they say someone’s life is “an open book.”

The word “sincere” and its cognates will provide you a rich field of study if you have a few spare moments. There are 4 or 5 Greek words employed in the NT to convey this. Nouns are variously translated as sincerity, incorruption, immortality; adjectives as: own (as in “own” or “genuine” son), pure, and true.

Sincerity is part of the emulative life that Titus was (and we are) exhorted to live: “In all things shewing thyself a pattern of good works: in doctrine shewing uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity, sound speech, that cannot be condemned; that he that is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of you” (Titus 2:7).

In “Gleanings from the Life of Charles Morton,” one of those “must-read” books in the “must-read” Pioneer series, a fellow laborer writes of hearing Mr. Morton pray this, “Oh, God, I would rather be a real farthing in Thy service than a counterfeit £5 note.” Forget the amounts involved (that prayer was uttered in the 1800s and the amount would now be close to £600). The point of the prayer is not the currency but the contrast between “real” and counterfeit.” It was a prayer for help to live life as an open book – to be sincere.

Years ago, the late Mr. Charles Strom was a very wonderful and faithful elder in the Pennsauken assembly. His immediate supervisor was asked to give an appraisal of his workers, one of whom was Mr. Strom. Sometime later, when the boss received the appraisal, he showed it to Mr. Strom, grinning as he did so. The appraisal read: “One of Charles’s strong points is integrity.” A footnote was added. “P.S. This can be very inconvenient at times.”

When someone is marked by integrity, and will neither lie to you or for you, “it can be very inconvenient at times.” What it cannot be is confusing – you know the character of a person like that. He is an open book.

In “William Chalmers Burns, China’s Man of the Book,” the author, Agnes Clarke, quotes Hudson Taylor’s words about his older friend and senior missionary: “William Burns is better for me than a college course with all its advantages, because right here in China is lived out before me all that I long to be as a missionary.”

Living under the eye of God; living out before others; living as we ought; known for our integrity; perhaps that is part of what Paul had in mind when he wrote: “That ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ” (Php 1:10).

The famous doxology we so often sing, (“Praise God from Whom all blessings flow”), is actually the 11th and last verse of a long hymn by Thomas Ken. Here are the third and fourth verses:

By influence of the Light divine
Let thy own light to others shine.
Reflect all Heaven’s propitious ways
In ardent love, and cheerful praise.

In conversation be sincere;
Keep conscience as the noontide clear;
Think how all seeing God thy ways
And all thy secret thoughts surveys.

Since many will never read the Book God has inspired, it would be wonderful if we could all live as an open book, sincere, and real before God, before His people, and before the world. “Now therefore fear the LORD, and serve Him in sincerity and in truth” (Josh 24:14).

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