He looked up at the circle of friends around him. Setting on the library table the speech he had been drafting, he awaited their responses.

The opinions given were blunt and critical. One by one, each of the party leaders urged him to rewrite. They argued that the course outlined in the speech as written would certainly lose the Senate race. Their counsel: focus on the issues assuring audience appeal and delete controversial remarks - even if the candidate did believe such remarks expresses the critical issue the election. Only one of the dozen insiders recommended the speech be delivered as written.

The opening paragraph of the speech Lincoln's associates tried to stop him from delivering: "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the farther spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belier that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States...."

This was not the first time the 49-year old candidate had faced the dilemma of deciding between what is moral and what "works." As a young lawyer, he had turned down questionable cases. He had even engaged a case and then - being convinced his client's position was dishonest - refused to proceed.

No, he was no stranger to moral dilemma. Nor was he unsettled in how to deal with such a dilemma.

"Friends," the lanky figure answered his comrades in their backroom conference, "...if it has been decreed that I should go down because of this speech, then let me go down linked to the truth - let me die in the advocacy of what is just and right."

The decision made, he gave his "no compromise" speech the next day. As his friends predicted, he received a storm of angry letters from fellow party members - and he lost the election five months later.

The idealist had cast his lot for speaking truthfully - and lost. This, he concluded, was the end of his political prospects. Yet he had no regrets.

"Though I now sink out of view and shall be forgotten," he wrote to a friend a few days after the election, "I believe I have made some marks which will tell...long after I am gone."

Speaking the truth does not always bring hoped-for results. Honesty may be the best policy, but telling the truth frequently costs along the way.

Nevertheless, it was the firm conviction of the lawyer who lost the 1858 Senate race that some things are more important than success. His name: Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln did eventually win his place in politics. Defeated in 1858, "Honest Abe" was called to run again in 1860 - in the race for the White House. When he decided to establish his national platform on speaking the truth, he had no assurance of the future. Yet that platform eventually carried him to the White House.

Truthfulness is the conviction that telling the truth is right, whether or not we live to see its vindication. The first measure of truthfulness is a person's willingness to speak what is true, regardless of the immediate outcome.

TRUTHFULNESS ON THE JOB

Abe Lincoln had learned as a child to speak the truth, plain and simple. His step-mother once said of him: "He never told me a lie in his life, never evaded...nor turned a corner to avoid any chastisement or other responsibility...."

The strength to speak truthfully in the face of "big-time pressure" only develops as one builds the habit of truthfulness in little things. Abe Lincoln was honest at home and on the job, and he thereby developed the moral courage to be honest before the entire nation.

Build truthfulness by telling the truth in your daily conversations, both at home and on the job.

TRUTHFULNESS WITH BALANCE

The facts can be hard. Telling the truth is frequently uncomfortable.

Although truthfulness is being more committed to what is true than to comfort, truthfulness must be kept in balance with benevolence. Benevolence is "giving to others' basic needs without having as my motive personal reward."

Truth should always be spoken with the best intentions. To speak information about others with malicious motives - true or not - reaches beyond truthfulness into slander.

Speak the truth, and speak the truth with benevolence.

TRUTHFULNESS VS. DECEPTION

Earning future trust by accurately reporting past facts

It is from the Old English treowe - meaning "firm; trustworthy; faithful" - that we get the word truth. The words trust, truce, and troth (as in betroth) also derive from treowe.

A truthful person gives a report that is faithful to the facts. This may be seen in actions as well as words. For example, a soldier who refuses a bribe is true to his oath and to the nation whose uniform he wears.

Honesty, a synonym of truthfulness, is from the Latin word honos or "honor."

truth·ful·ness n 1: habitually representing the truth; telling the facts 2: corresponding with what is genuine or real 3: speaking the truth with sincerity

Truthfulness is the consistency of an object, a word, or an action to the pattern by which it is measured. Truth can be spoken of in terms of the natural world, moral absolutes, or factual events.

NATURAL TRUTH

In the natural universe, something that is out of line with its standard is said to be "out of true." For example, a plumb line is used by masons to lay bricks. By using a plumb line, bricks can be stacked in a straight line as measured against gravity. The pull of gravity is the ultimate standard by which the "uprightness" of a wall is identified as true of not.

MORAL TRUTH

After the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as its official religion in the fourth century A.D., the Christian Bible provided the standard by which moral actions were measured throughout most of Western culture. With the Enlightenment of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the scientific method provided for many an alternate means of measuring right and wrong, truth and falsehood. In the present era, often called postmodernism, some question the validity of the category - whether or not there really is a universal standard for measuring moral truth.

FACTUAL TRUTH

In the flow of human events, the truth of a report is measured by its consistency with the actual event being reported. If a person accurately represents what took place the day before, he is speaking truthfully. However, if he embellishes the report, his words are no longer consistent with reality and thus are not true. Real events are the

THINK TRUTHFULNESS 1. What are three top reasons a person would lie? Talk about whether the reasons you list really "pay off" in the end. 2. When is silence a lie? 3. Have you ever had an experience like Lincoln, who told the truth and lost initially, but won in the long run? “An honest man will receive neither money nor praise that is not his due.” - Benjamin Franklin

ultimate standard by which factual truth is measured

TRUTHFULNESS AT HOME

Abe Lincoln was significantly influenced by a biography of George Washington that he read as a child. Washington's example of truthfulness motivated young Abe Lincoln to be truthful at all times.

Read to your children about Abe Lincoln and other honest heroes. Providing positive role models of good character is critical for them.

Character definitions and information used by permission. Copyright Character Training Institute. www.characterfirst.com
 

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