“When George Washington was six years old, he received a hatchet as a gift and damaged his father’s cherry tree with it. When his father discovered what George had done, he became angry. Young George bravely said, “I cannot tell a lie…I did cut it with my hatchet.” Washington’s father embraced him and declared that his son’s honesty was worth more than a thousand trees.”1
There’s one major problem with this story about honesty. It’s not honest! It never happened.
Washington’s first biographer was Mason Locke Weems, a traveling preacher who decided that the nation needed to immortalize the perfect example of leadership. What better way to do it than to create a lie that embellished and exalted our nation’s first leader. Money was also a motivating factor for concocting the lie. Stories like this would sell – and they did.
The story gets worse! William Holmes McGuffey, a Presbyterian pastor and educator, famous for the McGuffey Readers, believed in religion and morals. What better way to do that than to create a book for children that would present the lie as a truth so that kids could be shown an example of integrity?2
Does anyone else see the conflicts in all of this?
I always believed that this was a true story. Several years ago, I was reading something that declared this to be a myth. What?!?!? It couldn’t be! After some research, I was highly disappointed. Unfortunately, my disappointment was initially directed at George Washington. But he isn’t the one that lied. He was DEAD and had no control over what anyone wrote.
Weems and McGuffey are at fault. THEY are the ones that started and perpetuated the lie. How many more people through the years kept the lie going? I have to believe that many of those who continued spreading the story were completely innocent. They had no idea that what they had been told all those years was anything but truthful. Who would doubt the McGuffey readers?!?
Today is National Honesty Day. Truth. Honesty. Integrity. These are virtues whose value cannot be overstated. We are to be “truth dealers.” Everything that exits our mouths and the way in which we live our lives must exemplify honesty and integrity.
Romans 12:17 says, “Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men.” And 2 Corinthians 13:7 says, “Now I pray to God that ye do no evil; not that we should appear approved, but that ye should do that which is honest, though we be as reprobates.”
Coming at the topic from a different angle, Colossians 3:9 says, “Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds.” Anything less than honesty and integrity is a lie. I can’t find any gray, fuzzy area in the Scriptures that permits us to fudge the truth, embellish the story, or deceive.
Maybe we try to justify “a little white lie.” Someone asks us, “What do you think of this? How do I look in this? Does this make me look fat?” Right now, someone is saying, “Oh, I’m not going there! Do you realize how much trouble I’d be in if I did tell the truth?”
Now, think this through carefully. Ephesians 4:15 says, “But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.” In context, the passage speaks of truthfulness in the midst of spiritual lies. We are to share the truth of God’s Word. It is to be done in a loving way so that the person we are speaking to knows that we aren’t trying to be malicious or unkind. And, we can apply this to all of our speech.
If we have developed a reputation of truthful honesty and someone asks us those tough questions, hopefully we have developed the reputation of loving truthful honesty. We aren’t going to say, “What were you thinking? That looks hideous! You look as big as a house in that!” That is not loving. It’s just plain dumb and rude! Instead, think of how you could demonstrate love for the person who has asked the questions that paints you into a corner. Be helpful. Don’t let honesty and integrity become your excuse for being insensitive.
Let’s put truth, honesty, and integrity into practice today. It’s not just for the moment. It’s a lifestyle. Proverbs 20:7 says, “The just man walketh in his integrity: his children are blessed after him.”
1Mason Locke Weems, The Life of Washington the Great (Augusta, GA: George P. Randolph, 1806), 8-9.
2https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/cherry-tree-myth#_ftn1
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