In the midst of a U.S. Government shutdown with no end in sight, the Treasury Department floated the idea of minting a $1 dollar coin in the likeness of Donald Trump:
My Two Cents: The Scarcity of Good Faith
We live at a time when the U.S. faces a scarcity of good faith dealings by the United States’ present leadership. Lying itself has served as a token by which elected officials prove loyalty to one who has set himself up as King of the Road to the White House. “I’m willing to lie for you,” has become an emblem of trust between those complicit in presenting a united front of lies. During a time when politicians call for hanging the Ten Commandments in schools, the question remains, “What happened to living the Ten Commandments versus only displaying them?” Today, we talk about the missing Ninth Commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness.”
What makes the Ninth Commandment critical is that personal, business, and national dealings are based on good faith. As one definition put it, ‘She acted in good faith’ be interpreted not only as ‘She believed that what she did was the right thing to do’, but also as ‘She acted in a decent and fair way.’
No Truth for You
Imagine you sit with your morning coffee and tune into the morning headline show to see the President sitting behind his desk with a breaking Executive Order, “Truth is a Crime: Anyone caught forcing someone to tell the truth is guilty of violation of the DOGE efficiency act. The best interest of the United States is to lie to protect self-interest.”
Acting on what he believes to be his best self-interest, Jon a real estate broker pockets all the earnest money gathered that day and wires it to an offshore account and declares that the company had a cyber attack that drained company funds.
A nineteen year-old boy faces a capital murder charge for a crime he didn’t commit. The prosecutor, to advance her career on her spotless conviction record, deleted DNA evidence that would have exonerated the boy whose petty crimes and race would play well with the mostly white jury for a conviction.
You may say, “Jim, these are interesting hypotheticals, but we are at war with the liberals. They do the same to us. We just need to do it first.”
So, you believe that you are doing the right thing. So, that makes bad faith dealings appropriate? As the definition we cited above shows both ends of the kayak paddle of truth, “She believed that she did was the right thing.” and “She acted in a fair and decent way.” Belief we are doing the right thing and action in fairness and decency comprise the tandem paddles of truth through the white waters of deception. Belief in good faith precedes actions but remains incomplete without verifying action.
A Parable of Good Faith Betrayed
Maria’s husband, a U.S. citizen voted for Donald Trump. He listened to his plan to “Make America Great Again” and that they would, as promised, only pursue the criminal element for removal out of the country. Maria was certainly not criminal. As mother of their three children under the age of 6, she attended Mass weekly, serving the needy at the church’s food and clothing bank, where she provided Spanish translation along with food.
Her husband Joe worked at Aldi’s as a stocker, where he personally stocked the entire store due to the store’s labor reduction. Maria worked a night job as a motel housekeeper after the kids were asleep. Joe and and Maria wanted their children to grew up secure and safe in the U.S. They listened to other Latino politicians who believed and who promised them a better future.
Fast forward after the election, Maria has been held in an unknown ICE detention center for the last four months, with no word. Joe struggles to care for their three children, as the love of his life has been ripped from their home. Joe struggles to make sense as the the words promised by the politicians ring hollow in his ears.
What happened? Four years ago, Maria was pulled over coming home from a New Year’s Eve party. She was the designated driver as Joe had a little too much to drink. However, Maria lacked both a driver’s license and insurance, for which this was her second citation. Maria never considered herself a criminal. She and Joe faithfully attended their ICE check in as they were paying an attorney what they could in hopes of securing a green card one day.
One day at the ICE check in, where Maria always arrived 15 minutes early, she sat with her youngest, a 3 year-old. Maria noticed the hallway was filled with men wearing black masks and military tactical uniforms. As her name was called for her appointment, she entered the room, verified her name, and was promptly arrested as a “criminal alien,” citing her driving without a license and insurance. She was zip tied and started crying in Spanish for someone to call her husband and her lawyer. Somehow when the six ICE agents rushed out to prepare for the next victim’s rendition, the 3 year-old was locked out in the hallway, where he sat until the end of the business day crying.
When Joe ran franticly into the ICE check-in facility looking for his wife, he found his three-year-old crying and lying alone, wet pants and hungry, under the waiting room chairs with Maria gone. “Where’s my wife!?,” Joe demanded.
The receptionist frowned and shrugged her shoulder through the bulletproof plexiglass and slid him a generic business card for the ICE Regional Office, where he could not reach a live person who could tell him where his wife was being held.
“How could this have happened?,” Joe relived the events that led up the last election. “They told us, ‘They were going after the worst of the worst.” Joe and Maria looked into the eyes of the local Latino political leaders who, so he felt, believed Joe and Maria, and thousands like them were safe. “The government is going after the cartels and criminals.”
But like both paddles of a kayak, belief in doing the right thing and actually acting decently and fairly are both needed to chart a course of good faith dealing. It doesn’t take much for someone to deceive himself into considering a course of action is the “right thing to do.” But if the tandem paddle is not balanced with acting in decency and fairness, the result will cast society on the shoals of injustice. In other words, how you get there matters.
‘She acted in good faith’ can be interpreted not only as ‘She believed that what she did was the right thing to do’, but also as ‘She acted in a decent and fair way.’
The Meaning of Good Faith
Truth Traumatized: Combat Vet and U.S. Citizen Pepper Sprayed and Jailed
The present administration fails to grasp that doing a “Kavanaugh Stop” on people because of their skin color, pepper spraying and jailing them for days without cause has betrayed the good faith of the American people. Whereas Justice Kavanaugh “believed” that it’s fine for an officer to ask Latinos a few questions to verify their nationality before letting them go, the real actions of pepper spraying, assaulting, and jailing U.S. citizens without cause betray the decency and fairness that was founded even by the Ninth Commandment of bearing a true, decent and fair, witness.
Truth Telling,
Pastor Jim
