Initiatives of Change - Detailed view of For A Change Articles

Edited By JOHN LESTER AND AILSA HAMILTON
During the summer US television was full of Irangate, when it wasn't discussing the fall of certain TV evangelists. A visitor like me could be forgiven for assuming that lying was endemic.

Yet the programme which most engaged my attention was refreshingly different. It too was a news story and concerned a small town with a little-known college which had participated in one of the basketball leagues.

They had a new coach and some keen young players and with this combination, like David pitted against Goliath, won the competition. The town celebrated and feted their coach.

The twist to the story came later. A few weeks after the celebration the coach discovered that in just one match of the many played a substitute had come on, for just two minutes, who did not have the required number of grades that year, which made him ineligible for the tournament.

For two days the coach wrestled with this and then went to the authorities and told them that, unbeknown to him at the time, they had benefitted from the skills of someone who should not have been playing. As a result the shield was taken from them and given to another team.

The story was the more poignant for the fact that the coach was a black man in a largely white neighbourhood. When asked why he did it he replied simply that to have done anything else would have been dishonest. The townspeople registered simultaneously great disappointment and almost total support for the integrity of the coach.

One of the obvious conclusions to be drawn from this is that it demonstrates the foolishness of judging a country by the news story that happens to be uppermost.

Of course, it is easy enough to argue with one's head about how honest politicians, for example, are or should be - even to judge them; or to discuss how much hiding of the truth can be justified. But this story spoke to me at a deeper level. It made me feel uncomfortable.

I wondered first of all whether I would have had the courage to react as the coach had done. Then I thought of an instance where I had not. I had forgotten about it but needed to sort it out. So I discovered, not for the first time, that honesty is infectious.

There is a gulf between truth and falsehood . Honesty is tangible and most recognise its necessity if society is to be wholesome. But we so easily debase it. It is commonplace, for example, to portray a flattering image of ourselves – which inevitably requires the suppression of truth: few of us would claim never to have done this.

But if we look at the men and women through history who have sought to draw close to God, then we find that they choose to reveal him, rather than a flattering image of themselves. It is as if, by seeking to be filled - in the case of the Christian saints - by Christ, any compromise, however slight in the world's eyes, appears to be sullying the one they serve.

I suspect that many of us are aware of . both kinds of life. I am probably like many others. I want to live the latter yet so easily find myself slipping back to the former.

It may take dishonesty on a large scale to damage the whole credibility of a nation - and that is a problem for many - but even the smallest dishonesties can destroy thespirit of a family or a country; just as the simple honesty of the basketball coach challenged and uplifted a whole community.

If my initial reaction to his story was to wish I had not heard it, I was later very grateful for it. Was it just coincidence that I turned on the TV at that moment? I wonder.

John Lester