Category: authenticity

Let Your Life Ring True

Neal Pollard

In the Christian Science Monitor, Nancy M. Kendall, drawing on other etymology (i.e., word origin) resources such as Hendrickson, Morris, and Barnhart, writes, “Due to poor equipment and the scarcity of precious metals, metal workers of the Middle Ages were not able to produce coins that were uniform in appearance and weight. This situation gave criminals an opportunity they couldn’t resist. Thus, when in doubt over a coin’s validity, a tradesman would drop it on a stone slab to “sound it.” If phony, it’d make a shrill or dull, flat tone in contrast to the clear ring of a true coin. By extension, a story tested and found acceptable is said to ring true, and its opposite, to ring false or hollow.” 

How interesting!  From that origination, the phrase has been applied to people’s statements, characters, and beliefs.  We ask, “Does he/she/this ring true?”  By saying this, we are looking for authenticity, for genuineness.  What an awesome opportunity we have to put our Christian lives on display!  Others look at it and us and by doing so can determine, to a degree, if Christianity rings true.  Certainly, they can compare our lives to what a Christian life should be and see if our individual lives ring true to authentic Christian behavior.  

Live before your coworkers, school mates, neighbors, fellow-Christians, and people you encounter daily in such a way that you show the validity of living for Jesus.  In this way, you are allowing the truth of Jesus to be put to test as it is observed in at least one sample.  There are poor imitations and substitutions out there.  You have the opportunity to show them the genuine article!  Let your life ring true!

Goose Hunting

Scott Philliips

A few years back I started goose hunting and I found out something very interesting about myself. I like it a lot! They are exciting to hunt, easy to harvest the meat, and they are delicious when I smoke them into jerky. Many of you probably don’t understand the challenge and excitement involved since most of the time you could just grab one off the street and throw it into your car. But out in the open, where it’s legal to shoot them, it can be a real challenge.

In order to get flying geese to come in for a landing close enough to shoot them, there are two basic tactics. One is decoys. Geese want to join up with other geese, and if they see some on the ground it tells them that it is probably a good area to feed and that it’s safe. In order to fool them, your decoys need to look real, and mine look real. Anytime I leave my spot and return, I spend an embarrassing amount of time sneaking up on my own decoys. The second thing you need is to sound like a goose. Your call needs to be authentic. It needs to get their attention to draw them into the kill zone.

Many of you have already connected the dots in my story. It’s so simple really. It’s a do-it-yourself lesson.  We need to be on guard as Christians so as not to be fooled or deceived by teaching that is not authentic, not the real deal. Teaching that may look and sound good, but will cost us our souls, can fool us.

But that’s not the lesson. I challenge myself and all of us to consider an even more sobering question. Have I become the decoy? Has looking and sounding like a Christian become enough for me? My calls are spot on. I can speak their language. My decoys look fantastic. They dutifully show up for every hunting trip. But they are not real, and they don’t move.

A real goose moves.
A real goose flies.
A real goose feeds.
A real goose is active all the time.
A real goose is busy being a real goose, all the time.

Read Matthew 25:34-36.

So are you, am I the real deal? It depends on what we do between “hunting trips.”

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[Originally from Scott’s “90 Seconds of Power” devotional at Bear Valley]