Francis Berger
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The Most Honest Man I Know

9/26/2022

7 Comments

 
For the first time in years, I have developed an appetite for fiction. I decided to begin satiating my rediscovered hunger with Dickens's Great Expectations, which I last read over thirty years ago. While reading Chapter Ten, I was struck by Joe Gargery's firm - well, as firm as a simple, kindhearted, gentle man like Joe can get - reprimanding of Pip for lying:

"There's one thing you may be sure of, Pip," said Joe, after some rumination, "namely, that lies is lies, However they come, they didn't ought to come, and they come from the father of lies, and work round to the same. Don't you tell no more of 'em." 

The passage brought two things into sharp focus for me -- the rampant, unrepented dishonesty saturating the world today, and a memory of the most honest man I know. I'll skip commenting on the former and concentrate instead on the latter in this post. 

Ross is a simple, kind-hearted, gentle man who lives in a tiny settlement in northern Ontario in Canada. A mutual friend once told me of a peculiar incident involving Ross and an Ontario Provincial Police officer.

Ross was returning home from a hunting trip and was clocked driving 110 kilometers in an 80 kilometer zone. Apparently, he only realized he was speeding when he noticed the flashing lights in his rear-view mirror. Muttering under his breath, he promptly pulled over and waited for the police officer to approach the car. 

"Thirty clicks over the limit," the cop said sternly as he inspected Ross's driving license. "That's nothing to sneeze at. Do you know what the fine for that is?"

"I have no idea," Ross admitted. "Must be a lot. And I don't know how it happened. I guess I got lost in thought."

"Yeah. Could cost some points, too. So, were are you headin' in such hurry, eh?"

"Just headin' home. Coming home from a hunting trip. But I wasn't in a hurry. Like I said, I must have just got lost in thought." Ross paused for a moment. "But I'm not tryin' to make excuses or nothing. I should've been more mindful."

Noting Ross's conciliatory tone, the cop took the driver's license and ran it back at the cruiser. He returned a few minutes later, withdrew his ticket book, and nodded his head. "All right," he said. "I can see you didn't mean it. And you haven't been drinking, and you got a clean record, so here's what I'll do. I'll drop the speed to fifteen over the limit on the ticket. That'll keep you from losing points, and it will cost a whole lot less." 

Ross raised his head and looked directly into the police officer's eyes. "I appreciate the offer, but I can't let you do that."  

To say the cop was beside himself would have been an understatement. "I don't think you understand," the officer said. "I'm trying to help you out here."

"I get that, officer, but I can't let you do it because if you did it, you'd be lyin' and I'd be lyin' and nothing good could ever come of it."

The cop could barely keep himself from guffawing. They were literally in the middle of nowhere. Walls of pine forest ran along the side of the road on either side. There wasn't another car in sight anywhere, neither in front of them nor behind them. 

"No one will know. Just you and me. I'm trying to help you out here."

Ross remained adamant, "And I'm trying to help you out. Please write the ticket for thirty over because thirty over was what I was doin'. That's the truth, and I don't want neither of us to wander away from the truth."

The cop looked like he wanted to say something, but he simply scratched the back of his neck. After a moment of scratching, he placed the tip of his pen to his ticket book and began issuing a ticket to Ross for thirty over the speed limit. 

When he handed Ross the ticket, he said, "You know, I've never in my twenty-three years on the force met a man like you."

"Is that a good thing?" Ross asked. 

The cop clicked his pen and slipped it back into his jacket. "Yeah, I think it is," he said.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Note added: I once brought this speeding ticket incident up with Ross during a hunting trip years after the fact. Fittingly enough, he cut the subject short by stating that he did not understand what there was to discuss. 
7 Comments
bruce charlton
9/26/2022 21:58:23

It is a good story, and makes a vital point.

But (ironically) it doesn't ring quite true as described; unless there was somebody else present (but unmentioned) as well as Ross and the policemen to report the conversation - in which case the lie would not have been private between the two.

Most likely you fictionalized it a bit from an account given you by Ross himself?

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Francis Berger
9/27/2022 09:46:35

@ Bruce - You've raised a valid point - one I should have included in my recounting of the story.

Ross went home and told his wife about what happened. In turn, his wife went and told the town about what a fool her husband had been.

They had money problems, so her dismay is somewhat understandable, but her denouncement of his actions didn't bode well for their marriage. Suffice to say, she is his ex-wife now.

In all honesty, it took me a long time to understand that Ross had done the right thing when it came to that speeding ticket.

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bruce charlton
9/27/2022 16:19:17

Thanks. That makes it more impressive.

Anti-Gnostic
9/28/2022 18:15:14

That's a very "Canadian" anecdote. But I'd call it the perfect being the enemy of the good.

We are told, for example, that adultery consists even of imagining sexual relations with someone other than a spouse. But you'd be a fool to confess each of these instances and insist on going through a reconciliation process every time you lusted after someone other than your spouse.

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Francis Berger
9/28/2022 19:29:45

@ AG - I get where you are coming from, and I agree, but I don't think that applies here. For starters, the incident wasn't all in Ross's head, but transpired in the world. It involved the interaction of two individuals.

Ross was willing to accept the truth of what he had done, and he was unwilling to allow the cop to alter that truth even though the cop's altering of reality would have helped Ross immensely.

I don't think being perfect had anything to do with it. I think it had more to do with living the reality of the truth, even when it is seemingly working against you.

I don't think this example can be applied to all situations in life as a sort of ready-made, cookie cutter framework, but it is an approach that I think people, especially Christians, should perhaps take more seriously in their everyday lives. I mean let's be honest, think of all the times we bend the truth -- literally alter reality -- for the sake of escaping some discomfort or gaining some trivial benefit.

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Serhei
10/5/2022 20:48:08

Leskov's "Unmercenary Engineers" is an interesting meditation on this exact subject. I am not sure if it's translated to English anywhere. It is a slightly fictionalized account of two engineers in the late Russian Empire, of whom one attempted to work in an engineering occupation while remaining completely honest, and slowly went mad from the contradictions, as well as being ostracized (since he was not dishonest in the same way as everyone else, his persistent occupation of the moral high ground was treated as an untrustworthy attempt to gain leverage). The other one (Ignatius Brianchaninov) decided that the world is irredeemably corrupt and went into a monastery. Although Brianchaninov attained sainthood, I find him one of the more dour and intolerant Orthodox saints of that time period based on his writings. My present-day reading of Leskov rather suggests the thought that neither of the two young engineers was successful in finding the right answer.

I'll see if I can muster the time and motivation to write this story up in more detail. It was very much on my mind this morning as I encountered a similar subtle conflict of interest in my own field.

Reply
Francis Berger
10/6/2022 13:04:21

@ Serhei - I am unfamiliar with Leskov's "Unmercenary Engineers", so I appreciate your bringing it to my attention. I would be interested in hearing your further thoughts on the subject should you find the time to expand them.

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