Sincerity

WE have to be reminded of this virtue, indispensable not only to achieve
personal integrity but also to attain a certain level of social harmony.

Now that we are growing into more complex socio-political life, we all the
more need to be sincere—with God, with others, with our own selves—to achieve authentic personal and social development.

At the moment, we seem to be drowned by an ocean of data and opinions, while truth is actually left out in the cold. This situation has been with us for so long that we already consider it normal.

Everyone is claiming he is sincere in his views, then cites all sorts of
info and other pieces of evidence to support what he says.

While these claims are good, sincerity actually goes far beyond these purely subjective affirmations. It goes far beyond simply reporting what took place or what we see, feel or know. True sincerity is never cold and callous.

Sincerity is love for the truth. It presumes a certain living as contrasted to a formalistic relationship with how one understands truth to be.

This is the source of the problem. Truth to many is just what we see, feel or know. Or it’s what we studied, researched on, what we learn from other sources. Truth is seldom considered to have anything to do with God, who is Truth himself and the source of all truths.

When sincerity is not actively linked to God, then what we have is a very precarious, even dangerous kind of sincerity.

It would be a sincerity prone to pride, arrogance, pursuit of self-interest. It would be a sincerity devoid of charity, compassion and mercy. It would be a divisive sincerity, susceptible to be easily manipulated and to lead to self-righteousness.

It would be a sincerity that serves the tricks and wiles of human malice, sowing intrigues, creating contentions, fuelling loquacity and rash judgments.

We have been amply warned about these caricatures of sincerity in the gospel, but sadly these are what we are seeing around us these days! And in abundance.

Authentic sincerity is always a function of a living relationship with God. It is a sincerity that always upholds the truth in charity. Humility, simplicity and refinement always accompany it. Prudence and discretion temper it.

A truly sincere person considers his statements as a living part of his continuing dialogue not only with men but mainly with God. He lives a sincerity that makes him realize he has to make changes and conversions in his own self first before he can expect these in others.

It is a sincerity that is patient, willing to make sacrifices and to suffer for the truth. It is always accompanied by some kind of interior struggle against the constant enemies of the soul that also are the enemies of truth—pride, selfishness, vanity, etc.

These vices distort truth and reality. And when left uncorrected, they can
build a culture that actually harms and demeans humanity.

To be sincere, it is indispensable to be prayerful. Truth cannot be handled
simply relying on our good senses. It can only be handled properly with God, and prayer is our constant contact with God.

There are other requirements of sincerity. But I think that the most basic, the most indispensable, is to pray. Everything else has to flow from it. Otherwise, we would just be tossed and fro in an ocean of so-called “truths” that are none other than self-affirmations detached from the source of Truth.

This is something we have to understand well.