2020-04 Plow Points

A lie will bring you quick results but no premiums. A lie will look well for an hour but show shabby for a year. A lie will bring you cash but cut your credit. A lie will bring you velvet for a moment but hard circumstances for a decade. A lie is a commercial fake, a social fraud, an intellectual makeshift, a theological blunder, and a universal failure. Don't lie.

Here is a short story from “The Young Man and His Problems” by James L. Gordon. Courtesy of Funk and Wagnalls Co. “He had just moved into the area, and it was the first or second time he had been to town. He came into the store and ask the proprietor: ‘Are these plow points tempered enough?’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘I think not; I tried some of them and they are soft.’ When the farmer had gone I said to the proprietor: ‘Why didn't you tell that man that the plow points were well-tempered and hard, and would do the work he required of them? Why, you told him the truth and missed a sale; you're a strange man.’ But, as long as I stayed in that community, that man had a customer who would spend his last dollar with him.”

As we go through our daily activities with work, school, and our various volunteer events, let us be like that salesman who told the truth when asked if the product he was selling was good enough for the job.