Our text this morning is "Thou shalt honor thine own reputation by being a teller of truth as best thou seest it." This is from, you guessed it, my godless decalogue. Let's parse it.
Reputation, etymologically involves a rethinking. Perhaps it is a matter of sitting thinking about another, much as a 14-year-old girl who moons by her phone willing it to be rung by the boy she is (re- putare, Latin) thinking about, again, for the 33rd time this afternoon.
"I hear he ..." she has heard.
We can't create our own reputation, but we can regard it well, or disregard it. Maybe, if it is worthy, we can honor it.
As to truth, is it so if it is merely what we can best see? Might it be something well beyond the horizon, which we cannot see?
The God-ists say so, I suppose, but that is not what I have in mind. Rather, I am thinking of what you think is true, even if it isn't.
Such things aren't true by virtue of thinking they are. But they aren't quite lies, unless one knows them to be or experiences them as false. Then you dishonor yourself.
