The Right Thing

Roommates in New Paltz, New York, paid twenty dollars for a secondhand sofa. Noticing it felt a little lumpy, they discovered $40,000 stuffed in envelopes hidden in the sofa. At first, they started to dream about what they could do with the money. They were university students, after all! But after much discussion, they decided that the right thing to do was to find the original owner of the sofa.

They learned that the woman’s deceased husband had saved the cash so she would have some money when he was no longer able to provide for her, but her children—not knowing about the money—replaced the sofa with a new one and donated the original to a thrift store.* It’s always better to do the right thing.

Honesty is always the best policy.

When you have a chance to explain to the person at the cash register that they’ve given you too much money; when you realize you’re not actually entitled to that tax refund; when you discover that the person who moved out of the apartment before you left something valuable behind, it’s hard to feel good about yourself if you’re not honest. God wants His people to be honest in all things.

Opportunities to be honest (or not) are moments in which we reveal to ourselves what we’re really like. The students were under no legal obligation to return the money. When they arrived at the humble home in what they described as a “rough neighborhood,” they realized returning the money would be life-changing for the woman who had lost her husband. But even if the woman lived in the nicest home in town, returning the money would still have been the right thing to do.

Romans 12:17 says, “Provide things honest in the sight of all men” (KJV), which could also be expressed as “do the right thing.” The honesty or dishonesty of a believer speaks loudly about the genuineness of the person’s faith.

An ill-gotten advantage is no advantage at all.

Nothing is worth betraying your integrity, and in the process, dishonoring God.