What Does HONOR Require of Us?

Honor. Such a rich word, with so much meaning! 

It is a noun, as in a high place of honor or a moral code of honor. It is also a verb, meaning both to show great respect and also to follow through on a commitment. When I think of the word honor, it immediately makes me think of what is revered and how we treat those things with great regard.

Honor also crosses so many lines to convey what we cherish as most important in many different contexts. To a Cub Scout it is an oath of commitment to upstanding living. To a student it is a pledge to academic honesty. From a young age at church it is taught as a commandment to obey God and our parents. In business it is the integrity to follow through on a contract. In marriage it is a vow of lifelong commitment to each other. In a courtroom it is the judge upholding the law. For those who have or do serve in the military it is a respect of the sacrifices men and women make to defend and protect our country.

Hard to believe so many pillars of our society are brought to mind with such an unassuming five-letter word! In fact it is so weighty that it can seem almost beyond reach in our daily living. When we don a uniform or special attire fit for a monumental occasion, we dust off words like honor to set apart those special moments from our routine lives.

Asking what honor requires of us seems to direct our thoughts to both infinitely great and finitely targeted acts of valor. And in doing so, I think we neglect to consider the weight of how we carry ourselves in all the other moments. Often our less than honorable posture toward the mundane moments is what eventually seeps into dishonoring those pivotal moments.

A marriage that is not honored in the routine of life can tragically end in a broken vow. A child who does not follow the honor code may find themselves disqualified from an opportunity. A contract that is not honored both in letter and spirit throughout the course of conducting business often ends in arbitration, lawsuits, and severed relationships. 

So it gave me pause when I read and heard Andy Stanley talk about his house rules with his kids. Or I should say house rule, because there is only one. Honor. He talks about fostering a teenager whose first question was to know the limits. The rules that detail exactly what they can do without getting in trouble. Where is the line that once crossed will have consequences? Honor wasn’t a very satisfying answer. 

If I’m honest, honor isn’t a very satisfying answer to me either. Like a rebellious teenager, I often want to know the limits and how close or beyond them I can go without facing consequences. How much can I overclock the processor before the system becomes unstable? How much over the speed limit can I go without facing the honorable municipal judge? 

Changing the standard to honor takes away all of the gaming of our systems to push the limits. I believe that honor is written on our hearts and informs our conscience, at least until we assuage our convictions with more finite rules and standards that we can craft a narrative to get around, justifying something less than being completely honorable.

Anyone who has ever driven with a curious child watching over their shoulder knows what I am talking about. “Why are you going 50 when the speed limit is 45?” “Why did you speed up instead of slowing down at that yellow light?” “Why didn’t we ever completely stop moving at that stop sign?” How I answer those questions is critical. 

Do I teach my son that you can substitute your own logic for honoring the traffic laws? “The roads are dry and the weather is good and all the other cars are doing it, plus the speed limit used to be higher so I know it’s safe.” Or maybe explain that we only have to honor the laws if someone is watching. “There were no other cars at the intersection so it was safe and we wouldn’t get caught.” Maybe I get really philosophical and explain being late is also dishonoring, and that you can pick which thing is more important to honor. “Son I would have stopped but that light takes forever and we are barely going to get there on time if we make all the lights.” 

Any of those will explain to my son why his dad wasn’t really wrong to break the law. And they will also teach him how to compartmentalize honor, and hide dishonor behind lesser limits, easier to justify dismissing when convenient. The only good answer is to explain that I make mistakes, sometimes by accident and sometimes on purpose, but that is never an excuse. That isn’t very comfortable.

It’s even less comfortable in business. Gaming loopholes and enforceability in contracts, doing things that are technically not illegal but don’t honor the people we do business with. This is just as rampant as people driving 5 over the speed limit, so it feels no less uncomfortable. Yet it still informs our conscience in the same way, making it feel easier and easier to go with the flow and be no worse than everyone else, right up until we see those blue lights flashing.

Eventually we are going to have to confront the lies we tell ourself to feel okay about tolerating a little dishonor in how we live. It might be that we get caught by the law, that we pushed a little bit too far past the limit, or maybe that everyone was doing the wrong thing and you are the one that got caught. Or perhaps someone innocently asks why we are doing something that appears to be clearly wrong, and we are forced to expose the lies we told ourselves to the light. 

We don’t often think about honor, because it asks some questions that we aren’t proud to answer. In my last article I talked about the importance of integrity, that any supply chain lacking integrity will have friction that could have been avoided. But honor is having the courage to apply the integrity of a perfect standard to our own lives and businesses, even if no one else is holding us to such a high standard. 

Integrity might require of us that we follow the letter of the law when no one is looking, but honor requires of us to do the most right thing even if no law exists. It’s asking a lot, often more than is expected or necessary, but carrying a posture of honorable living comes with the reward of not just knowing we didn’t do wrong, but that we did act honorably.

Doing the right thing with absolute integrity is a minimum, but not sufficient, criteria for establishing lasting trust in relationships. Just because we do right does not mean we have acted rightly toward others. Lasting trust comes from having the courage to continually ask what honoring others requires of us. And then acting on it.