KEEPING
PROMISES

Topics: Church; Community; Integrity; Promises

References: Exodus 20:16; James 3:1–12

Toward the end of his three volumes on the history of the French Revolution, Thomas Carlyle concluded that the revolution failed, not because of corruption in high places, but because ordinary people in their ordinary places neglected to keep their promises.

If we do not keep our promises, what once was a human community turns into a combat zone of competitive self-maximizers. We are at sea, loose-jointed, uncertain, leery of each other, untrusting. Nobody can trust his or her neighbors. And without trust, no law, no police force, and no legal contracts can keep a community human. We are a people who can join together in a permanently free society only if we are a people who can keep promises together.

—Lewis B. Smedes, A Chorus of Witnesses (Eerdmans, 1994)