The Slippery Slope

Have you ever been asked to to do something that you have felt was wrong? Most of us who have worked for a while have been in that situation, and it's certainly an uncomfortable one. Some compromises may seem so small as to have no obvious consequence, but there's something to remember. The final tumble down the slippery slope to ruination may have begun as the smallest of "harmless" compromises. Maybe the story of two young men the next time such a choice comes up for you.

I was a science fair judge where a young man's project had the clear marks of a winner. When I asked how the original idea had been conceived, his peculiar wording raised a small red flag: "My mentor and I developed it together." Who was this unnamed "mentor"? An engineer in another city, he first conceded, but I wanted a name. He readily complied, noticeably stumbling over an unusual last name. Then he added, "Or something like that."

But I still recognized the name from his research notes -- the name of his father. I didn't understand his attempt to obscure the obvious and doubted other "facts" about the project.

Thomas Jefferson explains: "He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, until at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him." Said another way, each compromise leads into another.

I later spoke with another young man. Having managed to accumulate a bit of money from lawn mowing, he faced the perennial question: what about taxes? Most of his advisors said to forget them. The amount was "small," cash can't be traced, taxes aren't fair anyway, no one would ever know.... These were persuasive arguments.

But there was a voice -- a father's -- pressing him with a Biblical corollary to Jefferson's observation: "He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much." What would be the long-term consequence of a "little" step down the path of compromise? The slippery slope perhaps.

Once he had committed to pay, there was yet another voice -- a mama's -- tinged with pointed humor after patiently awaiting her offspring's decision. "There never was a time you weren't going to pay those taxes." Had the decision been entirely his? Probably not.

Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, said, "I think that I have observed that integrity ... takes a stronger hold of the human heart than any other virtue. By integrity, I mean a strict coincidence between thoughts, words, and actions."

One young man compromised and lost his prize; the other paid the price to come out a winner in the end. When integrity truly takes hold of our hearts, the slippery slopes will pose little threat. Think about that the next time you're given the chance to compromise your standards.

Copyright 1998 James McAlister

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