Silence: a Christian History
by Diarmaid MacCulloch,
Viking, 2013
Review by John L. Ng
November, 2013
At dinner after morning worship, a friend complained about her experience during communion, "Why do they have to sing when we are in quiet meditation. I can't hear myself think." At his morning Bible reading, another friend wrote his prayers in quiet reflection. This notion of silence as religious practices is as ancient as the Bible. Yet many Christians are unaware of its significance in church life. Diarmaid MacCulloch, Oxford Professor of church history, has something and more to write regarding the history and practice of silence.
The book, based on his Gifford Lectures, is divided into four sections. In Part One, The Bible, he rehearses the silences in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament; in Part Two, The Triumph of Monastic Silence, there are the silence practices of the infant church and the early monastic movements; in Part Three, Silence through Three Reformations, he looks back to the controversies and practices of silence in the eastern and western churches from the 8th century to the Protestant Reformation; in Part Four, Reaching behind Noise to Christian History, he concludes with abuses of silence in various forms but ends with quiet hope for the future.
The British edition has a more amusing title: "Silence in Christian History: The Witness of Holmes’s Dog." There is a kind of playfulness in the author's muses. But the subject is a serious matter. The church has struggled with, for and because of silence. Loosely tied together under a broad theme, some of his topics include the silence of God, self-imposed silence of ascetics, monastic rules of silence, self-protection silence of institutions and silence as devotional practices. When silence is so broadly defined, the book attempts too many (some seem unrelated and incoherent) ideas. As if the author is presenting everything he knows about the silences in the church. But he is a diligent scholar and is trusted with what he has written. The book is an enjoyable and informative read.
Every form of silence is distinctively different. Just as the languages of faith are contextual, so are the silences of faith. For example, common folks commonly assume that mediation and contemplation are synonymous. On the contrary, their distinctive meanings have made enemies of friends and empowered these opponents with murderous intents. Throughout, more renewed definitions of silence are illustrated. As a example, silence can mean the church's intentional political suppression of truths and facts.
And then there is the silence in the midst of noise. The world outside is full of noises. But the world inside the church is just as noisy. The author considers the inveterate spoken-word emphasis of Evangelical worship is a noisy aberration of silence. I might add that the constant striving after joyful noises in contemporary worship or the angry voices of Protestant politics are not far from the same aberration. As another historian mused, "The church is like a swimming pool, where all the noises come from the shallow end."
Beyond all this, there is the silence of God. With few exceptions in the Bible, the silence of God is probably the most prominent characteristic of the divine. Not few faithfuls, past and present, struggle in earnest with their silent God and noisy churches. Here the author beckons us towards the profound silence of our Lord's Resurrection. That silent reality ought to give us quiet hope.
Review by John L. Ng
November, 2013
At dinner after morning worship, a friend complained about her experience during communion, "Why do they have to sing when we are in quiet meditation. I can't hear myself think." At his morning Bible reading, another friend wrote his prayers in quiet reflection. This notion of silence as religious practices is as ancient as the Bible. Yet many Christians are unaware of its significance in church life. Diarmaid MacCulloch, Oxford Professor of church history, has something and more to write regarding the history and practice of silence.
The book, based on his Gifford Lectures, is divided into four sections. In Part One, The Bible, he rehearses the silences in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament; in Part Two, The Triumph of Monastic Silence, there are the silence practices of the infant church and the early monastic movements; in Part Three, Silence through Three Reformations, he looks back to the controversies and practices of silence in the eastern and western churches from the 8th century to the Protestant Reformation; in Part Four, Reaching behind Noise to Christian History, he concludes with abuses of silence in various forms but ends with quiet hope for the future.
The British edition has a more amusing title: "Silence in Christian History: The Witness of Holmes’s Dog." There is a kind of playfulness in the author's muses. But the subject is a serious matter. The church has struggled with, for and because of silence. Loosely tied together under a broad theme, some of his topics include the silence of God, self-imposed silence of ascetics, monastic rules of silence, self-protection silence of institutions and silence as devotional practices. When silence is so broadly defined, the book attempts too many (some seem unrelated and incoherent) ideas. As if the author is presenting everything he knows about the silences in the church. But he is a diligent scholar and is trusted with what he has written. The book is an enjoyable and informative read.
Every form of silence is distinctively different. Just as the languages of faith are contextual, so are the silences of faith. For example, common folks commonly assume that mediation and contemplation are synonymous. On the contrary, their distinctive meanings have made enemies of friends and empowered these opponents with murderous intents. Throughout, more renewed definitions of silence are illustrated. As a example, silence can mean the church's intentional political suppression of truths and facts.
And then there is the silence in the midst of noise. The world outside is full of noises. But the world inside the church is just as noisy. The author considers the inveterate spoken-word emphasis of Evangelical worship is a noisy aberration of silence. I might add that the constant striving after joyful noises in contemporary worship or the angry voices of Protestant politics are not far from the same aberration. As another historian mused, "The church is like a swimming pool, where all the noises come from the shallow end."
Beyond all this, there is the silence of God. With few exceptions in the Bible, the silence of God is probably the most prominent characteristic of the divine. Not few faithfuls, past and present, struggle in earnest with their silent God and noisy churches. Here the author beckons us towards the profound silence of our Lord's Resurrection. That silent reality ought to give us quiet hope.
The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age
by Steiner-Adair Catherine & Teresa H Barker
Review by John L. Ng
September, 2013
It is not counter-intuitive to cognize the prevalence of digital technology in contemporary family life. Smartphones, tablets and the internet have transformed the ways family members spend time together, relate to one another and communicate with others. Research shows that children between 8 - 18 years of age spend about eight hours accumulatively with their electronic devices daily. The only activity they spend more time in is perhaps sleep. Their plugged-in, missing-in-action parents are just as pre-occupied with their digital gadgets at the expense of family.
Catherine Steiner-Adair, clinical psychologist, professor and mother, with writer Teresa H. Barker, has inscribed a self-help book to encourage parents to yank back the primacy of their family. It is one thing to complain but it is another to know what to do. To know what to do with technology is a cognitive process that requires awareness, understanding, intentionality and practicality. Unlike our alarm, responding to technology responsibly is counter-intuitive.
Here "The Big Disconnect" is an informative manual for that intentional cognitive process. The book examines the profoundly adversarial impact of digital technology on both children and their parents. The mea culpa indicts every member of the family. Citing score of researches, she codifies not so few portentous subversions of this technological age: the negation of family-centered time and space, the premature loss of childhood innocence, the decline of relational empathy, the erosion of sustained individual attention span, the diminution of the art of verbal conversation and creative imagination. I add to this list the normalization of pornographic images. It behooves concerned parents to reconsider their children's formation in the light of this listing.
The chapters are delineated according to children's ages: babies, toddlers, pre-school, grade school and teens. Each age span has its own unique problems, pitfalls, challenges and remedies. Each chapter includes actual family anecdotes and cites doable recommendations. Parents of children of all ages can final a chapter reference for help. The book's final chapter refines what it means to be a sustainable family in a pervasive technological culture and what it takes to transform that technology from enemy to ally in family formation.
I like her phrasing - the sustainable family! Indeed, to be sustainable, a family has to face up to technology's adversarial potential in a family's great disconnect. The incredible speed of digital advances renders the threat to family building even more complex. A sustainable family has to be proactive in cultivating a philosophy - a way of living - that enforces agreed convictions, shared values and behavioral boundaries. For example, something as obvious as deciding where to install your children's computers. Or how firm should parents insist that all family members sit down together for daily dinners.
Review by John L. Ng
September, 2013
It is not counter-intuitive to cognize the prevalence of digital technology in contemporary family life. Smartphones, tablets and the internet have transformed the ways family members spend time together, relate to one another and communicate with others. Research shows that children between 8 - 18 years of age spend about eight hours accumulatively with their electronic devices daily. The only activity they spend more time in is perhaps sleep. Their plugged-in, missing-in-action parents are just as pre-occupied with their digital gadgets at the expense of family.
Catherine Steiner-Adair, clinical psychologist, professor and mother, with writer Teresa H. Barker, has inscribed a self-help book to encourage parents to yank back the primacy of their family. It is one thing to complain but it is another to know what to do. To know what to do with technology is a cognitive process that requires awareness, understanding, intentionality and practicality. Unlike our alarm, responding to technology responsibly is counter-intuitive.
Here "The Big Disconnect" is an informative manual for that intentional cognitive process. The book examines the profoundly adversarial impact of digital technology on both children and their parents. The mea culpa indicts every member of the family. Citing score of researches, she codifies not so few portentous subversions of this technological age: the negation of family-centered time and space, the premature loss of childhood innocence, the decline of relational empathy, the erosion of sustained individual attention span, the diminution of the art of verbal conversation and creative imagination. I add to this list the normalization of pornographic images. It behooves concerned parents to reconsider their children's formation in the light of this listing.
The chapters are delineated according to children's ages: babies, toddlers, pre-school, grade school and teens. Each age span has its own unique problems, pitfalls, challenges and remedies. Each chapter includes actual family anecdotes and cites doable recommendations. Parents of children of all ages can final a chapter reference for help. The book's final chapter refines what it means to be a sustainable family in a pervasive technological culture and what it takes to transform that technology from enemy to ally in family formation.
I like her phrasing - the sustainable family! Indeed, to be sustainable, a family has to face up to technology's adversarial potential in a family's great disconnect. The incredible speed of digital advances renders the threat to family building even more complex. A sustainable family has to be proactive in cultivating a philosophy - a way of living - that enforces agreed convictions, shared values and behavioral boundaries. For example, something as obvious as deciding where to install your children's computers. Or how firm should parents insist that all family members sit down together for daily dinners.
Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration (2008)
Jesus of Nazareth: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection (2011)
Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives (2012)
by Pope Benedict XVI Imprints of the Crown Publishing Group
Review by John L. Ng
July, 2013
Some years ago, the European Union deliberately omitted in its charter any reference of Christianity’s political and cultural impact in European history. That is plain silly if not stupid. Any reader of history cannot reasonably deny Christianity’s significance in Western Civilization; one also cannot ignore the realization that post-modern European and American cultures have evolved toward an anti-Christian stance. As the Roman Curia’s official defender of Catholic doctrine under Pope John Paul II, Joseph Ratzinger was the Catholic Church’s prime apologist who spoke against this Christian-phobic climate.
As Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger continued to engage with post-modernity’s slant in his writings and homilies. In his final papal years, he published a three-volume monograph on the life of “Jesus of Nazareth.” He goes to the heart of the matter: Who is Jesus and why does he matter in history and in the daily lives of humanity? In his preface, Ratzinger writes, “I set out to discover the real Jesus; if we look carefully at the events of the life of Christ, they only can be properly explained if he was indeed the Christ, the son of the loving God.”
These volumes are not Catholic polemics against post-modern culture. On the contrary, they represent this great thinker’s exegetical meditation on the life of Jesus as told in the four Gospels. He finely blends historical/literary criticism and theological scholarship into a refined devotional. He freely and fairly engages Catholic, Jewish and Protestant, liberal and conservative authors alike. Without the credit pages, I would not suspect that “Jesus of Nazareth” is penned by the head of the Catholic Church. The three volumes could well have been written by any exegete who loves Jesus and walks with God.
In my pastoral work, I have plowed through more than my share of Biblical commentaries, theological periodicals and exegetical treatises. Mostly protestant, too many are verbose and not many are insightful. Ratzinger’s prose is at once concise in clarity and profound in perception. In fact, at times I wish he spend more space in his delineations. While showing sincere deference for the veracity of the Bible as the word of God, he wrestles honestly with the Gospels’ narrative variations. After each textual treatment, he always manages to return to the historicity, and the mystery, of the person and atoning work of Jesus according to Scripture.
No doubt, when the pope writes, he writes as an equivalent head of state whose pontification has global repercussions. Beyond Vatican politics, these monographs are the scholarly devotion of a passionate pastor. Anyone who seeks “to encounter Jesus and to believe in him” according to the Gospels will find great encouragement in these volumes as a helpful tutorial.
Review by John L. Ng
July, 2013
Some years ago, the European Union deliberately omitted in its charter any reference of Christianity’s political and cultural impact in European history. That is plain silly if not stupid. Any reader of history cannot reasonably deny Christianity’s significance in Western Civilization; one also cannot ignore the realization that post-modern European and American cultures have evolved toward an anti-Christian stance. As the Roman Curia’s official defender of Catholic doctrine under Pope John Paul II, Joseph Ratzinger was the Catholic Church’s prime apologist who spoke against this Christian-phobic climate.
As Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger continued to engage with post-modernity’s slant in his writings and homilies. In his final papal years, he published a three-volume monograph on the life of “Jesus of Nazareth.” He goes to the heart of the matter: Who is Jesus and why does he matter in history and in the daily lives of humanity? In his preface, Ratzinger writes, “I set out to discover the real Jesus; if we look carefully at the events of the life of Christ, they only can be properly explained if he was indeed the Christ, the son of the loving God.”
These volumes are not Catholic polemics against post-modern culture. On the contrary, they represent this great thinker’s exegetical meditation on the life of Jesus as told in the four Gospels. He finely blends historical/literary criticism and theological scholarship into a refined devotional. He freely and fairly engages Catholic, Jewish and Protestant, liberal and conservative authors alike. Without the credit pages, I would not suspect that “Jesus of Nazareth” is penned by the head of the Catholic Church. The three volumes could well have been written by any exegete who loves Jesus and walks with God.
In my pastoral work, I have plowed through more than my share of Biblical commentaries, theological periodicals and exegetical treatises. Mostly protestant, too many are verbose and not many are insightful. Ratzinger’s prose is at once concise in clarity and profound in perception. In fact, at times I wish he spend more space in his delineations. While showing sincere deference for the veracity of the Bible as the word of God, he wrestles honestly with the Gospels’ narrative variations. After each textual treatment, he always manages to return to the historicity, and the mystery, of the person and atoning work of Jesus according to Scripture.
No doubt, when the pope writes, he writes as an equivalent head of state whose pontification has global repercussions. Beyond Vatican politics, these monographs are the scholarly devotion of a passionate pastor. Anyone who seeks “to encounter Jesus and to believe in him” according to the Gospels will find great encouragement in these volumes as a helpful tutorial.
Beyond Human Nature
by Jesse J. Prinz W. W. Norton & Company, 2013
Review by John L. Ng
April, 2013
How cultural values and social experiences shape our human nature is the premise of this compelling book by Jesse Prinz, professor of philosophy and director of the committee for interdisciplinary science studies at the City University of New York. Indeed, his book is an interdisciplinary discourse on the nature of being human. Some of his academic references sound oxymoronic that boggle my uninitiated mind: evolutionary psychiatry, behavioral genetics, biosocial science, developmental medicine, cognitive psychology, cross-cultural psychology, orthopsychiatry, behavioral and brain sciences. Drawing from these esoteric sources, he considers the nature of our human nature.
The debate between the "naturist" and the "nurturist" regarding how our nature is formed is as timeless as it is evolving. Prinz speaks loudly against the prevalent notion that human nature is driven primarily by biology. Those who study this stuff write that our temperamental traits, cognitive intelligence, abstract ideas, social values and emotive bents are strongly determined by our biological make-up. For examples, they argue for certain alcoholic, homosexual or violent genes that pre-dispose these individual tendencies.
Prinz dismisses much of this reductive, deterministic model of human nature and notes that biological contribution to our human nature is at best an exaggeration. He does not deny that nature plays a part in shaping who we become but concludes that our human nature transcends biology. We are the sum total of both natural disposition and nurturing influences. At the end, he concludes that our human conditions are powerfully influenced more by our external environment than our internal biology.
Like all social sciences, his research is by no means a precise scientific process. For example, researches collaborate to presume that there are five basic personalities (represented by the acronym OCEAN): openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. But Prinz recognizes that our contextual variances have such a wide spectrum that predictabilities of our personalities are at best possibilities. Besides, human nature is too confusingly complex to be explained solely on a simple, singular notion of human development.
Prinz's argument for nurture is counter-political-correctness. The deterministic human nature model is obviously the currency of our time. In many respects, it spends more to promote political agendas and winks at scientific researches. No doubt it has given a free political pass to certain human deviant behaviors that were once considered immoral or abnormal by society. Politics aside, few can honestly deny that our nature is interplay between biology and environment. They are essential components in forming our human disposition.
As a Christian who seeks to understand our human conditions based on a theistic rationale as well as on social research, I appreciate Prinz's argument. It gives credence for taking personal responsibility in how we think, what we do and who we have become. The etymology of the word "responsibility" implies that we have the human "ability to respond" to circumstances and make choices. We are responsible for those choices. Relinquish our capacity to respond solely on determinative nature nullifies what it means to be human.
Review by John L. Ng
April, 2013
How cultural values and social experiences shape our human nature is the premise of this compelling book by Jesse Prinz, professor of philosophy and director of the committee for interdisciplinary science studies at the City University of New York. Indeed, his book is an interdisciplinary discourse on the nature of being human. Some of his academic references sound oxymoronic that boggle my uninitiated mind: evolutionary psychiatry, behavioral genetics, biosocial science, developmental medicine, cognitive psychology, cross-cultural psychology, orthopsychiatry, behavioral and brain sciences. Drawing from these esoteric sources, he considers the nature of our human nature.
The debate between the "naturist" and the "nurturist" regarding how our nature is formed is as timeless as it is evolving. Prinz speaks loudly against the prevalent notion that human nature is driven primarily by biology. Those who study this stuff write that our temperamental traits, cognitive intelligence, abstract ideas, social values and emotive bents are strongly determined by our biological make-up. For examples, they argue for certain alcoholic, homosexual or violent genes that pre-dispose these individual tendencies.
Prinz dismisses much of this reductive, deterministic model of human nature and notes that biological contribution to our human nature is at best an exaggeration. He does not deny that nature plays a part in shaping who we become but concludes that our human nature transcends biology. We are the sum total of both natural disposition and nurturing influences. At the end, he concludes that our human conditions are powerfully influenced more by our external environment than our internal biology.
Like all social sciences, his research is by no means a precise scientific process. For example, researches collaborate to presume that there are five basic personalities (represented by the acronym OCEAN): openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. But Prinz recognizes that our contextual variances have such a wide spectrum that predictabilities of our personalities are at best possibilities. Besides, human nature is too confusingly complex to be explained solely on a simple, singular notion of human development.
Prinz's argument for nurture is counter-political-correctness. The deterministic human nature model is obviously the currency of our time. In many respects, it spends more to promote political agendas and winks at scientific researches. No doubt it has given a free political pass to certain human deviant behaviors that were once considered immoral or abnormal by society. Politics aside, few can honestly deny that our nature is interplay between biology and environment. They are essential components in forming our human disposition.
As a Christian who seeks to understand our human conditions based on a theistic rationale as well as on social research, I appreciate Prinz's argument. It gives credence for taking personal responsibility in how we think, what we do and who we have become. The etymology of the word "responsibility" implies that we have the human "ability to respond" to circumstances and make choices. We are responsible for those choices. Relinquish our capacity to respond solely on determinative nature nullifies what it means to be human.
Sincerity
by R. Jay Magill Jr.
W. W. Norton & Company, 2012
Review by John L. Ng
February, 2013
Over lunch with my wife's friends, while looking at a plum blossom painting brushed by me, one of them blurted out that my calligraphy looked like it was written by someone who did not know Chinese. I forced a smile in grimace over her unfiltered sincerity and wished she was insincere in her uninvited critique. Magill's book traces this great virtue of sincerity in its five hundred year history. It has a theological beginning during the 16th century Reformation in the church. Reformers great and small wrestled with sincerity as a biblical imperative. Martin Luther quoted St. Paul as his proof text: Now this is our boast - our conscience testifies that we have conducted ourselves in the world . . . in holiness and sincerity that are from God (II Corinthians 1.12).
Of course, sincerity was not really a new notion from the church. The ancient Greeks gave us the word itself. It means "without wax." To uphold their high quality, ceramics were advertised to be without flaws patched up with wax. In time, sincerity means without deceit. This desired transparency soon sipped into greater society. Philosophers, clerics, poets, playwrights, essayists and politicians, in the worst and best of times, paid homage to this noble virtue. From the marital intrigues of England's Henry VIII to the bourgeois French high court life, from the age of Romanticism to the age of the Cold War, from American pop art to hipster chic, sincerity has illuminated our intrinsic longing to be without pretense.
In his epilogue, Magill imagines what our world would be like if no one is sincere. He writes, "if everything everyone said or did had an ulterior motive. You would have no real friends. . . . A world without any sincerity would embody the X-Files motto: Trust no one." Then again, what if everyone is utterly sincere. They say exactly what they mean and feel. What if they have no regard for others' hurt feelings; what if they ignore the balm of etiquette used to lubricate the rough rub of social intercourses. Being imperfect that we all are, this perfectly sincere world would be a miserable place to live and have our being. Every once in a while, maybe more often than we admit, we want people to keep their true thoughts and feelings to themselves. This flawed world is difficult to navigate as it is without their sincere impropriety.
In an imperfect world of very imperfect people we need both sincerity and insincerity to nourish our famish relationships. Insincerity, in the broad room or bed room, is suspiciously unacceptable. We don't like people who are habitually deceitful. We abhor those who are pretentious, dishonest or insensitive. Plainly, we want to avoid inauthentic individuals. Then again, as Magill observes, history has shown that "the ideal of sincerity was supported by religious or literary figures who often ended up hanged, burned, beheaded, hiding in the forest. . . or otherwise hunted out of society."
Then how can sincerity and insincerity co-exist in mundane and grave circumstances - what do we say when a woman asks if that red dress makes her look fat or when the secret police inquires if there are innocent people hiding in our attic? To paraphrase Aristotle referring to honesty, sincerity must be exercised to the right people with the right motive at the right time. In that sense, sincerity is a moral choice we make. It reflects our fear of God, mutual respect for others, and our earnest need for pleasant encounters. Even if we must to be insincere, we still need to be prompted by a sincerity that seeks to guard the well being of others.
W. W. Norton & Company, 2012
Review by John L. Ng
February, 2013
Over lunch with my wife's friends, while looking at a plum blossom painting brushed by me, one of them blurted out that my calligraphy looked like it was written by someone who did not know Chinese. I forced a smile in grimace over her unfiltered sincerity and wished she was insincere in her uninvited critique. Magill's book traces this great virtue of sincerity in its five hundred year history. It has a theological beginning during the 16th century Reformation in the church. Reformers great and small wrestled with sincerity as a biblical imperative. Martin Luther quoted St. Paul as his proof text: Now this is our boast - our conscience testifies that we have conducted ourselves in the world . . . in holiness and sincerity that are from God (II Corinthians 1.12).
Of course, sincerity was not really a new notion from the church. The ancient Greeks gave us the word itself. It means "without wax." To uphold their high quality, ceramics were advertised to be without flaws patched up with wax. In time, sincerity means without deceit. This desired transparency soon sipped into greater society. Philosophers, clerics, poets, playwrights, essayists and politicians, in the worst and best of times, paid homage to this noble virtue. From the marital intrigues of England's Henry VIII to the bourgeois French high court life, from the age of Romanticism to the age of the Cold War, from American pop art to hipster chic, sincerity has illuminated our intrinsic longing to be without pretense.
In his epilogue, Magill imagines what our world would be like if no one is sincere. He writes, "if everything everyone said or did had an ulterior motive. You would have no real friends. . . . A world without any sincerity would embody the X-Files motto: Trust no one." Then again, what if everyone is utterly sincere. They say exactly what they mean and feel. What if they have no regard for others' hurt feelings; what if they ignore the balm of etiquette used to lubricate the rough rub of social intercourses. Being imperfect that we all are, this perfectly sincere world would be a miserable place to live and have our being. Every once in a while, maybe more often than we admit, we want people to keep their true thoughts and feelings to themselves. This flawed world is difficult to navigate as it is without their sincere impropriety.
In an imperfect world of very imperfect people we need both sincerity and insincerity to nourish our famish relationships. Insincerity, in the broad room or bed room, is suspiciously unacceptable. We don't like people who are habitually deceitful. We abhor those who are pretentious, dishonest or insensitive. Plainly, we want to avoid inauthentic individuals. Then again, as Magill observes, history has shown that "the ideal of sincerity was supported by religious or literary figures who often ended up hanged, burned, beheaded, hiding in the forest. . . or otherwise hunted out of society."
Then how can sincerity and insincerity co-exist in mundane and grave circumstances - what do we say when a woman asks if that red dress makes her look fat or when the secret police inquires if there are innocent people hiding in our attic? To paraphrase Aristotle referring to honesty, sincerity must be exercised to the right people with the right motive at the right time. In that sense, sincerity is a moral choice we make. It reflects our fear of God, mutual respect for others, and our earnest need for pleasant encounters. Even if we must to be insincere, we still need to be prompted by a sincerity that seeks to guard the well being of others.