One thing you may have noticed about the Honor Code’s commitment to honesty is that it demands that we be “honest in all things.”  But surely that cannot be right.

What about the little lies, that don’t do anybody any harm?  If the ball bounced twice in foursquare at recess, but nobody noticed and I say it bounced only once—no big deal, right?  If my teacher asks me if I did my reading last night, and I didn’t but I know I’m going to make it up tonight, no harm in bending the truth a little, right?  After all, who’s really made any worse off by a white lie?

Answer—you are.

C.S. Lewis puts it bluntly: “That explains what always used to puzzle me about Christian writers; they seem to be so very strict at one moment and so very free and easy at another. They talk about mere sins of thought as if they were immensely important: and then they talk about the most frightful murders and treacheries as if you had only got to repent and all would be forgiven. But I have come to see that they are right. What they are always thinking of is the mark which the action leaves on that tiny central self which no one sees in this life but which each of us will have to endure or enjoy — forever. One man may be so placed that his anger [or lie] sheds the blood of thousands, and another so placed that however angry [or dishonest] he gets he will only be laughed at. But the little mark on the soul may be much the same in both. * * * The bigness or smallness of the thing, seen from the outside, is not what really matters.”

Honest in all things means honest in all things.  After all, it is for our own good.