The Genuine and the Counterfeit

The law provides heavy penalties for what we usually call counterfeiting. But there are many kinds of counterfeiting that are beyond the usual penalties of law. We have in mind the intangible kind of counterfeiting that goes on often by the hour, almost anywhere, where many say much that isn’t so, and pretend to know what they don’t know, and reach conclusions on things they never knew⎯or pretend to be what they are not, or pretend to have an interest in people or in things in which they have no actual interest.

There is much small talk and much pretense on many matters⎯much of which is pleasant and relatively harmless⎯except that it wastes time and skims the surface and keeps people from getting down to solid substance.

There is another kind of counterfeiting that is one of the worst⎯when someone deliberately sets out to deceive⎯or sets out to take advantage of an innocent person⎯someone who pretends to be what he isn’t⎯who pretends love he doesn’t feel, intentions he doesn’t have, who breaks hearts and deeply hurts others. He may say the words and have the appearance of a sincere person. But there is an intangible something that distinguishes sincere people from those who only pretend to be so. And sooner or later, what people do, more than what they say, separates the sincere from the insincere.

“Sincerity and truth are the basis of every virtue,” said Confucius. “All must be earnest in a world like ours,” Horatius Bonar added. “‘There in nothing,’ said Plato, ‘so delightful as the hearing or the speaking of truth’⎯for this reason,” said Thomas Sherlock, “there is no conversation so agreeable as that of the man of integrity, who hears without any intention to betray, and speaks without any intention to deceive.”

Heaven protect us from the promises of an insincere person⎯from a counterfeiter before he is caught.

Insincerity is one of the meanest, shallowest things in life.