A person’s possession of a belief doesn’t imply that they consistently live up to it. Your actual beliefs are not what you profess to believe, but what you demonstrate by what you actually choose to do, think, and feel. Honest beliefs prescribe behavior. A person’s lack of honesty determines the distance between their professed beliefs and actual actions. A perfectly honest person feels, thinks, and acts according to what they believe, and they believe what they think, feel, and do.
When you are honest, life serves as a mirror that shows you who you are. Life provides you with the daily opportunity to reconcile what you believe, what you feel, and what you do. You constantly face situations where you have the opportunity to live up to what you believe, do, and feel against opposition. Each such decision point provides you with an opportunity to show that you are who you believe and represent yourself to be, or to choose to be someone less. If you live up to what you believe, you will accumulate evidence that you are really that way.
How well do your outward actions align with your professed beliefs? Suppose it were illegal to lie. How would you prove that you actually believe what you say you believe? How closely would your choices align with your professed beliefs in the eyes of a judge? How would you fare if your professed beliefs were compared to your actual actions by those who know you best? Under this standard, most people would be condemned. For example, the majority of Christians would stand condemned for living lives contrary to Christ’s example and teachings.