You want the Truth.
If you don’t believe it, just remember the last time you were lied to and how you felt about it: You were angry, disappointed, hurt, offended, humiliated, or all of the above, especially if you had really trusted the person who lied to you.
We expect the truth from people we believe in and trust. We also generally assume that people in official positions of trust will also speak truth to us—for example, teachers, physicians, lawyers, public administrators, law enforcement officers, or clergy persons. And we are outraged when we discover such officials have been lying to us.
According to M. Scott Peck, lying is psychologically unhealthy. “We must always hold truth, as best we can determine it, to be more important, more vital to our self-interest, than our comfort. Conversely, we must always consider our personal discomfort relatively unimportant and indeed, even welcome it in the service of the search for truth. Mental health is an ongoing process of dedication to reality at all costs.” [See his book, The Road Less Traveled.]
According to Jesus, lying is evil. (M. Scott Peck agrees. See his book, People of the Lie.) Jesus refers to Satan as the Father of Lies: “He [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” See the Gospel according to John 8:44.
Hence, we do evil and cause harm to ourselves as well as to one another when we lie. Yet, as a people, the human race, it is safe to say that we lie so easily and so often, with so many “little white lies,” and think nothing of it. Nations lie to nations, governments to governments, national leaders lie to their foreign counter parts, businesses to businesses, and so-on and so-forth. It is one reason why lawyers are so pervasive and legal contracts are so necessary—“Get it in writing!”
Ironically we don’t think of ourselves as evil. And so we don’t think that we are doing evil when we lie. We put EVIL in an altogether different category: Evil is the raping of a young innocent girl. Evil is the cold blooded murder of a woman pregnant with child. Evil is something that only dirty-rotten-scum-of-the-earth type people do. Not So! We do evil every time we tell a lie.
If you find yourself resisting such a statement, ask yourself why. Why do you not want to accept the fact that lying is a form of evil? How often do you lie? When and for what reason do you find yourself telling a lie: to cover up, to protect yourself, to deflect trouble, to side-step hard questions, to avoid accountability, to avert personal scrutiny?
Lying is seldom, if ever, done with truly honorable and good intentions. And if and when it is, there is often a troubling inner battle as to whether or not telling the lie is in fact better than simply speaking the truth. Fact is: We often short-change others because we presume that they “can’t take the truth.” Yet, who are we that we should determine whether or not the other can take the truth? So, we give them a lie, in the name of protecting them. Are we; that is, do we really protect others when we lie to them rather than speak the truth to them? I doubt it very much. Re-read M. Scott Peck’s quote above and think about it. He categorically disagrees with the belief that we protect people by lying to them.
Sure, sometimes we get things wrong; we think that we are speaking the truth when we are in fact only spreading misinformation. That happens to the best of us. But that’s not the same as deliberately telling a lie, saying something that we know as a fact is NOT true. Being mistaken is forgivable, sometimes even laughable. Being a deliberate liar is neither funny nor innocent in its effect.
Lying does harm. Lying therefore is destructive. It tears down rather than builds up. It weakens rather than strengthens. It avoids responsibility rather than embraces it. It cheats, steals, and robs from others rather than produces, enhances, and advances the well-being of others. There is no integrity in lying.
This is why certain kinds of anonymity can be a form of lying. Consider extremely wealthy and powerful political backers that remain hidden, donating huge amounts of money to affect an election’s outcome, all the while avoiding public scrutiny as to who he or she or they may be. This is why telling little white lies, or misleading and/or misdirecting, or allowing others to draw the wrong conclusion based on half-truths one has spoken, is also a form of lying and therefore a form of evil. When one hides the truth, or tries to escape detection from view, or evades the light of careful scrutiny one is often moving in the realm of deceit, which is a form of evil.
We no longer speak of EVIL, as such, in our society. Or rather we have simplified it into extreme acts—such as acts of terrorism. And for that reason we are lying to ourselves, thinking that we really aren’t bad people. Most of us believe ourselves to be quite innocent, even very good people. Is that so? When was the last time you lied or allowed people to draw false conclusions based on half-truths you conveyed? And how often do you do so? How would you defend yourself in asserting that you were doing nothing wrong, that it was not in fact a form of evil?
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