Liars All?

I read somewhere a while back that the majority of Americans take it for granted, that is, actually expect that politicians lie.  It’s politics!

Yet, we also get angry and reactive when a politician is caught in a bald face lie.

No, let me be more specific.

When caught in a lie, we eagerly attack our political opponent’s candidate with scathing judgment and condemnation of him or her while at the same time we readily overlook and/or minimize the lies made by our own favored candidate.

It’s a simple double standard formula: If we don’t like the candidate, we pronounce, accentuate, and condemn every lie, however small, however big; on the other hand, if we like the candidate, we excuse any and all lies as insignificant and forgivable.

Why do we do this?  First, we want what we want and we humans tend to do anything it takes to get what we want—even if it means lying or cheating or cutting corners and/or misleading, as in leaving things out and failing to tell the whole story, or exaggerating and over embellishing.

Secondly, we feel more in control when we lie.  Emphasis is on “feel.”  Fact is, we generally lose control when we lie, for we more often than not become victims of our own duplicitous behavior.  Yet, when we lie we feel as if we are controlling the situation, managing and maintaining our reputations, our personal interests, our ego & pride, or are containing our influence over others and/or our control over events and their possible outcome.  In that sense, lying is a means to an end, a tool, or a weapon and/or defense mechanism.  In short, we believe that lying works!

The trouble is that lying often IS effective—in the short run!  And that’s what reinforces the tendency/temptation for us to lie.

And who hasn’t lied?  Indeed, some of our greatest personal injuries have occurred when we have discovered that our closest friend or confidant or loved one, someone we truly respected and trusted as unquestionably trustworthy, has lied to us.  Now THAT hurts!  That adds to the problem.  Furthermore, if we’ve lied to others, we assume or expect that others will also lie to us; or, if others have lied to us, we feel more justified in lying to others.

Of course this is why the question of character is always raised in a political campaign.  Is he/she honest, trustworthy and true to his/her word?  But we started off by admitting that most of us already expect political candidates to lie?  So what do we mean by the question of trustworthiness in a political candidate, if we already assume that all political candidates (left or right) lie?

Furthermore, if that’s the case, why stop at the character of the candidate?  What about the character of the voter?  Are we willing to have our chosen candidate win by any means and at any cost—even if it means by lying, cheating, and misleading along the way?  If so, what does that say about us and our national character as a whole?

Studies have shown that most people either ignore or proactively resist revealing discrepancies found by “fact-check” reports against a candidate, if it is a candidate that they favor.  That is, if a fact-check report reveals egregious lies and half-truths and/or great errors in a favored candidates speech, for example, the attitudinal response of that candidate’s supporter goes something like this: “I don’t want to hear about it?” or “The fact-check report itself is a lie!”  In short, we don’t want to know the truth, if the truth goes against our own desired interests.  So be it.

It is no wonder that Jesus the Christ said, when speaking of the evil one: “When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

The Biblical (Gospel) message: God is Truth.  So, even if we only tell a so-called little white lie, we fall short of God’s righteous perfection.  Indeed, you and I fall short of God’s purity, holiness, goodness, and righteous all the time.  This is why we humans tend to mess things up so badly, in whatever arena we may speak of—political, economic, social, etc.  We have character issues.  This is why we need a Savior and why it is that Christians point to Jesus as our needed Lord and Savior.  For, given our human nature, we’re certainly not going to perfect the world on our own; just look at what we have to work with—look at the world's condition right now and compare it to any century prior to this one and you know what I’m talking about; we've not improved a bit, have we?