When We Lie

Lying, Liar, Lies

If mere humans may have things abominable to them, mine is lying. I hate it in nearly all forms: commercial advertising and political propaganda, of course, as well as even when people doing good things feel compelled to pretend they are flawless: that the rotten thing they just did is required by that good thing they’re doing, for instance, or that they didn’t do the rotten thing at all.

There is no I don’t know which is worse there, because it doesn’t matter. Both are lies.

Alas, there are children in this house, and also we grown-ups in it occasionally venture into the world of other putative adults, which are to say that we get a lot of lies.

And it’s still strange to me in many cases, especially the times involving children — because there are usually multiple systems both human and the mechanical in place to catch them. I mean what the hell are they thinking?

Well, that’s half right. Hell’s involved, but they probably aren’t thinking, at least not well. Internet filters are watching, as are adults — slightly less reliable than software, but far more experienced at being human, which means we were kids, which means we know what the hell they’re thinking.

Still, it’s encouraging that they’re not thinking, as is the foreignity of the falsehood. It’s good when it’s strange because it means we retain hope — modicum … smidge … whatever. There is yet faith.

*

Only two things can happen when we lie. One is we get away with it. One is we don’t.

If we don’t, we may suffer consequences. To take again the example of kids, they often get punished more for disobedience also involving deception. They are less like to be trusted each successive time. If they don’t stop, they will be come dishonest bastards. There’s a lot of downside.

If we do ‘get away with it’ we also suffer. We think we don’t because we get what we wanted — the sweet slake of sin — and there may even be little or no quick or immediate response. It might take a few days for the lie to come to light, or parents have grown too weary to do any real good, or, if it’s been a long slog of subterfuge, both. But even in the worst case, where the least good is done, the parents know, and God knows.

That is to say, the liar has slimed the one or two human people in his life who care the most about him, who want the most for him, who will be one of his only sanctuaries when the world lies back at him, not to mention the one God who is even more of each of those things. So really we never get away with it. God knows. This is said to carry no weight in the world these days. But many people who say so are also known to … lie.

And then there is that pesky Natural Law, which says the truth will out.

One of my favorite speakers is Dr. John Mark Reynolds. He is also a philosopher, theologian, and university provost, but I like him most and know him best for his speaking. Once he asked an audience why, if forces of evil ever overthrow the government of the United States, why he asked us, is that effort destined to fail, those forces destined to fall?

We guessed and guessed and guessed, our flailings focused around troop strengths and covert intrigues and other men-and-chariots concepts.

No, he said. It will fail because it’s false.

Bam, as some of the kids used to say.

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly.

The truth will out. Lies fail.

If you’re five years old, the slime squirms out from between your crossed fingers in less than the time it took you to gather it up into them. If you’re twenty-five, an adult say, you may get a little longer. If you have an army, the Soviet Union say, the lie might last nearly a century.

Woo Woo.

Of course John Mark is also a father, and a grown-up operating in the big good world, so he sees a lot of lies. Prolly has engaged in it himself a time or two. Men doing good things you see, are not unflawed.

Whatever we may claim.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent

Can We Tawk?

Comedienne Joan Rivers’ catchphrase was, ‘Can we talk?’ with all that that entails — its rhetorical nature, the Jewish thing, an implication that at least one of the parties will be better off for having done so … Like God. T’other day a priest spoke of ontological remembrance, the immediate and ongoing memory of past-present-future

Read More »

Hide and See

Something lost, Dallas Willard said once, might yet be very valuable. One’s car keys for instance. He was speaking somewhat in the context of salvation, if I recall … the general point was calling something lost doesn’t mean it’s not wanted — quite the opposite. Yet it remains … until finding its way out or being found

Read More »

Greater Love Blah Blah Blah

Do we doubt locals thanked them for their service? I’m not equating the two. They were wrong; glad we crushed them. Only noting it’s likely they thought as much about such things as we do, which is to say not much. German citizens who believed their leaders, loved their country, watched their sons get on

Read More »

Dark Eyed Life

According to @CitizenScreen, doing yeoman’s* work daily on Twitter* relative to the Golden Age of film, today is the birth date of Mabel Normand, Hedy Lamarr, and Dorothy Dandridge — Normand: New York, 1892 Lamarr: Vienna, 1914 Dandridge: Cleveland, 1922 — which makes for coupla at least interesting, if not compelling or fascinating at the

Read More »

Random

True Romance

Mentioned last week the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a term used in film to refer to a female — not a woman, mark you, but a girl or perhaps female, depending on the level of [im]maturity — who exists in a story not for herself, more deeply not as a Self, but only for the

Read More »

Like A Rolling Stone

A totally unscientific survey — texted my brother-in-law on the other coast — shows [my] fears of the death of the ice cream cone have been at least mildly exaggerated … tho looking, literally, a little topsy-turvy. A’course, I’d not heard anything specific; the reports were only in my head because about nothing from this

Read More »

On Real

Learned of late that several people — at least three husbands in young marriages, two with young children, everyone in his 20s — had not only never read The Velveteen Rabbit … but hadn’t heard of it. That sorta explains why it’s public domain and I can link to it here. Also explains why when

Read More »

Cursing With God

More battle scenes please Once teaching a high school American Literature class — and let me tell you, once is enough —a student he says, “I don’t understand The Red Badge of Courage.  It’s a war book, but there are hardly any battle scenes.  I don’t get it.” So we did a little Socratic dialogue, and

Read More »

Related

Not a Eulogy

(A Eucatastrophe) * Love the words, my friends. Pay attention to the words, I say. Christians don’t die One reason we know this is Jesus said it. In John’s account he told Michael: “You shall never taste or see death” (Indeed, as the Psalmist says, “taste and see that the Lord is good.”) Another reason

Read More »

Shock and Appall

Our system is perfectly designed for the results we’re getting. We worship wealth and crave power. We have a job called “celebrity” and wink at vulgarity and reward villainy. We admire brashness. We randomly excuse or excoriate peccadilloes: depends on the news cycle, the fame or infamy possible, and the money and status of those involved.

Read More »

Trouble and Strife

Septic tank is Cockney rhyming slang for “Yank” which may suggest what trouble and strife is slang for. But it’s not fair of course, and good men, and most men some of the time, know she’s not only that. Upon noting once how, yes, “children are a bother,” Dallas Willard made the important philosophical distinction

Read More »

Why Not Two Cupcakes?

Something we know well and another I know little. Remember … re-member … before we begin Dallas Willard on knowing — namely … named-ly … not intellectual apprehension but interactive relationship. Each and both come from the same aim: good and right and lovely when well and harmful on all counts when not, as is

Read More »