31 Days of Love & Hate :: Day 9 ~ Lying

Next hate topic… lying.

#9 on God’s Top Ten list: “You must not bear false witness against your neighbor.”  This commandment prohibits lying… but on a deeper level it implies that we have the responsibility to be truthful at all times.

In order to lie, we must already understand what the truth is.  We know the truth, but deliberately misrepresent it or withhold it from view.  Most of the time we do this for self-serving reasons.

65 percent of high school students say they have cheated on an exam in last 12 month.
24 percent of college students say they would lie to get or keep a job.

Unlike the moral relativism of most people… God absolutely hates lying.

Why? Because lies destroy.

“Telling lies about others is as harmful as hitting them with an ax, wounding them with a sword or shooting them with a sharp arrow.” (Proverbs 25:18).

God hates lying because He is truth. In fact, Jesus used that very word to describe His character… “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life.” (John 14:6)

We know lying is wrong, so why do we do it?

Often because we have been caught doing something wrong or embarrassing.  Most of the time we lie “to save face”… or to keep from offending someone else.

But here are a few ways we might not think about lying…

Flattery. Flattery is perhaps the subtlest forms of deceit.  A good definition of flattery is “saying something to a person’s face that you would never say behind his or her back.”  It’s tempting to flatter someone to get something from them, but saying insincere things is just another form of lying.  Would you consider a two-faced person to be honest?

Exaggeration. This is especially easy to do, since we often feel the (insecure) need to impress other people.  We may tell people about that “giant fish” that got away, or we might hype our skills with the hope of getting that job promotion.

Keeping Silent.  We might hear someone say something we know for a fact is untrue, yet we remain quiet. Or we might turn a blind eye to a case of injustice and let it be “someone else’s problem.” Slander by silence.

Lets be truth-tellers in a world that “loves to live a lie.”

Greg

{This is a series of posts for 31 Days of Love & Hate. To read the other posts, click here.}