Hey!, Wanna See Some Sin? "Cry aloud, spare not, lift up your voice like a trumpet and show my people their transgressions and . . . their sins." Isa. 58:1
22. Lies: Is lying wrong?
"Lie (5574) not to one another", Col. 3:9.
lie, 5574: Gk., pseudomai, to utter an untruth or attempt to deceive by falsehood; falsely, to lie."What shall I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto him, . . . Do not bear false (5576) witness, . . ." Lk.18:18-20.
" . . . You shall not bear false (5576) witness, . . ." Rom. 12:9.
false, 5576: Gk., pseudomartureo, to be an untrue testifier, i.e. offer falsehood in evidence: to lie."You shall not bear (6030) false (8267) witness (5707) against your neighbor (7453)." Ex. 20:16.
bear, 6030: Heb. anah, respond.
false, 8267: Heb., sheqer, an untruth: by impl. a sham: deceit, falsehood, a lie.
witness, 5707: ed, witness or testimony.
Dict: witness, from O.E. witnes, testimony, lit. "what one knows".against, (understood)
neighbor, 7453: reae, reya, an associate, more or less close: brother, companion, fellow, friend, husband, lover, neighbor, another.
In modern English, "You shall not respond with a lie or deceit about what you know, to anyone."
"He that overcomes [sins] shall inherit all things; and I will be his God and he shall be my son. But . . . all liars, shall have their part in the lake of fire which is the second death." (Rev. 21:7-8).
22.1. How many of us tell lies?
To quote many, many sources on the subject, "Everyone does it."
"Lying, say the experts, is epidemic."
David Graham, The Toronto Star, http://www.earthtym.net/ref-charismatic.htm
More than 274,285,884 Americans, or all Americans over the age of three years. In other words every one of us who is old enough to talk.
"Deceptive, shrewd, evasive, clever - no matter how we describe our behavior, much of what we communicate to others is some form of lying. We just don't tell the truth. If this behavior doesn't gnaw at our consciences, it's only because we're able to rationalize our lying by compartmentalizing these lies into neat little acceptable categories.
The strict definition of a lie is "to deliberately make a false statement." But then, we have varying degrees of lying like prevaricate, which is rarely used and means to quibble or confuse the issue, in order to evade the truth. Or we can be more sophisticated and use equivocate, which implies the deliberate use of ambiguity in order to deceive or mislead. Yet another softer equivalent for a lie is fabricate, where we invent a false story or excuse, with the intention to deceive. Most of us think telling "fibs" or "white" lies is quite natural, as long as they're unimportant and not harmful.
The only beloved messengers of the truth are little children, because it's refreshing, comical, (and often embarrassing) to hear them speak so honestly and forthright. However, as these innocents get older, we begin to admonish them for their candid remarks, as they cease to be cute and funny. They get the message and by the time they're teenagers, they've learned how to lie, just like us."
"Did you ever wonder what would happen if everyone decided to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth for just one day? Imagine no BS, no covering up, no lies of commission or omission, period - not even the smallest, most innocent little white lie."
From: "A Nation of Liars".....by Richard Koss (Emphasis ours.)
http://collection.nlc-bnc.ca/100/201/300/inditer/2001/09-11/koss/liars.htm
Mr. Koss wrote, "The only beloved messengers of the truth are little children, because it's refreshing, comical, (and often embarrassing) to hear them speak so honestly and forthright."
Christ said, "Verily I say unto you, Except you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." (Mat.18:3)
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How many people lie?
10,000,000+ taxpayers "lie on their tax forms" according to the IRS.
6,640,000 job applicants based on "80% of all resumes are misleading"
304,864 doctors, based on "70% of all doctors lie on their bills to health insurance providers".
489,530 attorneys, they mostly "work to benefit their clients, not to arrive at truth".
67,050,000 workers based on 50% or "half of American workers".
100% of dating couples surveyed lied to each other in about a third of their conversations.
20% - 30% of middle managers surveyed had written fraudulent internal reports.
95% of participating college students surveyed were willing to tell at least one lie to a potential employer to win a job, and 41% had already done so.
We are lied to about 200 times each day.
Most people lie to others once or twice a day and deceive about 30 people per week.
The average is 7 times per hour if you count all the times people lie to themselves.
We lie in 30 to 38% of all our interactions.
College students lie in 50% of conversations with their mothers.(The numbers above are based partially on information at the 2000 Census web site and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/index.html
http://www.bls.gov/home.htm)
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The truth about our lies:"But what are the big lies? What are the most significant lies we tell each other and ourselves?
That may be a hard question for us to answer because we come from a culture of lying the way that dolphins come from a culture that is wet. Individually, we might like to think that we are better, but the fact is that there is so much lying going on right now that you'd think that it was congenital to the human race.
Modern intellectual history is tragic and almost comedic if you view it in the context of a three-act play. In Act One is the pronouncement that God is dead. In Act Two comes the declaration that we can make it on our own by using knowledge to improve. But in Act Three, which is where we're at now and where we seem to be stuck, the primary action consists of calling those who had hope in Act Two liars and exposing them as frauds. It seems sort of pathetic, but that's pretty much who we've become: a cast of hope-abandoned characters struggling to avoid the consequences of a missing plot. Perhaps that is why we lie so much -- because the truth is painful and hard to bear.
. . .
Lies in commercial speech surround us like air. If every product and service advertised to us lived up to one-half of its promise, ours would be a truly blissful commercial state. Tobacco companies lie about whether nicotine causes cancer, chemical companies lie about the safety of implants in breasts, pharmaceutical companies lie about suicides, jury verdicts and the effects of giving psychotropic drugs to kids. Even if you had a lie detector that worked, there would be no point because using it would be like being on the beach with a metal detector that detected sand.
. . .
But why do we lie? What is the truth we are trying to hide? Sometimes it's just an inconvenience or embarrassment, like when a child asks about sex while you're standing in the supermarket checkout line. Sometimes it's to stay out of trouble, as when someone says, "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't really know you meant that," when in fact they did. Sometimes it's even out of spite, someone may lie because it gives them a feeling of power over someone else. Most often though, and with the lies that have the deepest roots, we lie because we are afraid to face the truth.""The Truth About Our Lies", by: Phillip Tanaka
http://members.web-o.net/rpargman/truth.html (Emphasis ours)
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"U.S.A. Today: "Nearly half of American workers admitted to taking unethical, or illegal actions in the past year." U.S.A. Today revealed the top five types of unethical, illegal behavior that workers say they have engaged in over the past year because of pressure. Half of American workers admitted to this. They cut corners on quality control. They covered up incidents. They abused or lied about sick days. They lied to or deceived customers. They put inappropriate pressure on others.
We are a nation of liars. We have even developed our own vocabulary about lying, and a book has been written about it. It's entitled "The New Doublespeak — Why No One Knows What Anyone Is saying Anymore". Let me share with you some of the more creative doublespeak terms that are currently in vogue: "meaningful downturn and aggregate output" — that's means recession; "after-sale service [fee]" — that's a kickback; "temporarily displaced inventory" — that's stolen goods; "a strategic misrepresentation" — that's a lie; "a reality augmentation" — ah, I love that one — but it's a lie, too; "terminological inexactitude" — again, a lie."
http://www.thefallschurch.org/SERMONS/1998sermons/981227jy.htm (Emphasis ours)
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"A nation of liars"
"We are a nation of liars. In a national survey 91 percent of Americans admitted to lying regularly. Thirty-six percent confessed to telling serious lies which hurt others, are totally self-serving or break the law.
One-third of HIV positive individuals, for example, have not informed their spouses or partners of their condition.[ James Peterson and Peter Kim, The Day America Told the Truth (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1991), pp. 45-46, 237]
False claims for workers' compensation are so widespread that private investigators in San Francisco spend 75 percent of their time investigating suspected cases.
[ Ken Garcia, "Sleuth Techs Replacing Sam Spades," San Francisco Chronicle, June 27, 1998, p. A-17.]In 1990 when the IRS required dependents to be identified with a Social Security number, 7 million names mysteriously vanished from income tax reports.
[Michael Josephson is quoted by Elizabeth Venant, "A Nation of Cheaters," San Francisco Chronicle, January 7, 1992, p. D-4.]"Telling The Truth, Does it Pay?
by Stephen Lim
http://www.ptm.org/01PT/MayJun/TellTruth.htm (emphasis ours)
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Pre-schoolers lie:
" The famed California Growth Study, conducted several decades ago, revealed that more than one-third of girls ages three and one half to six engage in lying.
One-third of the boys between ages three and one half and eight also lie."
Lying In Children And What To Do About It.
Psychologically Speaking...by Dr. Thomas A. Houle, Saturday, February 23, 2002
© 2001Houle Psychology Clinic. All rights reserved.
http://www.drhoule.com/column1.htm
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Michael Lewis in his book, Lying and Deception in Everyday Life, states that, by the age of 3, two-thirds of American kids have learned to lie. By age 7, about 98% lie.
The Conscience of a Nation: Clinton, Sex and Politics Around the World
Chapter 3, The Morals of Americans
http://www.victorsbooks.com/CONchap3.html
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"Any ardent and objective observer of American morality cannot escape the conclusion that Americans are just a bit above the floor in matters of truth, and that's how far the high mark gets; the high number of churches on the landscape of America and savvy television evangelism act concertedly to mask resilient hypocrisy that characterizes day to day dealings."
"The experts have the facts and figures about lying in America. In an article entitled "How Honest are Americans" that appeared in USA Today, the author states that, according to Lousig-Nont & Associates, a pre-employment testing firm located in Las Vegas, Nevada, "Anyone looking for an honest man or woman in the U.S. today would have lots of problems." Fifty-two per cent of 7,443 people Lousig-Nont tested were rated as low desirability because they admitted to stealing or thinking about stealing regularly.
Dr. Brad Blanton, a famed psychotherapist, in his book, Radical Honesty: How To Transform Your Life By Telling The Truth, puts it poignantly: "We all lie like hell. It wears us out." In their oft-cited and highly regarded book, The Day America Told the Truth , James Paterson and Peter Kim noted that "Lying has become an integral part of American culture, a trait of the American character. We lie and don't even think about it. We lie for no reason." Elsewhere in the book, they commented: "Americans lie. They lie more than we had ever thought possible before the study. But [ironically] they told us the truth about how much they lie." In their comprehensive study, they found that 91% of Americans lie regularly and more than a third of the married people were having sex on the side and not telling their spouses.
Dr. Blanton, in an article in Men's Journal entitled "Stop the Baloney," associates 53% of divorce to lying: "The reason we have a 53 percent divorce rate is not because people are telling the truth, it is because they are lying." In the Larry King Live show of February 13, 1998 mentioned above, Mr. Feldman said that Americans are taught to lie and deny about having sex: "... we don't know if he [referring to President Clinton] did or didn't, but the best they have is maybe in a civil deposition he didn't tell the truth about an affair, which every person in America has been taught don't admit you had an affair ." (Emphasis supplied.)
Michael Kennedy, a New York civil and criminal attorney who formerly represented Susan McDougal, appearing on CNBC's Rivera Live on June 8, 1998 confirmed this, saying, "We know everybody lies about sex. Americans lie about having sex when they didn't just to boost their egos to their peers or whoever happens to be the audience. Americans lie about having sex to avoid gossip and scandal.""
The Conscience of a Nation: Clinton, Sex and Politics Around the World
Chapter 3, The Morals of Americans
http://www.victorsbooks.com/CONchap3.html
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A lying society:
"Amidst current political mayhem, the issue that cuts to the heart of our humanness is the issue of lying. Watching the media and the hoards of loud, obnoxious political experts lambaste the president for lying about having a little sex on the side has made me ashamed. We live in a world of lies, and many of us, supposed Christians, have the nerve and stupidity to waste our time and millions of dollars shaking our collective fingers at the president, while we go about our own phony lives feeling so righteous. It's just appalling.
. . .
In other words, in so many ways, we are all ... living a lie. We live many lies. We can condemn the president in such a way as to be just shy of stoning him in the public square, but easily forget about the lies we tell to our bosses, spouses, children and friends.
. . .
Lying and deception, including self-deception, are so common in our culture, they are a part of everyday life. Children live in a fantasy world fostered by both parents and television. If a kid didn't believe in the tooth fairy, or worse yet, Santa Claus, we'd think something was wrong. We would want to set them straight. It's un-American not to believe in Santa Claus. In that case, according to certain Muslim extremists, not only is Santa Claus a lie, but so too, is Christianity.
. . .
In her book, "Truth About Lying," Dr. Gina Graham Scott defines five types of lying: the "model of absolute integrity," which is someone who rarely lies; the "real straight-shooter," someone who tells white lies; the "pragmatic fibber," who lies when the situation calls for it; the "real Pinocchio," someone who sees no problem in lying; the "compulsive liar," someone who is pathological -- they can't help it.What type are you?"
"Liars dipping into America's cookie jar"
Jerry Flattum is the Opinions Page editor
©The Minnesota Daily, OCT. 7, 1998
http://www.daily.umn.edu/daily/1998/10/07/editorial_opinions/o1007/
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The reason we are often sworn to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth", is because we all recognize that we don't usually tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
"According to the best estimates, over one million polygraph examinations are administered each year in the United States. They are used in criminal investigations, during government security checks, and increasingly by nervous employers - particularly banks and stores".
PINOCCHIO SCIENCE: THE TRUTH ABOUT THE POLYGRAPH By Al Seckel
http://www.klab.caltech.edu/~seckel/Polygraph.html
Because so many job applicants lie, 4,000 to 8,000 practicing examiners are needed just to administer polygraph tests.
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"Take you heed every one of his neighbor, and trust you not in any brother: for every brother will utterly supplant, and every neighbor will walk with slanders. And they will deceive every one his neighbor, and will not speak the truth: they have taught their tongue to speak lies, and weary themselves to commit iniquity." Jer. 9:4-5.