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
22. 18. Will honesty work? Would full time, total honesty cause society to collapse?
A structure will collapse if the framework or foundation is weakened or destroyed. To the extent our society is based upon lies, it would be affected by a change to full time, total honesty.
So what is the extent of lying in the world?We all spend the majority of our time trying to "get more", more goods, more services, more comforts, more pleasures, and more approval or acceptance by others (fame and power). We consider all these needs and wants as being critical enough to justify our lying as necessary, acceptable or even an admirable skill. (The "outrage" over Watergate, Contra-gate, the white Bronco, Whitewater-gate, Monica-gate, and the Enron collapse is contradicted by our increasingly tolerant "public opinion" expressing acceptance.)
To "get more", we sell our labor, or buy and sell in the marketplace. Our individual "buying and selling" (with it's "required" lying) collectively forms local, regional and international "trade".
To prevent anarchy and to limit "feudalization" of society, we practice, and export, "democracy". Apart from God's laws, it appears to be the best system available to mankind, but it is still imperfect. Under this system, lawyers (to whom truth is irrelevant in relation to their client's desires and pocketbook) become the rule makers (legislators) and rule enforcers (administrators and judges) over all of our "buying and selling".
Locally, we compete with other individuals in our "buying and selling", to increase our personal wealth. Collectively, we form "businesses" which compete with each other in "buying and selling" to increase the company's wealth. At the city, county, and state levels, we compete with each other to attract more "businesses" to increase the city, county and state tax base (the "public wealth"). At the national level, we compete with other nations to increase our "national wealth" and maintain a positive (for us, negative for "them") balance of "trade". When these international competitions become too intense, we call them "trade wars". The implication and the threat being that if the "balance" (a reference to weight scales) gets too one-sided, a real war may follow.
From the individual level to the international level, the "buying and selling" and the "legislating, administrating, and adjudication" controlling all this "buying and selling", involves strategy, bluffing, misrepresentation, withholding of information, artful negotiating, distortion, embellishment, equivocation, gaming ethics, misinformation, misdirection, misrepresentation, misstatement, reality augmentation, terminological inexactitude and all the other terms we use in place of "lying".
On a social level, we lie to our families in the privacy of our homes. We lie to employers, coworkers, and customers. We lie to neighbors and strangers. We lie in public offices whether we are a clerk or a President.
We lie in the professions of physician (placebos), lawyer ("my client is innocent"), and scientist ("smoking doesn't cause cancer"). We lie in manufacturing ("these tires are safe", "this SUV is safe"). We lie in industry ("we didn't pollute anything"). Educators lie ("the students passed the tests"). Journalists lie ("these are the facts"). The media lies ("Republicans are scum, Democrats are saints"). We lie in the arts ("this is an all original composition"). We lie in sports ("yes, he's 6'-4", but he's only 12 years old").We perpetuate our lying society by teaching our children to lie. We teach them to lie by lying to them, for them, and in front of them. We take them to church, where they are lied to, and where they further learn by example to lie, and where they are told that it is "okay" to lie "for the right reasons".
We live with all this lying, by lying to ourselves. "It's not really lying, it's (something else)." "It's only a little lie." "It's a half-truth." "Sometimes lying is absolutely necessary." "It's for your (my) own good." 'Lying is simply wisdom, it is prudent."
So the answer is yes, society as we know it, would collapse if all lying stopped. If we all spoke only the truth, the world would be turned upside down. While that has not yet happened, it has begun. It hasn't noticeably affected the world, in fact, it has been so unnoticeable that very few are even aware of it.
God pointed out, through Isaiah, that the world is already "upside down". "Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honor me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the [false] precepts of men: Therefore, behold I will proceed to do a marvelous work among this people, even a marvelous work and a wonder: for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid.
Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the lord, and their works are in the dark, and they say, Who sees us? and who knows us?
Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter's clay [a cheap invention]: . . ." (Isa. 29:13-16).Christ came to turn it right side up, which appears to a self-justifying society of liars, to be turning it upside down. When Paul preached the gospel in Thessalonica, "a great multitude of the devout Greeks believed", . . ."But the Jews [the religious mainstream of that time] . . . took certain lewd fellows of the baser sort [a nice way of describing punks, thugs, gang bangers], and gathered a company [formed a mob], and set all the city in an uproar [incited rioting], and assaulted [broke into] the house of Jason . . . and took Jason and certain brethren [kidnapped some believers as hostages] unto the [civil] rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned the world upside down are come here also;" (Acts 17:1-6).
A society that accepts lies, cannot tolerate the truth, nor those who speak the truth.
--------------------------A world that discourages truth:
"St. Augustine defined all lies as sins because they misused God's gift of speech. In a better world than this one, people would agree and act accordingly. In fact, in a better world lies would not be necessary at all, since the truth would be self-evident and foolish to deny or attempt to refute. The world we have discourages such certainties. Lies will continue to be told, as will the difficulty of recognizing them as such."
"Lies, Lies, Lies", By Paul Gray, All Politics, CNN TIME, October 5, 1992.
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/10/06/back.time/ (emphasis ours)
--------------------------Truth must be attached to love:
"Honesty is not always the best policy. Truth must be married to love; honesty must be intertwined with kindness."
Carole Mayhall, Marriage Partnership, Vol. 11, no. 2.
http://www.claimthevictory.org/sermons/liar.htm
Honesty and truth can be used as a brutal and cruel weapon. Truth may hurt (for example, "we are all sinners and worthy of death"), but only truth leads us to more truth. Anything less, a half-truth, a little lie, cannot lead to truth.While truth must be attached to love, it cannot be tempered (watered-down) or overshadowed (partially or totally obscured) by love.
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Truth means truth. It does not have to mean brutality.:
"White lies have a way of growing dark over time. We must think long and hard before we tell even white lies.
But there is a danger in the other extreme as well. Telling the truth can be used as an excuse for brutality. It is not a virtue to be brutally honest. . . . Some things are better left unsaid. Truth without love easily becomes a weapon."
"Lying", Peter Morales, Senior Minister, June 3, 2001
http://www.dimensional.com/~juc/sermons/lying.html
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"Practicing Radical Honesty"
"Our governments lie. Our politicians lie. Our economists lie. Our police lie-sometimes on the witness stand. Our educators lie. Our religions lie. Our parents lie. And nobody admits it.
Not only won't the liars admit it, the people being lied to won't admit it. They know they're being lied to, but they won't acknowledge it. Do you want to be the one to tell the Emperor that he's wearing no clothes?
So not only do we all lie, we lie about our lying.
And oh, what tangled webs we weave...
There's a way out of all this. A way to a life of peace and joy and incredibly exuberant freedom.
Tell The Truth.
About Everything.
All The Time.
Big order? It shouldn't be. But let's acknowledge that it is-otherwise we'll wind up lying about that. It is a big order
Because we've been doing it so long, it's become part of our way of living. We have to learn a new way to live-and a new way to love. Because that's what we're talking about here. We're talking about love. We're not loving anybody to whom we are lying. That includes ourselves.No wonder the world is in the shape it's in."
Practicing Radical Honesty: Foreword by Neale Donald Walsch
http://www.radicalhonesty.com/fr-foreword.htm
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Business would not stop in the absence of lies:
"Lying in business. Commerce is an ancient and respectable human activity that predates written language. If I have extra wheat and you have extra apples, lets work out a trade. While to many people today, lying and business are as inextricably entangled as deceit and war, there is nothing about the fundamental nature of commerce which dictates that lying form an essential part.
A business organization is a form of human community dedicated to commerce. As such, it can be based on the same assumptions as any other type of community: that people are ends, not means, and that the community is formed for the benefit of all. While a few businesses are run so that the employees are all equal (co-ops and ESOP's), even those more hierarchically organized can be based on the premise that people treated with honesty and concern will respond with loyalty and hard work.
If this sounds impossibly idealistic, it is not. I am a businessman and have founded and run companies based on this premise. Companies, like any other community, are held together by a type of glue. In political communities, there are three types available, fear, greed or loyalty; businesses are usually based on either greed or loyalty, as fear does not apply when there is a large choice of other communities which can be easily joined by changing jobs.
People may work in a business based on lies without being disturbed by it if they are resigned to it and especially if the lies do not impact them personally (similar to the tolerance of adultery by friends mentioned above.) They may tolerate an environment in which they are routinely lied to if the financial opportunity is large enough and especially if they are of the type who can thrive in an environment of lies. However, I believe most people would prefer, if the opportunity exists, to work in a company whose goals they approve and which treats them as human beings and not as things. If I am correct about this, then it follows that they look to business leadership with the same standards as any other kind of leadership. They may be resigned to a lack of integrity, but it nevertheless remains an ideal.
Businesses can be tremendously successful without engaging in fraud. While we may be suckered into buying products that are highly hyped, we also have a special affection for, and often a lifelong relationship to, products that accomplish a job unpretentiously and about which no extraordinary claims are made. I value the car I drive, and will buy another of the same kind, because it hasn't broken down in six years, not because I believe that by owning it I am younger or better-looking than I actually am.
One of the companies in which I worked had a business model which was ninety percent sales and ten percent implementation. I am not implying any dishonesty built into the model; there are businesses where finding the opportunity is most of the work, and delivering the result is much easier. Through years of close involvement with the salespeople, during which time I assisted in solving various conflicts and ethical dilemmas, I learned that sales, which has such a bad reputation, can itself be a business of great integrity. At its most transparent, sales involves the matching of a problem and a solution, or a need and the thing which satisfies it. The salesperson, rather than lying to the purchaser and getting him to want something unsuitable, can simply work to eliminate the friction of the system by honestly addressing the purchaser's concerns.
There is an incentive to be honest in business, as in other kinds of activities, which works entirely on a practical and not a moral plane. Customers who discover that they have been lied to will not return; employees who have been lied to will leave, and it will become harder to recruit new ones. These practical incentives do not always work (economic necessity, the lack of choice, or simply the ease of obfuscation and difficulty of transmitting information, may be enough to counter them.) Nevertheless, they work enough of the time that the consequences of deception provide a practical brake on the system."
"Lying", by Jonathan Wallace
http://www.spectacle.org/0500/lies.html
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A. How can we always tell the truth and not hurt people's feelings?
Change the subject. Comment positively on something else.
Refuse to comment. Have "no comment", or "no opinion". And change the subject.
Truthfully answer a different question than the one asked. "Does this make me look fat?", Answer, "I think you look good." (if you can do so truthfully.)
Answer that "It doesn't matter what I think. The important thing is how you feel about it."The problem is not always one of being untruthful. Sometimes the problem is in our wanting to be told what we want to hear, which is often not the truth. Sometimes the problem is in our asking questions that make others feel that they have to be untruthful in order to avoid our hurt feelings or our anger.
Sometimes the problem is that we are so easily offended. Sometimes the problem is our vanity.
B. How can we help others to always tell the truth?
Don't ask "loaded" questions. Those which no one can answer truthfully without being negative.
Don't ask any question unless you want the absolute truth.
Ask in such a way that the other person can answer objectively and not incriminate themselves. "Do you think that others might think that this makes me look fat?"
Don't ask questions when the only purpose is to serve your self-deceit.
Don't ask questions that put others at risk. If you are going to be offended by any of the possible answers, don't ask.
Do not give positive reinforcement when others lie to you. Don't reward lying.
Do not give negative reinforcement when others tell you the truth. Don't punish truthful people."You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free." John 8:32.
C. How can we always tell the truth and still be successful in the business world?
One part of the problem is how we measure success. Do we measure it in dollars, in possessions, in fame or in power? Or do we measure it in terms of righteous character which qualifies us to enter the Kingdom of God?
"You cannot serve God and mammon" Mat. 6:24, Lk. 16:13.
D. How can we always tell the truth and never incriminate ourselves?
"Do no wrong" Jer. 22:3.
E. If we have already "done something wrong", do we lie about it?
"Repent, and sin no more" Jn. 5:14, 8:11.
"Confess your sins one to another" Jas. 5:16, See also Lev. 5:5.