Proverbs 6 tells us that a lying tongue is among the six things God hates. Proverbs 12 says that telling the truth lasts forever and the lying tongue only a moment. Suppressing the truth, hiding the truth, and intentionally telling a lie are all the same. Sometimes telling a lie is more manageable than telling the truth. But you must often tell more lies to cover for the first lie. At some point, telling the truth, no matter how bad it is, will have been easier than the cover-up. Most all adults know this but will fall into this trap occasionally. This is another one of those instances that is easy to discuss but hard to put into practice. The simple story tends to grow every time it is told. No one wants to look bad, so a tiny change helps hide the truth. “Sometimes it’s (a lie) to protect the liar from being punished or someone else from punishment. The lie might be to avoid embarrassment, hide an awkward situation, or simply have others think better of the person telling the fib. Such lying isn’t admirable, but not hard to understand why it occurs.” (Writer, 2019) It is easy to come up with many excuses, but it does not change the end result and only postpones the truth coming to the surface. Ask Bill Clinton about how a small lie keeps biting at a person until it devours the liar. “Sigmund Freud, and later his daughter Anna, also a psychoanalyst, understood denial as a defense mechanism that involves a refusal to accept reality. By blocking distressing reality from our awareness, denial is a psychological strategy our unconscious invokes to protect us from thoughts and feelings we may find unacceptable. To use a familiar expression, we turn ‘a blind eye’ to an issue or situation that probably bears looking into.” (Kushner, 2020)
Many hours of research have been spent trying to figure out why people lie and the end result of these lies. Lying can be attributed to low self-esteem and a false sense of self. Pathological liars want to influence peoples’ opinions of them, trying to look better than they are in their own minds. The false narrative makes them feel better about themselves but usually does not impress folks around them for long. Again, it is impossible to maintain a lie forever. Jose Harris, Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford from 1996 to 2008, is credited as saying, “There is beauty in truth, even if it’s painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don’t teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one’s character, one’s mind, one’s heart or one’s soul.”
There are three common lies. Lies that leave part of the truth out of the story, lies that add falsehoods to the story, and lies of convenience or influence. But liars come in several forms. The sociopathic liar is very dangerous because they live within their lies daily and operate without reason. The pathological liar will lie compulsively with no reason behind the lie. A compulsive liar is a person that tells falsehoods out of habit, sometimes for no reason at all. Then there are the occasional liars that lie to fit an occasion, careless liars that try to look more intelligent than they genuinely are, the pathetic liars are trying to compete with those he thinks are better than them, and white liars, which describes most of us at some time or another.
The narcissistic liar is one of the most dangerous to be around. Many times, this person is easy to like, charming, loveable, and persuasive. But no matter what is being said or how it is said, they are self-promoting at someone else’s expense. Once this liar achieves their goal, they will drop their target and move on to the next victim. Many of these liars have underlying reasons, but most lie because they feel a need to not tell the truth. Telling a good lie is a learned talent usually discouraged in the early development stages. Still, some children live in environments that do not teach proper skills and sometimes actually teach deviant behaviors. Dr. Stouthamer and Loeber, in a study in 1986, determined that children learn to lie as communicating with intent to deceive in the preschool years and will increase if not corrected as age increases. For some sociopathics and schizophrenics, lying is a mental health problem. Special treatment must be given, but most lying is learned in a person’s environment. It can be altered with straightforward guidance and understanding.
We need to remember in Proverbs 26 that God considers lying as hating the person being lied to. If you hate another person in First John 3:15 and 4:20, He views lying in the same consideration as murder. Proverbs is very plain in that lying, bearing false witness, and being deceitful shall not go unpunished, and those that are guilty will perish. Telling lies, hiding the truth, and trying to conceal our shortcomings is typical human behavior. Humans have lied ever since the devil lied to Eve about the apple, and Adam and Eve tried to hide from God. It has had many names and seen many excuses over the years. However, it remains number nine of the Ten Commandments, which states, “Do Not Give False Witness Against Your Neighbor. Revelation 21:8 tells us the unrepentant liar will forever be separated from God. The liar will forever be separated from a loving and holy God. This verse states that all liars will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, the second eternal death. We have all heard that telling the truth is always easier than lying. Hopefully, one of these days, we will believe and repent from lying.
Kushner, D. M. (2020, 11 28). Denial: Telling Ourselves Stories That Hide the Truth. Retrieved from Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/transcending-the-past/202011/denial-telling-ourselves-stories-hide-the-truth.
Writer, S. (2019, 10 21). Understanding Why People Lie. Retrieved from American Counseling Association: https://www.counseling.org/news/aca-blogs/aca-counseling-corner/aca-counseling-corner-blog/2019/10/21/understanding-why-people-lie#:~:text=Sometimes%20it’s%20to%20protect%20the,to%20understand%20why%20it%20occurs.