Lies

Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.  Ephesians 4:15

It seems these days that we have erased a lot of lines that, in the past, would never have even been crossed, let alone erased.  One of those lines that has been erased seems to be telling the truth.  People no longer seem to care about lying. We accept it. It doesn’t bother us.  We don’t get upset anymore when someone exaggerates, falsifies, fabricates, or misrepresents the truth.  We live in a day when we’ve been bombarded with erased tapes, tampered evidence, illicit cover-ups, padded resumes, political posturing and exaggerated ads – to the point we’ve pretty much given up on truth being a viable enterprise. Like many other issues we have given up on, this is not what God has called us to do.

We are to speak the truth in love which means we weigh our words of truth before we speak them.  It doesn’t mean we don’t tell the truth for the sake of being loving. It just means we prayerfully consider ways to say the truth in the least hurtful manner. 

Truth is conforming one’s words to reality. Being real. Lying is pretending. Why do we lie? 
The main reasons we lie are: 

·     Fear of harm- The easiest reason to understand why we lie is for self-protection, including self-deception, to prevent harm to ourselves. This harm can be either physical or mental. 

·     Fear of conflict:To some degree, we all fear having an argument.  

·     Fear of punishment:When growing up, how often did we lie about how well we did in school, or who started a fight? 

·     Fear of rejection:Sometimes, our insecurities are why we lie to each other, because we want to remain popular in our relationships. Typically, it is harmless boasting to impress other people. 

·     Fear of loss:This is usually the loss of personal objects, such as money or expensive valuables. Greed is the foundation for this reason and can be found in each of us. 

·     Fear of losing opportunity: We often lie to make ourselves more desirable to other people too. Most common, people lie for fear of losing an opportunity to have sex. Other times, when our self-esteem starts to decline, we even lie to ourselves as means to prevent loss of morale. 

·     Fear of hurting another: We often lie to help our friends and loved ones. How often do we flattery someone just to make them feel better? This is the only selfless reason why we lie. 

Despite all the technical reasons why people lie, it all boils down to this: The fundamental reason why people lie is because it mostly works.  It usually gets people want they want in the moment, but it is not worth everything else that comes with lying.  Shame, guilt, and consequences, not to mention hurting the ones we love and sinning against God are all side effects of lying that destroy lives.  Whatever you are wanting so badly that you think you need to lie about it, you might want to reconsider.  Lying is never the answer.  Even when telling the truth is hard and will result in consequence, it will not be as bad as what comes with lying. 

In Christ, we should not only speak the truth, but speak it in love.  Raw truth is seldom appropriate and is usually destructive.  We have been saved in grace and we are kept in grace; therefore, we should live and speak in grace. When we need to share a hard truth with someone, we can show the grace and love we experience in Christ.