IT’S A SIN TO TELL A LIE

It’s right there in the Bible (Exodus 20:16): “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” In other words, it’s a sin to tell a lie. Why? Because lying destroys community. God gave Moses – and us – the Ten Commandments as reminders of what is necessary to build up and support a community rather than tear it down. When we lie, steal, kill, refuse to respect one another, we tear down.

Deep in our hearts and minds we know that. And yet we still lie. We lie to others and we lie to ourselves. So often we do so because it is the easy way out of a situation we would rather not be in. We lie to get what we want rather than to face the truth. Anne Perry in Seven Dials makes this observation: “A man who would lie to serve his own needs will eventually lie for anything.”

What is worse is when we will then act upon those lies, lies we somehow have come to believe as true even though they are just that: lies. We saw that happened on January 6. What was and is so frightening is that many of the rioters prayed to God to bless what they were about to do, all because they believed the lie that the election was stolen. What is even worse is that a goodly segment of our elected leaders knowingly and willingly propagated that lie. Why? As Anne Perry said, “to serve their own needs.” Obviously they do not believe what they were, and many still are, professing to be true is, in fact, a sin, is wrong. That is on their consciences.

Now don’t get me wrong: my little white lies are just as sinful as the Big Lie that is being told about the election. Perhaps my lies don’t have the consequences of what happened on January 6, but they have consequences for which I must own up and for which I need to attempt to atone, if possible.

More often than not we don’t foresee the consequences of our lies because, for the most part, they are minor. But we should have seen this coming. We had a President who lied all the time, over 30,000 times. If he didn’t like something he called it fake or an alternate fact. In other words, he lied. We all put up with the lies, especially those who had power to stand up and denounce them but did not because it served their own needs not to.

The consequences of our sins eventually catch up to us and they usually are not pretty. In fact, the pain caused by our sins once they catch up with us overrides any pleasure we received from them. We know that. We’ve been there. Sometimes we learn that harsh lesson and sometimes, sadly and to our later pain and chagrin, and, what is worse, the pain we have caused others, we don’t.

We as a nation, as a community, will recover from the events of January 6. That is part of our resilience as a people. But what took place that day must remain as a harsh reminder that it is a sin to tell a lie and what can happen when we do.