The trouble with truth is -- It hurts. It hurts to know the truth and it hurts to tell the truth. Telling a little white lie might keep us out of trouble for a while. It may save us embarrassment of not admitting to a mistake that we let others take the blame, so we can stay behind our shield and continue to project perfection.
Knowing the truth can also upset us. Learning things that were not as we believed can devastate us, taking away from our perspective of things that we thought to be real. The lie works both ways. We don't like to be lied too.
It's the old double standard I guess; we can dish it out but we can't take it.
Guilt and a hurting conscious run rapid when we lie. As a child when I did something wrong I knew that I would be punished in some capacity. It those days, unfortunately, it was usually a whipping with a switch.
I lied telling my parents that I did not commit the act, what ever it was. Knowing that it might spare me a whipping if I could convince my parents that I was innocent, so I lied.
Everyone knows the story about George Washington cutting down the Cherry tree. This is a classic example of redemption. Confronted by his father if he cut the tree down, he says "I cannot tell a lie, yes I did.'' His father did not punish him and acknowledge his courage to tell the truth.
In the children's story of Pinocchio when his nose grew longer at every lie, we learned that the nose growing longer was a depiction of his guilt. In reality our nose does not actually grow longer, however our guilt does. When we tell the truth it can hurt because we have to admit to flaws and inconsistency in our selves.
As the years passed, we learned that deception and lying can only bring pain more than physical punishment. We also learned that telling the truth might lead to paying a consequence, but it well ultimately leads us to -- peace of mind and a clear conscious.
In my life I have learned that lying is a terrible vice. That it can lead to other vices if it is left to grow, devouring all self respect. It is better to tell the truth, even if it leaves us with despair and hanging our head in shame. We can always seek redemption for our sin and the shame will soon dissolve into peace of mind.
I strongly believe that our conscious is from God. In the Bible it states that if you lie you are in danger of Hell Fire, or some words to that effect. Now I don't know exactly what that means but if we take it at face value, it should surely be enough to refrain us from lying. It does me.
If we have no conscious---I guess we don't have God. As long as our conscious tells us that lying is a bad thing; I wont lie---I hope my readers won't either.
1.