Write for God

Kevin, my husband, is the most honest person I’ve ever known. If he doesn’t like my hairstyle, he tells me. Most spouses would just settle for a little white lie. A clerk at the convenience store near our house trusts my husband with the amount of gas he pumps because, as he says, Kevin is “straight.”

That being said, Kevin has a difficult time believing how people in the public eye can lie so glibly and so easily. When a psychopath kills his wife and there’s evidence that he did it, Kevin can’t fathom how the culprit can’t admit his guilt. Even a tiny lie about someone’s appearance trips up my husband, for whom lying about a mortal sin would be unthinkable.

Politicians who lie without a second thought flummox Kevin. The political candidate who “misspoke” about coming under sniper fire during an overseas jaunt apparently had no difficulty confusing an error in pronounciation or grammar, which would be a case of misspeaking, with an outright lie. There is a difference–a huge difference–Madam Candidate, between one and the other. As Mark Twain said about using the correct word, it’s the distance between the lightning and the lightning bug.

For as long as people have wanted power and money, they’ve lied to get them or to spare themselves retribution for their wrongs. St. Augustine of Hippo wrote about lying in De Mendacio, the Latin word for lying and the origin of “mendacity,” the word so identified with the patriarch Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Pinocchio is the only liar whose face betrayed his fibs; most liars in public life continue lying until they’re caught on video.

St. Augustine found lies in religious teaching the worst form of deceit; those that harm others and help no one are next on his list of eight types of lies. Lying to save a life ranked lower on his scale.  Yet, Jesus calls the Devil “the father of lies” and the Pauline letters have passages where St. Paul reminds us he is not lying, which I’ve always imagined was a response to the unbelief all around him about his message of salvation.

We live in an age when lying is the basis of how business is conducted–from phony deductions on taxes to stealing millions from pension funds. An honest man or woman can’t get elected these days, or doesn’t even try to. Elected officials lie about inside deals and about spending more money on prostitutes than many families will ever see in a year of hard work. Candidates only admit they “misspoke” when archival video footage positively proves they lied. That candidate must have learned from the spouse who dared to say he had not had sex with an intern whose dress had stains that proved otherwise.

No one dares to tell the truth for fear that their true selves will be exposed in all their flawed reality. The idea of owning up to a fault or a lie is beyond the courage of most people in the public eye. If God were to ask today for just 10 honest men before destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, he’d have a difficult time finding one if He didn’t knock on our front door first.

But Jesus is the Truth, as He said. Confession is good for the soul, but it has to begin with confession to the self that becoming closer to God means getting farther from our lies. It’s a lesson that our elected officials, candidates and neighbors alike should all heed. And that’s the truth.