“Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holms
I think most of us would say no. Let me rephrase that… I hope most of us would say no. My dad used to say, “You go to the same place for lying you do for stealing,” equating in my kid-brain telling a lie with criminal behavior. Nothing was worse than getting caught in a lie, even if that lie was told to cover up a bigger misdeed in the hopes of avoiding punishment.
So what is a lie? By definition, a lie is “giving some information while believing it to be untrue, intending to deceive by doing so.” In other words, for something to be a lie, knowledge and motive are crucial, it’s not just that the information is inaccurate. A liar has to know that what they’re saying is untrue, and they choose to say it anyway with the intent to deceive.
There are linguistic tools that aren’t technically true — from exaggeration and hyperbole to satire and metaphor — that don’t generally sink to the level of a lie because the motive is not to deceive. There are “white lies” that are told to spare someone else’s feelings, as in, “No, honey, of course you don’t look fat in that outfit.” (The real question is are you trying to spare their feelings, or save your own skin?)
Merely repeating something we’ve seen or heard that’s inaccurate doesn’t make a liar out of us. It may mean we’re gullible, confused, misled, or poorly informed, but it doesn’t necessarily make us liars. However, when we learn that something we’ve repeated is false and we continue to repeat it as fact, that brings knowledge and motive into the equation.
In today’s world, it seems lying — like the prodigious use of the F-bomb in polite society — has achieved new levels of normalcy, and that presents a problem in situations where we need to know what’s real to make informed decisions. We can no longer rely on “I saw it on TV” or “I read it on the Internet” or even, “there was a picture/video/recording.” With malignant actors creating online content expressly to deceive the masses, our inner sense of discernment has to work overtime and always be on guard. It’s exhausting, and when we’re exhausted, we’re prone to errors in judgment.
There will always be lies and liars, and sometimes we’re going to be tricked, deceived and misled. Doubling down on a lie once it’s exposed in the interest of saving our egos is not the best practice. That’s like taking a wrong turn, driving off a bridge, and then telling everyone that’s what we meant to do all along. It’s painful to acknowledge we’ve swallowed a lie and harder still to admit we’re wrong, but that’s the antidote for the “tangled web of deceit” described by 19th-century Scottish author Sir Walter Scott (not Shakespeare, as I learned today).
We must give ourselves grace when we’re in error and have to recalibrate, and we must be willing to do the same for our friends and family who’ve fallen prey to deception.