Daily Thought for Friday, March 11th

March 11, 2011

Lying

Today’s Thought:

“Sin has many tools, but a lie is a handle which fits them all.”– Oliver Wendell Holmes

Today’s Question

Did you know that “One of the striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives?” – Mark Twain

Today’s Spiritual Thought:

“O, what a tangled web we weave,

When first we practice to deceive!”

- Sir Walter Scott

Thomas Jefferson said of lying, “He who permits himself to tell a lie once finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time till at length it becomes habitual.”

Anyone who says he has never told a lie is a stranger to the truth.

“Lying lips are abomination to the Lord: but they that deal truly are his delight.” – The Bible (Proverbs 12:22)

In modern society to be politically correct, we do not like to call it lying: we prefer rather to say it is the employment of situational ethics, or a mild stretching of the truth.

We have somehow developed a system of grading lies and by in large we have become a society, which condones lying to some extent, as long as it isn’t extreme or excessive.

After all we reward some of the biggest prevaricators or truth by electing them to public office.  When referring to truth in politics, John Arbuthnot stated, “All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.”

Eric Hoffer had the right idea when he wrote, “We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.”

As Christians, I fear we are the guiltiest of this – we lie to ourselves.

We try to convince ourselves that God won’t mind a little stretch of truth here and a little more there.  The purpose of a lie is that it has a premeditated intent to deceive.  We fool ourselves if we think we can deceive God.

We can fool some of the people some of the time, but we can never fool God.

We claim that He is the truth, the light and the way and we say He is in us, yet we try to deceive each other by living one way on Sunday and another way the rest of the week.

We say honesty is the best policy, but how many times do we fail to adhere to the policy we endorse with our words.

Truth is truth, yes is yes, amen is amen and God does not lie and He doesn’t want us to either.

Emerson wrote in an essay entitled ‘Prudence,’ “Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.”

Lying is a sin in God’s eyes, so if you have done or are doing it, repent, confess your sin to God and ask Him to help you make the wrong you have done right.

Sometimes it is better to say nothing and displease someone that it is to lie and displease God.

Today’s Verses:

Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother.

Luke 18:20

Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.  For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.  Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

                   Romans 13:8-10

My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.

                   1 John 2:1-4

Today’s Prayer:

Father, sometimes it seems harder to be honest than it does to be deceitful; but then sin is always easier.  Help me to be truthful, honest and to have integrity with You, with myself and with others.