Do We Lie?

[Darris McNeely] So over the weekend I was reading this article in the Wall Street Journal entitled, "Why We Lie." It says, "Research shows that everyone cheats a little right up to the point where they lose their sense of integrity." And it was recounting the fact that up to 98% of people lie at one time or another in some little fashion or sometimes in big fashion and that it's the majority of us who are tempted to lie and in fact do lie, breaking the 9th Commandment of bearing false witness or lying against God. Is it that serious of a problem? According to this article, it is. And what do we do about it?

[Steve Myers] It is an amazing problem when you think about it. This just highlights the issue once again. And if you look over the years at various surveys that have been done, it is surprising the different results they've come up with. Everybody lies the surveys say. Some say—the one that was most startling to me was the one that said people lie three times for every ten minutes of conversation. So that's amazing when you think about it. And of course this article specifically pointing to how rampant the problem is, not just a person here or there, but people we know. And what this seems to say is that's you and I.

[Darris McNeely] Yeah, here's what it says. It goes on in this article to summarize, it says, "Here's what we found through the research in a nutshell, everybody has the capacity to be dishonest and almost everybody cheats—just by a little, except for a few outliers at the top or bottom." The 1% at the top who are scrupulously honest and the 1% at the bottom who are hardened criminals and hardened liars and cheats. "The behavior of almost everyone is driven by two opposing motivations. One the one hand, we want to benefit from cheating and get as much money and glory as possible, on the other hand, we want to view ourselves as honest, honorable people. Sadly, it is this kind of a small scale mass cheating, not the high profile cases, that is most corrosive to society." If all of this is true, then it really falls down to every one of us to really examine ourselves and look and see where we fall in the parameters of this great commandment of God, "Thou shalt not bear false witness" or "Thou shalt not lie."

[Steve Myers] You think about the difference in the world if we were truthful people. But we can't kid ourselves. There's an amazing passage in Psalms 44:21. It talks about God saying, "He knows the secrets of the heart." So even though we may be lying, and we don't think anyone knows about it, guess what? God knows. God knows everything. We're not going to get away with thinking that He doesn't. So, we've got to be honest with ourselves because God knows. And so we've got to change.

[Darris McNeely] There's a saying that character is what is really built within our hearts and our lives in the secret times when nobody else is watching. If you take this verse that Steve just read in Psalm 44:21 that God does know the secret things of our hearts and we live by that, then we always do know that there is someone who does know what we say, what we're thinking, and—interestingly by that very verse, there's a comfort and an encouragement that He does know our heart. And He knows that if there's really deep maliciousness or if it's just a moment of weakness when we may have been caught or tempted and the untruth, the lie, or something that we transgress in just a little bit is because of just a human weakness rather than really a hardened attitude with our heart. Still a sin—still something we need to watch and carefully monitor so that we do live a life of integrity.

[Steve Myers] And so it's a reminder. We've got to be people of integrity. Make it our goal. Look at ourselves and make sure we're living up to the standard of God and seek Him. And by doing that, we can make sure we're keeping that commandment.

[Darris McNeely] That's BT Daily. Join us next time.