The Truth Matters (Part 2 of 2)

If honesty is really the best policy, well let's be honest. All of us are guilty of saying things that just aren't true. Today on Truth for Life we take a look at some of the ways we tell lies and we learn why we choose deception over truth. Our study continues in Exodus 20 verse 16.

Here's Alistair Begg. The little gossipy statements about other people. There need be no basis to it. It need only be allegation. It can be a pack of total lies. But in the culture in which we live, where truth is relative and not absolute, where chaos reigns, where people love to believe the worst, where rumor abounds and sells millions and millions of magazines, we'd be hard-pressed to rebut the things said. You've been involved in rumor lately? Passed any rumors on this week? Passed on any unsubstantiated information to anybody?

Stuff that you've got no way of knowing whether it was true or not true, but you like the feel of it? A little juicy one, a little kernel about somebody squeezed out from some corner, dropped in casual conversation, never made much of it, you don't need to, it drops like an incendiary device into an environment, into an office, into a coffee room, into a school, something that may damage the life of that individual for a long, long time. One throwaway line concerning the high school senior girl, one passing comment concerning that student, one word of innuendo concerning that work colleague who has now gone on vacation. Lies. Slander does the same thing. Slander is a form of breaking the ninth commandment. We made much of it last time.

We won't now. Deception is another way in which we do it. Romans chapter 3, Paul says, of those who are godless, he says that deceit is on their lips.

You can read that in verse 13 of Romans 3. They deceive by their very nature. We deceive our moms and dads, and some of us were very good at it. When we didn't want them to know something, we told them something they did want to know.

Okay? So what you do is you volunteer information fast, that is good information and is true information, in the hope that they will not pursue from you other information which is not good. Believe me, I know how you do it. If you don't want to know who you were with, them to know who you were with, tell them about people you were with that you know they were glad for you to be with. And then as they get very glad about that, move on to something else in the hope that they won't come back and say, Yeah, I know you were with so-and-so, and that pleases me, but were you also with so-and-so? Deception. We do it in business. How about flattery? Flattery. Someone said about flattery.

Flattery is saying things to a person's face that you would never say behind his back. You don't believe it. You don't believe it's true.

You never even drive in your car, you say, The guy's a jerk. You meet him, you say, You know what? I hold you in the highest esteem. I have never once been so impressed with a presentation as by your presentation today. You phone your wife, you say, I think I might get a raise, man. He was pleased when I told him that. I told him his presentation was great. Your wife says, How was it?

He said, It stank. It's flattery. It's lying. What about exaggeration? Do you ever lie by exaggerating? I do. I have to be honest.

Probably one of the ways I can lie better than any other is by exaggerating. How cold was it? Man, it was minus fifty-five degrees. It was so cold, people were having their teeth extracted without any kind of anesthetic. How bad was it?

Oh, man, you've read about the Second World War? That was nothing compared to this. How far is it? Oh, you could drive for fifteen hours and you wouldn't even got halfway.

And in point of fact, it wasn't that far, it wasn't that cold, and it wasn't that bad. What about creating false impressions? What about not correcting untrue statements when they're made? You're on a joint selling mission with one of your sales staff. The sales guy says something in the conversation in the negotiation that is patently wrong. You catch it, but it's actually to the good, especially if the client swallows it. You're on the horns of a dilemma.

Shall I correct him or let it go? Because after all, we could come out of this pretty nicely. Heh. You let it go, you get the business, you put your head on your pillow at night, you lied. What about carelessness? Especially with our children.

Carelessness. Samuel Johnson put this very well. I read it years and years ago. When I first became a father, I thought it made so much sense. I've tried my best to deal with it.

I'm not sure that I've come close to being successful. But Samuel Johnson said, Accustom your children constantly to this. If a thing happened at one window and they, when relating it, say that it happened at another window, do not let it pass. But instantly check them. You do not know where deviation from the truth will end. You never know, you see. If our children say it happened in the back window and it happened in the front window, it seems rather scrupulous to say, No, no, honey, it didn't happen in the back window, it happened in the front window. But if you don't, they will then internalize this fact. Subliminally they will say, You know, as long as it happened in a window, that's all that matters.

The first time they have an accident in a car and the officer asks them a question about whether they had their head out of the window or in the window, whether they had their seatbelt on or no seatbelt on, they may, having built up a legacy of sixteen years of being careless about issues of scrupulous truthfulness, simply answer whichever way it helps them. And you and I will have contributed to that, because we weren't smart enough to realize that careless talk is an evidence of telling lies. So if that's the manner in which we lie, let's ask then, finally, what is the motivation for telling lies? Why do we lie? Well, back in the Garden of Eden, the reason the evil one lied was because of malice and pride.

He wanted to be something that he wasn't, and he was malevolent towards those whom he could influence. Satan tells lies because he hates God, he hates people who are godly, and he wants to extend his anti-God revolt. When you and I tell lies, we're often driven by the same thing.

We're driven by pride, or we're driven by hatred. When we tell lies in order to impress other people, it's because of pride. When we tell lies in order to do somebody down, it's because of hatred. When I tell lies to protect my own interest, it's because of selfishness. What about when I tell lies out of contempt? Or when I tell lies out of a desire for revenge?

Or when I tell lies on the basis of embarrassment? In the book When America Told the Truth, the acknowledgement there on the basis of research is, quote, just about everyone lies. Ninety-one percent of us lie regularly. The majority of us find it hard to get through a week without lying. One in five can't make it through a single day, and we're talking about conscious, premeditated lies. Of the people interviewed, ninety-two percent said the main reason for their lying was to save face, and ninety-eight percent said the reason they told lies was so as not to offend people. Now, we don't want to be offensive to people. But there are times when telling the truth will hurt and will offend, and the issue of truthfulness has got to direct us—not whether a person's offended or not, not whether a person's disappointed or not, not whether they're grieved or not. Surgeons and doctors have to face difficult issues of truth-telling at many points along their lives, and the well-being of the patient drives their quest for honesty, if they're true to their oath. What about money and the desire for acquisition driving our lies? People tell me, you know, Alistair, it's very, very hard to be in sales these days, because in many areas, sectors of the industry, all that people do is lie about their product, or they lie about the timeframe in which the product is deliverable.

And so, Alistair, you've got to understand that if we're going to live in that world, we're going to have to play that game. Or guess what? We're not going to have any product to offload on anyone. We're not going to have any business.

We won't have any opportunity to make things well and right for our family. Well, is that true? Didn't the Bible say that God will honor those who honor him? Is it not that sin is a reproach to any people, that righteousness exalts a nation?

Is it not that even if we were to live in total abject poverty and to put our heads on our pillow at night with a guiltless conscience, it would be worth far more than to put our heads on a fat pillow full of dollar bills that had come by ill gain and as a result of untruthful speech? If you cannot be trusted in the tiniest of things, no one will ever trust you in the greater. Some years ago now, a young man came to take a girl out on a date. I happened to be there.

He came, and he indicated in the course of his conversation how excited he was to take this girl out. What do you do? He was asked, I'm in sales. What do you sell?

I sell parts for such and such an industry. Aha! How's it going?

We're having a great year. Mm-hmm. What's the biggest challenge?

The biggest challenge, he said, is getting the stuff to the people when you say you're going to get it there. This is a verbatim story. I was there. This is my story.

This happened. Well, what do you do when you can't get it there? I asked. He said, Well, the best thing you do is you don't tell them that you can't get it there, at least not when they want it.

I said, Well, how do you do it? He said, Well, what I do is, he says, I know if it has a delivery date in, like, two weeks. Fourteen days lead time.

I tell him, seven. On the sixth day, I phone him, and I tell him on the sixth day, we ran into a little problem with the delivery. It's not going to be there tomorrow. Of course, it was never going to be there tomorrow.

It couldn't. But hopefully, over the weekend, it'll be there sometime around Monday-Tuesday. I make a note in my book to call him Monday-Tuesday to let him know that, unfortunately, it won't be coming Monday-Tuesday.

But by this time, I know that the lead time between that day and the day that I know it will arrive is a shorter time than what would happen if he went out to start fresh with a new supplier. So I've got him. And I'm doing really well. I wasn't impressed. I told the girl. She married him.

He destroyed her, divorced her, lied to her, used her despitefully. And anybody who had half a modicum of sense would have known that if a guy is prepared to do that for something as inconsequential as when an order of steel will reach its destination, there is no saying what he will do in interpersonal relationships. Does the ninth commandment matter?

It matters. You say, Well, you know what, Al? I get really fed up with you on this stuff.

Because it's okay for you with your little black Bible and go up the stairs to that room of yours, and then you don't have to go out, and you don't have to live there, and you're going to tell me how to do this. I hope you don't feel that. I'll gladly come with you any day. I'd like to go for a decent day's work sometime.

That would be nice. I'll come with you. I'll come on your travels. I'll come. I'll come watch you, listen to you, be with you. I'd like that. I do that from time to time.

People take me all kinds of places. I'll come. That's fine. And I'll learn, and if I'm wrong, I'll admit it. But what about when we lie out of a sense of fear? Fear of consequences. I've been facing that.

I faced that flat out this week. It all started about ten days ago when I got a pizza that cost me fifty-six dollars. The pizza was ten dollars.

The speeding ticket was forty-six. I took it home to my wife. I said, Man, the pizzas are getting really expensive here in Bainbridge. She said, What's the problem? I said, Fifty-six bucks for a pizza. I said, Look at it.

She looked at it, and the box and sticking out the box was the ticket. You know, I said, Happy Thanksgiving from Sugar and Falls Police Department. And then it was forty-six bucks. So I waited till the time was almost run out, and then I gave them their money. Thursday afternoon, I'm driving home from here.

I'll be home as fast as I can. I promise I won't miss dinner. I come down forty-three. I said, I'm not waiting in that mess. So I did a right-hand turn through Pizza Hut.

Down the side of Pizza Hut, round by Dunkin' Donuts, and zipped out onto ninety-one. Beautiful, I said. Looked in my mirror, looked left, caught the light, they were all still snarled up.

I said, Crazy people. I can't believe it. I went, I just moved along ninety-one, about forty yards. I looked, I said, No, it's the pizza man again. Right behind me. Right behind me. So embarrassing.

It's really embarrassing. And then I got, so he's gonna flash in all those lights, and it pulls you off around the corner. I'm trying to get as far away from humanity as I can. Get run by the town hall. Guy comes, usual thing, you know, puts his hat on, comes up, roll the window down, try and look contrite. He's starting to give a speech about cutting through private property. I said, Look, I don't… I said, Why did you stop me? He says, You cut through the thing! I said, Look, what's wrong with cutting through the thing? I said, You want to come down here every night and try and negotiate that junction? I said, You cut through the thing, too. He says, You're not allowed to cut through the thing like that. I said, Well, I don't think that's fair. I said, In Scotland, you are allowed to cut through… I said, In fact, in Scotland, that's commended that kind of thing.

I mean, any run-of-the-mill individual can wait day in and day out in a big queue like that, but only the initiative takers can cut around the corner and zip home for their dinner. So now this guy doesn't know what to make of me. I said, I said, Furthermore, I said, I'm in deep trouble. I said, Because there's only a matter of days since one of you guys got me with a pizza. He says, What do you mean got you with a pizza? I said, Well, I said, I'm going home.

The pizza steamed up the windows. I'm just driving along, and all of a sudden it cost me fifty-six dollars instead of ten. He says, Give me your license. So I gave him the license, and he went back to his car.

You know that horrible feeling when you look in the rearview mirror to see if he's writing or not writing? Then I said to myself, There's plenty of ways out of this. I said, First of all, think about it, Al. You could have been going for a pizza.

You could have been going for donuts. So when he comes back, I'll tell him, I was going to get a pizza. I changed my mind.

So this is driven, this is called lying driven by fear. Okay? Because I know he gets me twice within the space of eight days, I'm going to need a limousine service, or somebody's going to have to pick me up in the church bus. So he comes back. And he says, You know, you were not exactly meandering through. He says, You were flying through. He says, It's obvious you weren't stopping for pizza. I says, I'm glad I wasn't going to use that line, I said to myself. I said, No, I said, Yeah, I was flying through. I said, I did it.

I did it. And then he said, Take care, Mr. Begg, and gave me my license. And then the reason I tell you that story is, one, because I'm relieved, and two, because I want you to know I'm trying to let you know that I am in the real world. I may not be in the steel selling world, but I am in the real world. And I thought seriously about trying to prevent myself from a thorny end by just spinning out a little kind of half-truth. Because by the time I got home, I could have convinced myself that I was actually thinking about stopping for pizza.

And then it had just slipped my mind, and then… Let me finish with this thought. We will never speak the truth until we know the truth. We'll never live the truth until we embrace the truth. Sometime in the early 1970s, Johnny Cash had a song—I won't sing it for you, you should be relieved—but it's one of the lines when the young man standing in the witness stand, the man with the book said, Raise your hand.

Repeat after me, I solemnly swear. And the man looked down, and the judge looked down at his long hair, and although the young man solemnly swore, the truth doesn't seem to matter anymore. It didn't really matter that the truth was there. It was the cut of his clothes and the length of his hair, and the lonely voice of youth cries, What is truth? That is what Pilate asked when Jesus stood before him.

I find no charge against this Jesus. What is truth? And the reason that many of us are shackled by our lives is because we have never come to the one who is truth, who holds out to us the cleansing, the forgiveness, and the renewal that we need. Once again, the Ninth Commandment shows me I have a problem, reminds me that I cannot in and of myself cure it, turns me to Christ, who in this case is all truth and all life and all forgiveness. And it actually comes down to the question posed in the song that was being played before I began to speak. Jesus is at the door of your heart, seeking entry, seeking to take my lies and change them to truth, seeking to take my deadness and turn it to life, to take my darkness and turn it to light. So today, if you hear his voice, will you not heed his call? Have you opened your heart to Jesus?

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Our offices are closed today. We'll be back Monday. Join us then as Alistair unpacks the 10th commandment and encourages us to be content with what we have. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.