Liars!

April 23rd, 2016| Topic: RaMbLeS | 2

Election season is upon us, those of us who live in the US of A. Ergo, the “season of lies” is upon us (as one correspondent called it).

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump labeled rival Ted Cruz “Lyin’ Ted.”

Cruz hit back:

Falsely accusing someone of lying is itself a lie and something Donald does daily.”

There is the standard joke that we’ve all heard:

How do you know a politician is lying? His lips are moving.”

News organizations dedicate tons of money and loads of time and expertise to fact-check everything all these presidential candidates assert and claim.

Said psychology researcher Bella DePaulo, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of The Hows and Whys of Lies:

I feel more worried about lying in public life than I ever have before. When lies succeed, they make it more tempting to lie. Lies can stick. They can have a lingering effect, even if they are debunked.”

Distortions. Self-justifications. False promises. Rationalizations. Fabrications. White lies. Black lies. And every color of lies in between.

We tell them, too. (Probably not as often as politicians; likely not as publicly; definitely not as shamelessly.)

DePaulo put voice recorders on young subjects for a week and found that they lied, on average, once in every three conversations that lasted over 10 minutes. For older adults it was once very five conversations.

Kang Lee, professor at University of Toronto, and a specialist in “deception research” makes the following observations.

Lying occurs quite early in development. By 3 years of age children begin to tell lies to conceal their transgression or white lies to be polite.”

Yikes!

In a experiment with kids in a video-monitored room, Lee placed them with a toy behind them that they were promised they could have … only if they didn’t turn around and peek.

He discovered that at age 2, only 30% lie. At age 3, it is 50%. By 5 or 6, 90% do.

All children tell lies. It is a part of normal development. Very few children become chronic liars. In fact, lying is a sign of cognitive development.”

Yikes ×2!!

He thinks parents are complicit, as they teach kids to tell “white lies,” about how much they love grandma’s sweater, and stuff like that. Later on, it is your spouse who tells you (with fingers crossed) that you look good in that outfit.

For a while, a few of years ago, Brad Pitt took on an Ann Landers kinda role in WIRED magazine, answering readers’ requests for advice.

One reader asked:

I exaggerated my salary on my online dating profile. Should I fess up?”

Brad Pitt’s answer: “Heck no [he used a more colorful word!]. He continued:

Everyone lies online. In fact, readers expect you to lie. If you don’t, they’ll think you make less than you actually do. So the only way to tell the truth is to lie.”

Yikes ×3!!!

No longer be children, being tossed by waves and carried about
by every wind of doctrine by the trickery of people,
by the craftiness of the deceptive scheme,
but being truthful in love, we are to grow up in all things
into Him who is the head, Christ.
Ephesians 4:14–15

Truth-telling is a characteristic of maturity and growth into Christlikeness.

Therefore, putting off falsehood, speak truth each with his neighbor,
for we are members of one another.
Ephesians 4:25

And truth-telling is also a function of our “bodiness,” one with another. How can we be untruthful to “ourselves,” is what the apostle is essentially asking here.

Let’s be better than those politicians!