I've been thinking about lies recently. And come on, we all tell lies.
Perhaps several a day. Maybe even unconsciously. And it goes without
saying that this is not a good situation.

When we lie, we fight reality, and we deceive others. Even though a lie
may seem a convenient thing to do in the heat of the moment, I believe
most of the time it is the wrong thing to do. As a Christian, I
don't rely on my own ideas about what is right or wrong (e.g., the phrase
"that's true for you" makes no sense to my thinking), but upon the words
of Christ and his followers.

The Christian tradition is very definite about the evil of lying. Parents
teach their children never to tell a lie, and then the "never" is
attenuated by the everyday "white lies" that are deemed necessary to
getting along, and by exquisitely complicated discussions of "quandary
ethics" at the margins of life's extremities. (For instance: If you were
hiding Jews in your house, would you tell the truth to a Nazi Jew-killer
who asked if there are any Jews in your house? There is, I believe, a
convincing answer, but that is for another day.) I confess to having told
my share of fibs, but with each passing year I have become more convinced
that to tell a lie, any lie, is to besmirch reality.

What is true need not always be told and sometimes, as in the case of
confidences, should not be told. But to lie is to soil and make
ugly the order of truth, which is beautiful. It is to make the world more
unreliable; it is to sin against words, and words bear the structure of
trust on which all life depends -- penultimately life with one another,
and ultimately life with God. One lie, every lie, wounds the world.