Dishonesty is a cancer that slowly kills every relationship where it grows unchecked. It kills relationships because there is a person who has been deceived and another who knows he has wronged his victim and believes he’s gotten away with it. The successful liar will lie again and again, and every lie will only cause his contempt for the victim to grow larger. These undiscovered lies remain forever. They’re like bricks paved and cemented across the path of any kind of mutual understanding. How can two people ever communicate when they stand on opposite sides of a solid wall built of lies?
Terry Goodkind is a fantasy-fiction novelist and one of my favorite authors. I’ve been a fan of his fantasy series The Sword of Truth for a long time and have re-read all the books in that series several times. Each book has a sort of moral-of-the-story kind of rule found at the end. These rules are called by Goodkind, “Wizard’s Rules” In the first book of the series, Wizard’s First Rule, the rule is this: People are stupid. If you tell someone something that they want to be true they will believe it. In addition, if you tell someone something that they fear is true they will believe that as well.
Recognizing lies when they’re told is a critical skill and the problem with this is the indisputable fact that some liars are highly skilled at deceit, more skilled than we are at detecting it. There are all kinds of liars but in my opinion, the three that are the most destructive are the vindictive liar, the compulsive liar, and the well-intentioned liar. The first hates you, the second thinks you’re an idiot, and the third thinks you can’t handle the truth.
The Vindictive Liar
The most dangerous kind of liar to you personally is the vindictive liar. Two things above all create an enemy, betrayal and envy. It’s hard to make friends, harder to make good friends, but easy-as-pie to make bitter enemies out of our very best friends. All it takes is betrayal. If you betray a close friend you will live to regret it. The other way to make an enemy is to have something that they want. Of all our emotions, envy has got to be the most useless and the most destructive of them all. Envy is Satan’s emotion. It’s why Lucifer was cast down. It’s also how Lucifer tricked Eve in the Garden of Eden. (You’ll notice it’s also the foundation of the Democratic party’s political platform.)
Genesis 3
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Satan temped Eve with this: “You will be like God.” God has something you want—knowledge of good and evil—and if you had this knowledge you would be like God. At its heart this is unmistakably nothing but envy. Satan too wanted to be like God. He’s here in this Garden tempting eve with the same envy that he himself succumbed to.
The Compulsive Liar
The most irritating kind of liar is the compulsive liar. There are some liars that are so intransigently dishonest that no effort, no proof, no videotape, no signed document, no receipt, nothing, short of divine intervention perhaps, would ever make them admit they had told a lie, while they lie with every breath. As my brother so succinctly puts it: It’s not a lie until you change your story, and even then it’s not a lie unless you admit you changed your story.
Read the entire post at Vantage Point of the One-Eyed Jack
The ability to discern a lie or a liar is a gift. It is called the gift of discernment. Those who lack this gift are so clueless as to watch a video clip of a liar telling a lie followed by a video clip denying the telling of that lie, and the clueless one giving the liar the benefit of the “doubt?” Millions did this during the latest political campaign. My problem is that I couldn’t tell for sure if we were victims of a VINDICTIVE LIE or of a WELL-INTENTIONED LIE. Sometimes I have trouble believing that all those Lefty Liberal Liars really believe in the “righteousness” of their cause. More often I think that they are fully aware of their CON, making them vindictive to the core. What do you think?
Posted by Linus | December 6, 2012, 7:42 amIt’s a riddle wrapped in a conundrum. At the heart of the envious is hatred. The demagogue who now holds civilization itself hostage at the brink of a so-called fiscal cliff, was raised from infant-hood drinking poisonous envy from his own mother’s milk. He hates America the golden goose. He hates having to wait for it to lay its one measly golden egg every day, so he’s going to see how much gold he can drag out of its stinking guts. He hates America the way it is, and misguidedly believes his own vision will let everyone—except the rich of course—live happily ever after. If he succeeds—and it looks like he will—all he’s going to end up with is a big mess that will stink to high-heaven.
Posted by Cyclops Jack | December 6, 2012, 9:07 amIt seems like back in the day everyone wanted what was best for the country but they disagreed on how to do it. Now we don’t even agree that we want whats best for the country. The Left would weaken the country by paying for entitlements (one of many money pits) to maintain control of the “needy” vote.
Posted by Cucciolo | December 13, 2012, 12:37 pm