On this day in history, in 1934, the Daily Mail printed this photograph that reportedly depicted the small head and neck of the Loch Ness monster. This iconic image, widely known as the “surgeon’s photograph” sparked an international sensation but was later revealed to be a hoax.
You know what that means? That means there was fake news even back in 1934.
I was talking with a young lady in her early twenties some time ago, and she said something that stuck with me. She said, “I don’t really believe anything anymore, unless I see it with my own eyes.” That sounds like she was born in Missouri…..isn’t that the show-me state?
I’m rather sad for someone who doesn’t believe anything anymore unless she sees it with her own eyes. What a difficult commentary on life to say that things are so unstable in our society that she trusts nothing except that which she sees. I guess because there is so much fake news, and so many lies swirling around.
The young lady’s words nagged at me for weeks. So much so that I decided we needed to do a service focusing on why we should to tell the truth.
Now, before you start to feel better than everyone because you always tell the truth, and you don’t ever lie, I ask you this question: Did you really read the terms and conditions before you clicked yes on your computer screen?
Lying is so common in our culture that we joke about some of the more common lies:
Here are a few of the classics:
The check is in the mail.
Your table will be ready in a few minutes.
We service what we sell.
And one size fits all.
Society — especially Western society — places a high value on truth. It is the foundation for a fair and just society. In court we require witnesses to swear to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” because that is the only way justice can be delivered.
Most religions have something to say about the matter, and it is clear that they place a high value on the principle of truthfulness. But is truthfulness an outdated principle in modern times, or does it still have value?
There are two aspects of truthfulness: being true to yourself, and being true to others.
While they are two different things, they are closely linked together. William Shakespeare wrote:
“To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as night the day, that thou canst not then be false to any man.” — William Shakespeare
Truthful people will understand themselves, and know their own strengths and weaknesses. They will not delude themselves about their successes or failures. They will present themselves in a way that shows who they really are. Their reputation will be founded on what they are, and whether in public or private, they will be the same.
Truthful people will meet commitments and promises that they make. And they will be accurate in their descriptions of themselves or others, so they do not mislead others
As individuals, being truthful means that we can grow and mature, learning from our mistakes. For society, truthfulness makes social bonds, and lying and hypocrisy break them.
Let’s stop and think about this for a moment. Consider what happens when you find out that someone has lied to you, You feel less inclined to trust them next time, and also less inclined to trust other people more generally.
According to Sisella Bok, author of a major philosophical book on the subject of lying, defines a lie as: “an intentionally deceptive message in the form of a statement.”
Bok goes on to say: Lying is bad, because a generally truthful world is a good thing. And here is where we circle back to the statement made by the young woman who couldn’t believe anything unless she saw it with her own eyes. “If people didn’t tell the truth, life would become very difficult, as nobody could be trusted and nothing you heard or read could be trusted — you would have to find everything out for yourself.” — Sisella Bok
We don’t want that kind of world, do we?
We all know what deception does to us. It makes our head spin. We go crazy trying to understand it. Why would someone deceive me? Why did I not know? And then we doubt our worth. And then, we isolate from others as we try to heal. And then, we don’t trust the same again.
I grew up in a home where no one respected people who lied. We honored the truth, and we were expected to tell the truth, even if we were going to end up in trouble for it.
It took me a long time to believe that. One time, after lying to my parents about something I had done when I was in seventh grade, my dad told me that I wouldn’t be punished if I would just tell him the truth, because whatever I was telling him wasn’t making any sense. He said, “Nancy, there is a verse in the Bible that says, ‘The Truth Shall set you free,’ so go ahead and be free, and tell me the truth.”
After a few minutes, I told him the truth. He stuck to his word, and I didn’t get punished. And he was right. Although I had lied, and I knew it was wrong, there was a release, a freedom that took place of my guilt once I told the truth.
Ironically, two years later, I walked into my high school auditorium on the first day of school and across the top of the stage were the words: The truth shall set you free. That shocked me. How did they know we talked about that verse in my house, and why was it in a school?
Well, many years later I realized that the pursuit of the truth, was an academic goal, and that a byproduct of the power of learning would be freedom. And as I became an adult, I figured out that the truth would set me free in yet another way. I needed to live my truth — to not hide who I was, and to be consistently who I was, so that I wasn’t deceiving anyone in any way.
Every Sunday, in the intro, I encourage all of us to discover what it is that we believe and to then live our lives in accordance with our beliefs. That is a way to live truthfully. To know ourselves and to tell ourselves the truth. I think some of the most difficult people that we interact with are those who lie to themselves. They are not settled on their truth, and they are not free.
Every now and then, we all tell a lie. We exaggerate the truth, or we tell a white lie to save someone’s feelings. Or we tell a lie to get out of trouble, or we tell a lie to hurt someone.
There is an old story about a little boy who had a problem with telling lies, so his father decided to teach him a lesson. His father got a brand-new piece of wood and drove ten nails into it. He then called his son over and said, “Son, you have recently told ten lies. I want you to go back and fix them. For each one you correct, we will remove a nail from the wood.”
So the boy began to fix his lies. He talked with each person he had lied to. When he had finished and the tenth nail was pulled from the wood, his father said: “Well, how does the wood look?”
His son replied: “Well the nails are gone, but the scars are still in the wood.”
His father said, “Yes, you have learned the lesson. Lying does damage that is sometimes impossible to correct. Lying hurts feelings and damages reputations.
My friends, let’s do our part to bolster our society by making an effort to stop lying, and instead vow to tell the truth. Amen.
Writer George Orwell wrote these words:
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” -George Orwell
May we all be willing to commit that revolutionary act of telling the truth. It will help our souls, save our relationships, and strengthen society.
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