I don’t like lying. I mean, I reeeeeaaaaallly don’t like it. First of all, I’m no good at it. Must be the built-in guilt that the nuns install into your motherboard in Catholic school. It just makes me squirm and pace the floor and bleed out of my eyes. I can’t do it. At least not well.
We all know the saying, “The truth will set you free,” which of course was first uttered by Steve Bannon. Just kidding. Pretty sure it was Jesus.
I know that phrase sounds cliché, but oh how accurate it is. I truly believe it. When anybody makes any kind of claim, it must be backed up with facts, empirical evidence, a basis in reality. Even if it’s something that you desperately want to believe because it would fit so nicely as a missing piece of the puzzle that you’re trying to solve, you absolutely need to ask if it can be verified as true. If you embrace truth—no matter what it is—well, in my experience, you’ll just feel better.
But…
Oh, I know. When somebody says something and then follows it up with “but,” everything they just said before it is usually BS. But here me out (there I go again, with another “but”).
I wonder if there are times when it’s better to not exactly come clean. And specifically, I’m thinking about lying to spare someone’s feelings. Is that okay?
I mean, yeah, Jesus said, “The truth will set you free.” But what if one of the apostles came up to him and they had this back-and-forth:
“Jesus, how does my breath smell?”
“Like a turd quesadilla, Bartholomew. It smells like a turd quesadilla.”
Could that have happened?
What about this sweet little girl, who pretended to like her mother’s cooking. She wasn’t telling the truth. She was lying, but she was doing it because she didn’t want her mom to feel bad. It came from a place of love.
So what about this little girl? She obviously was repulsed by her spaghetti. She did everything she could to keep it from spewing out of her mouth and onto her family.
The same kind of thing has happened to me. I’ve been at somebody’s house for dinner before and had big, big trouble trying to eat the appetizers. After the first bite, did I keep eating? Hell no. I couldn’t. I physically couldn’t. Instead, I stuffed the little powder-sugared puke balls one-by-one into my napkin when nobody was looking, smiled, and went “Mmmmmm. I must have the recipe.”
Was that the right thing to do? Should I have spit it out and instead said, “Damn woman! Where’d you learn to cook, Dumpster Dive Culinary School?” I just couldn’t do that. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
So is it ever okay to lie? Lying still doesn’t make me feel good, no matter the circumstance. It’s definitely a question I struggle with.
Honestly, I usually try my best to avoid situations altogether where lying might be necessary. Truth is so much more comfortable for me.
P.S. I bet the apostles really did have bad breath. I mean, what did they brush their teeth with back then? Fish spooge on a stick?