The Liar King

My children like me to tell them a bed time story, tell, not read, for whatever their reasons. Tonight, I told them a story based on a story I read called the Liar King by Robert L. Sheridan. A blurb tells about the liar this way: "The quack of all quacks – the most perfect, dirty, rotten scoundrel that in these latter ages has left his stain on the world’s history ... we have found in the Count Alessandro di Cagliostro ... unfortunate child of nature; by profession healer of diseases, abolisher of wrinkles, friend of the poor and impotent, grand master of the Egyptian Mason Lodge of High Science, spirit summoner, gold-cook, grand cophta, prophet, priest, and thaumaturgic moralist and swindler; really a liar of the first magnitude, thorough-paced in all provinces of lying, what one may call the king of liars" ... who made himself quite wealthy in his lifetime, and traveled and worked in noble circles throughout Europe." While the story, on the surface, seems to make the liar seem a likeable fellow, things that happen to most bad liars happened to him. The kids liked the story.

In our home, we have some rules that we follow, and when the rules are broken, punishment follows. Lying is a big no no. Lying destroys trust; it destroys futures. Except for murder and cheating (in the marital sense), there is no worse sin in the McCormick household than lying.

Why do people lie so much anyway? We lie all the time. White lies, face-saving lies, ass-saving lies, lies designed to keep from hurting somebody's feelings and lies to get revenge on those who have hurt our feelings. The really big whoppers though, are the lies we tell ourselves.

A man who runs a forum on Delphi has in his 'signature line' that he lives to fight bigotry, but his entire forum is devoted to hating and hurting Christians. He's living a lie or at least lying in his signature line. Lying may have reached its pinnacle on the internet for lying is so easy to do and so hard to detect. Why, though, one wants to hide what he/she is, what he/she does escapes me for when one lives a lie, no one knows you, so you are just as faceless as you want to be but without anyone having any real knowledge of you. It's a pathetic thing to have the need to lie, to be somebody at the expense of the truth and your friends, so-called, online. The coward who pretends to be brave is still a coward; the lady who is promiscuous but pretends to be a Christian woman of virtue is still a whatever word you wish to apply to such a woman. The person who pretends to be a virtuous spouse but does cybersex with the IM chatters is a cheat and a liar, etc. They may fool the people on the other end of the computer but they don't fool God, nor do they fool themselves.

What about those who lie for the good of others, you ask? There are some who feel that lying can be the "kind" thing to do inorder to avoid conflict. But lying is a very serious matter. Trust lost may never be regained and so many will lie much more thanthey originally intended to try to cover their "small" lie. Theyhave to keep telling bigger lies to cover their previous lying. The devil himself is the father of lies.

John 8:44 "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of yourfather ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketha lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it."

There is NO good lie. A lie is a lie is a lie. The truth is always better. At the very least, speak not at all rather than lie. There is nothing more offensive to God than a lie. Or to me either.