The Age of the White Lie
I recently read an interesting story regarding the way people in Italy are attempting to skirt around an important law. When Italy’s mandatory use of seat belts went into effect, enterprising Claudio Ciaravolo cashed in. Dr. Ciaravolo, a psychiatrist in Naples, invented a “security shirt.” It consists of a white T-shirt with a diagonal black stripe designed to deceive the police into believing the motorist is buckled up.
What is interesting about this simple story, is that these creative swindlers don’t realize that the law is established for their own safety. The government’s motive is not to evoke further controls on their lives, they are simply establishing a consequence for simply not obeying a principle that may very well save their lives. Although we might laugh at Claudio’s ingenuity, we must stop and recognize there is a little Claudio in all of us!
Our society today has lowered the bar of honesty and have allowed the “White Lie Bar” to be the excepted norm. We have even reduced the term lie, to “ethically challenged” to minimize the offense we might cause by catching someone from being dishonest.
The book, The Day America Told the Truth, came out in 1991. In this work, research showed 91 percent of Americans lie routinely, while 36 percent confess to dark, important lies. Eighty-six percent lie regularly to parents, 75 percent lie to friends, 73 percent to siblings, 69 percent to spouses, 81 percent lie about feelings, 43 percent concerning income, and 40 percent about sex. Psychologist Michael Lewis of Rutgers University says there are three types of lies: (1) Lies to protect feelings, such as saying a gift is nice when you actually hate it; (2) Lies to avoid punishment; and (3) Lies of self-deception. Our behavior repulses others, but we lie to ourselves and blame the rejection on something or someone else. A woman gives herself a breast exam and notices an unusual lump but tells herself everything is fine. Lewis feels these lies of self-deception may be the most frequent lies. That could explain why so many people reject the gospel. They’ve lied to themselves about their need for forgiveness and God’s requirement of commitment to Christ. In this age of obsessive lying, remember who is the “father of lies” (John 8:44), and who promised to give the “truth that shall make you free” (John 8:32). C. S. Lewis noted, “We often err either by ascribing too much or too little power to the father of lies.”
How is your ‘honesty meter” on a scale of one to ten. Are you more concerned about what people think about you than what God thinks about you? Have you been so entrenched in certain lies that you have now even deceived yourself into knowing who you really are, not who you want to be?
I think it is time that we tell the truth, and aim to set the bar of honesty at an all time high. The result will be epic!
