Pant's on fire

How many of our New Year resolutions have already crashed and burned?  Many have just have given up on making resolutions because we know that we’ll just ignore them anyway and so, why lie to ourselves?  

I recently heard a talk radio topic on lying to ourselves and others and why it might be okay and even preferable.    My thought for the following devotion are all driven by my own thoughts, no incident here in the office has raised the idea for the topic…okay, so just relax. 

The radio conversation was driven by a recent research finding that indicated that the average person can lies up to 200 times a day.  10 times an hour! It ranges from simply answering “fine” to the question “how are you”, when you’re not, to flat out bald face lies to keep yourself out of trouble.  

I came across this article over Christmas.

Reprint:  We're All Lying Liars: Why People Tell Lies, and Why White Lies Can Be OK  By Ulrich Boser May 18^th, 2009.

Admit it: You've lied. You told a friend that his shirt looked stylish when you actually thought it was tacky and garish. Or maybe you said to your boss that her presentations were fascinating when in fact they were insipidly mindless. Or perhaps you told your landlord that the rent check was in the mail.

Don't feel bad. You're in good, dishonest company. A growing body of research shows that people lie constantly, that deception is pervasive in everyday life. One study found that people tell two to three lies every 10 minutes, and even conservative estimates indicate that we lie at least once a day. Such incessant prevarication might be a necessary social evil, and researchers have recently discovered that some fibbing might actually be good for you. "We use lies to grease the wheels of social discourse," says University of Massachusetts psychologist Robert Feldman. "It's socially useful to tell lies."

Researchers have been studying deception for decades, trying to figure out why we tell lies. It turns out that we spin facts and make up fictions for all sorts of reasons. We might want to gain a raise or a reward, for example, or to protect friends or a lover. Our capacity for deceit appears nearly endless, from embroidering stories to wearing fake eyelashes to asking "How are you?" when we don't actually care. We even lie to ourselves about how much food we eat and how often we visit the gym.
Small embellishments can have positive psychological effects, experts say. In a study released last year, researchers found that college students who exaggerated their GPA in interviews later showed improvement in their grades. Their fiction, in other words, became self-fulfilling. "Exaggerators tend to be more confident and have higher goals for achievement," explains Richard Gramzow, a psychologist at the University of Southampton in England and one of the study's coauthors. "Positive biases about the self can be beneficial."

People who deceive themselves also tend to be happier than people who do not, some research suggests. There are social payoffs, too: Studies have shown that people who lie frequently are viewed as friendlier as and more amiable than their more truthful counterparts. Still, lying is generally regarded as immoral and distasteful. "No one likes being lied to," says former FBI agent and lying expert Joe Navarro. "We feel betrayed. When is it that they are telling the truth?" And people do really want to know the truth. A new Fox drama, Lie to Me, which features a steely British deception expert, has become one of the most popular shows on television.

Lying begins early. By the age of 3, most children know how to fib, and by 6, most lie a few times a day. Experts believe that children learn to lie by observing their parents do it—that they become practiced in the art of deception by imitating Mom and Dad. And parents sometimes explicitly encourage children to tell lies. Grandma Suzy will send some ugly wool socks or an itchy sweater, and parents will ask their son or daughter to say the item is lovely. As one study concluded, children "may learn to lie in the same way as they learn to speak."

Many experts don't see much difference between a little lie (telling Grandma you loved the ugly socks) and a big lie (covering up an extramarital affair). "Anything that is not accurate is a lie. You can argue that a lie done to make someone else feel better is relatively minor. But they have an effect. The bottom line is that a lie is a lie," says Feldman. "That's the great paradox here. I do believe the more lies, the more degradation. But you can't stop lies entirely. Society would grind to a halt."

Still, people act differently when they're gilding a story and when they're telling a massive whopper. When people tell a bold and blatant lie, they typically become tense and fidgety. Their heart rate speeds up. Their body temperature increases. But when telling white, or social, lies, they usually don't feel any anxiety at all. In fact, electrodes attached to the bodies of students in Gramzow's study revealed that the students who exaggerated their GPAs showed less nervous-system activity than students who were honest about their marks. "In certain situations, such as when someone asks you if you like the awful meal they just served you or the hideous outfit they are wearing, it probably takes less thinking to tell the expected polite lie than the more difficult truth," explains University of California-Santa Barbara psychologist Bella DePaulo. That doesn't make it any easier for people to sort out fact from fiction. Studies have shown that people can identify lies only about 50 percent of the time, or about the same as chance. To be sure, researchers have been able to figure out some clues to uncovering deception. When people tell a significant lie, for instance, they typically gesture less and their arms may appear stiff. People telling lies also might have dilated pupils because they feel nervous about spinning an untruth.

Even with the development of such research, there's no surefire way to catch a liar. But someone with a known track record of lying is likely to pay a price. "Lies add up," says Feldman. "The more you know that someone is not telling you the truth, the less trustworthy they are. They're just telling you stuff you want to hear, and you won't listen to them. 
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So the premise is average people lie up to 10 times an hour.  We have a room full of about  as average a people as we can get, there’s about 60 or so here at Corporate office  – so the research and math would suggest that we lie to each other up to 600 lies an hour :). So, I thought I’d give some tips on tips on how to tell if you’re being lied to.  

3 Ways to Tell if Someone Is Lying

1.     Establish a baseline: When people tell lies, they often feel some anxiety. So look out for any out-of-the-ordinary behavior like excessive sweating or nervous tics.

2.     Read Micro expressions - If someone is pretending to be calm, but he's actually angry, a micro expression of displeasure will flash across his face. These displays of emotion can hard to catch, though. They're fleeting and involve tiny facial movements such as the twitch of an eyebrow.

3.     Pay attention to Body Language: When people lie, they often feel insecure, and that emotion can express itself in their posture or in gestures such as shrugging their shoulders or folding their arms and legs into their body. Also: Look for submissive behavior like someone making a statement with their palms up as if they want to be believed. But keep in mind that all liars are different, and no clue is completely reliable. "There is no absolute indicator of deception," Navarro says. "There's no Pinocchio effect."

We’ve got some great examples of lying in Scripture, right from the beginning of human story.

Adam – “the woman made me do it”

Eve- “Satan made me do it”

Cain –“I don’t know where my brother is, am I his keeper?”

 David – “I did not have relations with that woman”

Peter – “Never heard of the guy”

That talk radio topic got me thinking about how honest am I really – both with myself and with others? How easy it is to put my subtle ‘spin’ on a conversation.  Why do I do it?  - So I don’t hurt the other person, so they can do their job better? – So, um, so, I can make their lives easier and less complicated… (look guilty an fidget).  Lying perhaps has less to do with the other person and much more to do with me…to make me more comfortable, to get me off the hot seat, to bait and switch (don’t look at me, look over there…) to put myself in the most favourable light possible – which is all about pride.    My pride – my ego is commanding – and my desire to maintain a particular image or belief –both to myself and others is extremely powerful. 

2005 Stephen Colbert decided that he had to give a gift of a new word to humankind, “Truthiness”. 

 

“Truthiness is what you want the facts to be, as opposed to what the facts are.  What feels like the right answer as opposed to what reality will support.” 

We know it, but as the article points out “a lie is a lie, no matter how small”.  But it also suggests that it is not possible, and maybe not even advisable to always tell the truth.  This really puts us in a bind as followers of Christ.Is it true that it isn’t wrong to tell a lie as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone?  Is it ever more beneficial or preferable to tell another a lie? When I ‘don’t’ the true, I devalue the other person – I make an assumption that they can’t handle the truth – I make a judgment call that in this case a lie is better than the truth.

 I’ve tried to do some self monitoring on this lately – my own personal research project – and, I’m a little dismayed with myself.  

My neigbour asks, “Does my dogs barking bother you….”  My inside voice is “yes, and I’ve wanted to find a rifle and end the problem”, but my outside voice says because I’m trying to build a good relationship with my neigbour  “No, no problem at all”. 

My mother asks “is it okay that we can the date for our Christmas party at your house” my inside voice says “REALLY MOM, we’ve re-arranged all kinds of stuff to make that first date work” my outside voice says “No worries Mom, we’ll make it work”.

My wife asks, “Do you like your Christmas present” and my inside voice says ‘No, I’m not sure what you were thinking”, and my outside voice says “no, do you have the receipt’ – and it might have actually been better to listen to the article and say “yes dear it is great”.  

Think about how many times you get asked “is that okay” and it isn’t, but, the pressure and expectation is that you’ll answer ‘yes’ – because you know that’s what’s expected, and to say no, well, then you have to explain and it just makes it more complicated. 

Which for me raises another question; I have to take responsibility and tell the truth – in love and kindness – however, I have to be willing to truly receive the truth.  Maybe we actually encourage people to lie to us.  Maybe we’ve trained them that we’d rather hear a little lie that means we don’t have to deal with it – and it remains you’re problem. Maybe the pressure we place on the other by how we react to information that isn’t favourable is so high that we in fact reward being lied to? 

So, it’s got me asking another question about myself – do I make it possible for people to tell me the truth?  Do I make room for it – am I able to handle a different answer than the one I want – am I willing and able to not make the other person pay for telling me the truth?  

University of Nortre Dame just published some research this past summer that identified a link between lying and health and relationships.  “Pants on fire” isn’t the only problem liars face. New research from the University of Notre Dame shows that when people managed to reduce their lies in given weeks across a 10-week study, they reported significantly improved physical and mental health in those same weeks. “We found that the participants could purposefully and dramatically reduce their everyday lies, and that in turn was associated with significantly improved health,”

So how honest are we – really. What is the price we or others are paying for buying into ‘truthiness’? 

Psalm 120:2 “Save me, O LORD from lying lips and from deceitful tongues”

Proverbs 11 says “The Lord hates cheating, but he delights in honesty, Pride leads to disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom”.

 

Proverbs 26:28 “A lying tongue hates those it hurts, and a flattering mouth works ruin”.  

Jesus says in Matthew 5:37 “All you need to say is simply ‘yes’ or ‘no’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.  

Ephesians 4:15 exhorts us “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.  

We are called to be a people of the truth.But appears it might not be as simple as just ‘truth-telling’, I also have to examine my motivations for how I tell – or receive truth. I can’t use truth as weapon or as an excuse for tearing down others.   

1 Cor 13: If I speak in the tongues^[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,^[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.

John 8:32 says “Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free”

 

Becoming people of truth begins with coming first and submitting our entire selves to Christ – it is the recognition, there is nothing average about you - or the others sitting in this room. We have been called to be a royal priest, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praised of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.   

Anyway, I was just thinking.

 

Neil