Lies

Post on 1 September, 2019 by Dallin Malmgren

Pho­to by Karen Malmgren

I still tell them., even though I shouldn’t. I mean, I don’t tell Trump lies, where I make things up, or hyper­bolize things from sources that are ques­tion­able. And I don’t tell sin lies, like “I was at the gym,” when I come back home from my secret lover’s. (Ha, that’s a laugh) I most­ly tell peace­ful lies, like: “Did you take care of that cred­it card issue?” “Yeah, no prob­lem.” And then I go do it. It’s still a lie, isn’t it?

Thou shalt not lie. It’s there, plain as paper. I was dis­cussing it with Harp­er, my 7‑year-old grand­daugh­ter. “What if your best friend was wear­ing a dress, and you real­ly didn’t think it was a pret­ty dress, and she asks, ‘Do you like my dress?’” Prompt­ly, “No, I real­ly don’t think it’s a pret­ty dress—I have to be hon­est.” Hmmm…so I said, “What if you said: ‘I don’t think that dress would look very good on me, but I can tell you like it, so I think it suits you.’” And Harp­er said, “Oh, yes, that’s a much bet­ter answer.” Now my ques­tion to you is: did I cor­rupt my granddaughter?

Talk about slip­pery slopes! Jesus said, “I am the truth…” You can’t walk up to peo­ple and say, “Jesus is the truth.” Well, you can, but it won’t be very effec­tive. (I’ve tried it a few times.) You have to show that Jesus is the truth. You have to show that the girl is more impor­tant than the dress (even if she doesn’t real­ize it). The worst thing the truth can become is rigid. The stone tablets broke. Some­one tell the fundamentalists.

I had an idea for a short sto­ry in which my pro­tag­o­nist, a teenage girl, woke up and decid­ed she would speak only the truth for the entire day. I had sev­er­al goes at it, but I could nev­er get much beyond the plotting/outlining stage. My pro­tag­o­nist always end­ed up obnox­ious or bor­ing or mute. 

So how do we nav­i­gate in this super-inter­ac­tive, touch-of-the-fin­gers, always-avail­able net­work of friend­ship and love? As I read it, the most pop­u­lar response is to hit “like”. Which prob­a­bly shows how cal­low our rela­tion­ships have become (no one is worse about this than me). So how to devel­op hon­est rela­tion­ships on what­ev­er lev­el? The Bible advis­es: “Speak the truth in love.” I think this might be the trick­i­est verse in a book full of mysteries—but also the secret to build­ing real rela­tion­ships. Because there is an under­ly­ing prin­ci­ple that often gets ignored—if you can’t speak in love, then shut up. We some­times use the “Speak the truth..” part to unload.

I resolve to stop lying—it’s just not right. But I also real­ize I have to become far more cre­ative in how I speak. The harsh word (no mat­ter how hon­est”, the manip­u­la­tive word (no mat­ter how effec­tive), the con­cil­ia­to­ry word (no mat­ter how obfuscating)—all are an attempt to con­trol the oth­er per­son. “Speak the truth in love”—freedom in communication.

Comments

  • Reply

    I tru­ly love your respons­es to my blog. (You might con­sid­er your own blog–or maybe you already do?) You kind of react in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent direc­tions, but always fol­low­ing a thread. God is work­ing with me on choos­ing when to speak and when not to. Your feed­back helps.

    Dallin Malmgren5 September, 2019
  • Reply

    “Now my ques­tion to you is: did I cor­rupt my grand­daugh­ter?” Good ques­tion. Is diplo­ma­cy lying? Answer: It can be. But it’s not always. It depends on how and what you’re using it for. There is no blan­ket answer on that, and that’s why it’s a grey area. 

    “Speak the truth in love” It’s in the sim­ple vers­es that the bible speaks the real truth of the world. Of course, Mur­phy has to have his say in things as “The Sim­ple Things Are Always Hard.” Wit­ness any teenag­er try­ing to explain things to the per­son they admire. Every­one gets writer’s block when try­ing to explain that, from the hum­ble farm boy of “The Princess Bride” to the high and mighty Mr. Dar­cy of Austen fame. But truth in love? It has to be. If you lie to your love, you’re pret­ty much doomed to lose it. That’s what 12 years of being mar­ried has taught me. My proud­est accom­plish­ment is that I’m a good hus­band. At least, that’s what my wife tells me. ;) And I have rea­son to believe her. 

    That said, you can­not vow to stop lying. You’re a writer. In the sheer tech­ni­cal sense, you sell lies for a liv­ing. Remem­ber what I said about diplo­ma­cy? Same thing applies to para­ble as well. We tell sto­ries to teach A truth. Does that always mean the sto­ry itself is true? The les­son taught usu­al­ly is, but the mean details? Not always. Not even often. In that instance, the bet­ter the fic­tion, the bet­ter the les­son is taught. 

    I’ve seen the per­son who does not lie. They are not pop­u­lar. They accept this, in that while they may have very few friends, the ones they have are hon­est about it. Silent? Most times, yes. Truth is pow­er­ful to speak, and is most often spo­ken soft­ly for that rea­son. But mute? *laughs* Truth is immutable. That’s the pow­er­ful part about it. You can yell and scream lies all day, and a whis­per of truth will undo you. The prob­lem you have with your char­ac­ter is that you expect them to speak THE truth, when what you need to dis­cov­er is what THEIR truth is. Every­body has one. It’s the core of who and what they are. The trick of it is, they’re not the same. And find­ing it when you’re young? That’s a rare soul there. Find your truth first. It’ll make it eas­i­er to find some­one else’s later.

    Scott Taggart2 September, 2019

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