There is a smart new TV series that reflects the emerging genre of detectives with a quirk – forensic scientists from Vegas to Miami to New York, The Mentalist, Psyche, obsessive compulsive detectives, detectives with facial tics, detectives with a southern accent whose guilty pleasure is a bon-bon, mediums who can see dead people …all geniuses at getting to the truth. Set in Washington D.C. in what has become known as the city of lies, LIE TO ME stars Tim Roth, a human lie detector who reads the face and the hands, the eyes, the nose, the slightest microexpression of murderers, cheating husbands and runaway kids.
It is a provocative idea that seems to resonate with the culture -- that we have to resort to either science or the supernatural to discover the truth because there is just so much lying going on today.
Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and A-Rod are all on the hot seat and the baseball steroid perpetrator’s list goes on and on. U.S. track and field is perhaps the biggest doping cover-up in all of sports. Dr. Wade Exum's report that 19 American medalists were allowed to compete at various Olympic Games from 1988 to 2000 despite having earlier failed drug tests shocked some people in the sporting community but was no surprise to others.
For years, insiders had speculated that U.S. athletes were not immune to delving into doping to get ahead of the competition. But how could this be? American athletes often spoke publicly against illegal drug use in sport, cursing the sports regimes of East Germany and China for systemic doping practices.
"There is no commitment to stopping the drug problem," said track and field star Carl Lewis in 2000. "People know the sport is dirty, the sport is so driven by records." Little did Lewis know he would be named in Exum's report.
The Chiefs of Enron deserve a category for themselves as the case is made by the Washington Post: “There are two types of liars…: the kind who back into a lie and find themselves lying to keep their heads above water, and the liars who act deliberately and without moral qualms.”
More recently, Bernard Madoff engineered the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. He lied to friends, investors, finance professionals, the SEC, and family for twenty years.
In Acts 5:1-10 there is a story of the most famous liars (beyond the Father of Lies) in scripture: Annanias and Sapphira drop dead for “swindling God on a real estate deal”. This is one of those texts that leaves me a little dazed and confused, a little shaken, a little nervous…because I am so disturbed by the severity of the consequence of this deception. I wonder why I have not dropped dead because I have certainly told bigger whoppers, worked harder at making myself look good, created more false impressions and outright lied much worse than Ananias and Sapphira. Not only that, but the Pastor who declares their death is only a few months away from having lied that he even knew who Jesus was!
In Psalm 116:11 the bible says, “All men are liars.”
When my daughters were just starting to date, I wanted them to memorize this verse. Not that men corner the market on deceit, but this verse is pretty plain and simple-- an assumption that people lie. When it suits them, when it gives them an advantage, when they can make themselves look better than they are, when the truth is too painful or too disappointing to admit, when they are afraid, and sometimes just for the heck of it…men lie, women lie, children surely lie. It is in their nature to lie.
I remember catching my 3-yr-old son who has jacked a piece of chocolate cake and mashed it all over the lower half of his face as he has hurriedly shoved it into his mouth. His cheeks are swollen with the evidence; his face screams the guilty pleasure of piles of icing, and I ask him, “Hey buddy, have you been eating cake?” and without blinking he says, “uh-uh.” He says uh-uh because his mouth is so crammed full of cake he cannot say the audible lie, “NO.” Are you sure? “U-huh.” Poke him in the cheek and ask, “what is that?” And I have to wait a few seconds till he can swallow a little of the stolen sweet and what does he say? “I don’t know.”
“ALL MEN ARE LIARS.” Those of us who have not had children yet or are not in law enforcement may be uncomfortable with this statement, but research validates the scriptural claim. According to research conducted by Harvard-trained Professor Bella DePaulo and several other researchers,
--Most people lie to others once or twice/day and deceive about 30 people/week.
--The average is 7 times per hour if you count all the times people lie to themselves.
--We lie in 30 to 38% of all our interactions.
--10,000,000 people lie to the IRS each year.
--80% of us lie on our resumes.
--70% of all doctors lie to insurance companies.
--100% of dating couples surveyed lied to each other in about a third of their conversations.
--95% of participating college students surveyed were willing to tell at least one lie to a potential employer to win a job, and 41% had already done so.
--We are lied to about 200 times each day.
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References:
1. Dr. Bella DePaulo "The Truth about Lying," Psychology Today, Vol. 30 Issue 3 (May/June 1997), p. 53.
2. Kenneth Labich, "The New Crisis in Business Ethics," Fortune Vol. 125 No. 8 (April 20, 1992).
3. Valerie Frazee, "Students Tell Tales to Win Jobs," Personnel Journal Vol. 75 No. 10 (October 1, 1996).
By the way, the same study found that college students lie to their mothers in one out of every two conversations. We are awash in a sea of deception. However, there is something deeper at stake here than telling the truth. On the TV show Lie To Me recently there was a compelling quote: “Every lie has consequences that you don’t see coming.” This is why God HATES lying. He sees all the consequences that you don’t see coming.
One of the most compelling forms of lying is self-deception. Often a young man comes to me intoxicated with the vision of becoming a successful missional entrepreneur, a.k.a., church planter. To use the American Idol metaphor, they think they are the next Clay Aiken, but they are actually the hapless William Hung. And no one has had the courage to say, “As far as church planting goes, you are no Clay; you are William.”
In our church planter assessment process, we screen as many of the "William Hungs" as possible, but no one is exempt from blind spots. By their nature, "you don't see them coming." Part of our task in the Church Plant Training Center Residency is to do some loving truth telling, to hold the mirror before a resident and ask, “Honestly, this is what I see. Do you see it?” All this “speaking the truth in love” holds the promise of assisting an aspiring lead pastor face weakness, stop the self deception, and become a competent gospel minister. Unless he wisely gathers a strong elder board around him, this may be the last chance he has to receive vigorous feedback about his flaws in an environment that is committed to his success.
As Daniel Goleman has expressed so well in his book, Primal Leadership, self awareness is a fundamental component of emotional intelligence…which spills into organizational intelligence. We know that great churches are built by great men who understand themselves, refuse to lie to themselves, and have both the humility and intelligence to create a culture of truth telling.
Good stuff. Hope the assessment goes well this weekend.
Posted by: Russell Johnson (AKA William Hung) | May 29, 2009 at 11:16 AM
Good stuff, Dad. Makes me want to ask more questions - no one wants to be played for a fool. Glad God is trustworthy... what a cynical world would we live in without glimpses of real truth?! So what can people really trust in without God? I mean aside from the fact that chips and salsa will always be the best thing to do on a Friday night?
Posted by: Emily Taylor | May 29, 2009 at 11:39 AM