In this episode we examine various forms of lies—ranging from white lies to more malignant deceptions. As we examine specific examples of deceit, we underscore the significance of self-awareness and the moral imperative to confront our own tendencies towards dishonesty.

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Welcome to a thought provoking episode of Relationship Realities.

Our hosts, Sam and Debbie Wood are thrilled to have you with us today.

Whether you're a single or married listener, get ready for a captivating journey where we explore the realities of relationships beyond the fairy tales.

Welcome back to Relationship Realities and so good to be back after a few months of being absent.

It's been a very busy summer, but hopefully we won't get back on track and keep this regular from the months to come.

Yeah, that's the goal.

And you know, we started last time, Deb, talking about deception and how deception fractures relationships.

And when we come to marriage, certainly we've seen in counseling this is a major problem.

And every marriage relationship has to deal with deception, has to deal with lying.

Or maybe that's why Paul in the first part of Ephesians gives us a theology, then follows up in a very practical section in Ephesians, chapter four, talking about what it looks like to be a real Christian, when he says, therefore having put away falsehood or lying, let every one of you speak truth with his neighbor.

For we're members of one another, so it's so essential.

It's the first thing he says is we need to be truth speakers and not liars.

And he's saying it to Christians.

And so that tells me the reason that he has given this warning or this exhortation is because we all struggle with this.

It's because all of us need each one of you.

He says we need to take care and pay attention in our own personal lives to make sure that we have put away deception, that we are not in any way using it.

Yeah.

And I, you know, in this podcast, rest of this podcast, we want to really talk about some ways we can lie, some ways we can deceive others, and even ourself.

And of course, in the podcast to come, we're going to talk about how to overcome that and really how to speak truth into someone's life who is lying to you.

So, but today we want to really talk about some of the typical type lies that may be prevalent in our own lives and in relationships.

One of the first ones would be, we could call them, you've heard of this, white lies, or some people call them polite lies.

What do they mean by that?

I think that's when someone may ask you a question and you don't want to offend them.

Like you might say, what's wrong?

And I might say, well, I'm not upset knowing that there is something wrong, that I'm, I'm angry About something and I just don't want to admit it.

Or it might be you're at someone's house and.

And you tell them that dinner was.

You know, that was exceptional.

That was so good.

When you really didn't care for it at all.

And those are white lies.

And I find it interesting.

That's what we're starting with today.

Because of all deception, this is the one probably that I struggle with the most.

Because just not wanting to upset someone else would lend me to maybe use deception and then excuse it because I didn't want to hurt their feelings.

Oh, we could be in a hurry.

I was thinking, as you said, that of being at church and somebody walks by and says, how are you doing today?

And you're having a terrible day, really, so I'm doing great.

You put a big smile on your face.

That's kind of a polite lie, wouldn't you think?

Absolutely.

And we do it frequently.

That's why I said, these are the ones that tend to struggle with a lot.

And then we could go into more direct lying.

And that's just directly telling a lie about something.

Like you ask your wife, and she's.

She takes care of the finances.

Did you pay that bill?

And she knows she hasn't, but she says, oh, yeah, I took care of it.

Oh, yeah, that would be a direct line.

Outright lie.

Especially when you know that you haven't done it and you say you have.

That's.

Yeah, a direct lie.

So just to outright deny something.

And you think about.

I think about how many men I deal with that are into pornography.

And the wife might ask them, are you into pornography?

Or did you look at something you shouldn't have looked at?

And they just flat out say, no, I didn't.

You know, and they just directly lie to their wife.

So I think everybody.

I think we kind of understand what it means to just tell a direct lie.

And the next one's a big one.

That's exaggeration or minimization.

We could call.

And I think that's so easy to do.

I think about maybe a wife says to her husband, you never help me.

You ever heard that before?

Well, not necessarily from you, but I have heard that a lot.

And people use that word never, or they use the word always.

And that's a clue right there.

You always fuss at me.

Oh, you're always late.

Those two words really clue you in that someone is exactly exaggerating.

And it's not just that exaggeration.

I think, too, of embellishment.

That is also here when People are telling stories, whether they're fish stories.

That's the one we think about a lot, about how big that fish was.

Let's make a story sound a little bit more interesting, you know, and you embellish it, right?

Or you want to build yourself up so every time you tell a story, that fish gets bigger or what you did gets more unbelievable.

Yeah, that's embellishing.

That's exaggeration.

And we're doing it because of pride, because we want to look better to other people and maybe we really do.

So that's a big one.

It is.

And you also included with that minimization.

And so it works in the opposite direction also when someone is saying, you know, I only did it just, just that one time, knowing that you repeatedly did that act and you're trying to minimize what you did.

You know, another one is how about lies of omission?

You know, not mentioning, say, some purchase that was made of being quite silent about something when you know the truth is there and you just don't say anything.

Well, this would especially be when you're in a conversation with someone else or a group of people and they are, are making comments about something and you know the truth about the matter, but yet you let them go on and, and decide for themselves something without speaking the truth.

And I think this could even happen like in when you're with a group of people and they're talking about a way to heaven and you don't speak up and say that, you know, the way to heaven is through Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone.

It's depending on what he did on the cross.

It's not anything to do with me.

It's totally what he did and depending on that.

And if you fail to mention that in a crowd, especially of unbelievers that might be making fun of, of Christianity, then that's deceiving deception.

Because you know the truth, Right?

They don't know the truth and you're not sharing the truth.

Right?

Yeah, that's a, that's a bit.

How about habitual lying?

Maybe some of us know people.

I know, I know some people that are habitual liars in the past, that it's almost like they can keep lying and don't even know they're lying anymore.

Yeah, that's a real danger.

And I think then they are incredulous if you don't believe them.

But it's really hard to believe someone that is a habitual liar.

And if they lied to you time after time after time, then that's Habitual lying.

Yeah.

And it's, you know, the Bible warns about this because it talks about liars not inheriting the kingdom of heaven.

When it talks about that, it's talking about really someone who has a pattern of lying as a lifestyle over a period of time.

If that's who you are, then the Bible says that's a big warning that you may not even be a Christian or believer.

So that's, that's a huge thing to think about as we talk about habitual lying.

How about malicious lies?

Oh, to me, a malicious lie would be when you intentionally plan to, or you scheme to damage someone else's character by saying something about them that was false that you, you did not have as a fact.

But yet you say it like, I saw her flirt with another man when you weren't even in the room.

Yeah.

And it's so easy for some people, especially if you are bitter towards someone else, to actually maliciously lie about them.

So we have to be so careful about that.

How about concealment?

Just concealing the truth?

We've talked about that a little bit already, I guess, right.

Keeping sin a secret or hiding, pretending like you really didn't do something when you did.

Not admitting things.

That's concealing.

Well, going Back to Genesis 3, I mentioned, to begin with, Satan conceal the real truth, Eve, by saying, hey, if you eat of this fruit, then you'll be like God, not telling her that what's going to be happened to her when she sins against God and what's really going to happen?

He conceals the truth.

And, you know, I think of another form of deception.

When you bring up Genesis and what happened there in the garden, and that's blame shifting.

Here God comes to Adam and he says that he asked, he questions Adam, did, did someone tell you that you were naked?

How did you know you were naked?

And he shifts all the attention away from him and says, that woman you gave me, she made me lie.

You know, it's her fault.

She lied first.

And, and that's blame shifting.

Yeah.

And it's, you know, and it's so easy because we want to protect ourselves.

We want to look good ourselves.

Right?

To just try to say, oh, they did it.

There's real problems over there.

It's not me.

So it's so easy for us to shift the blame to someone else.

How about making commitments without any intention of keeping them?

Now that's a big one, too.

And I think it immediately hits me when somebody says, okay, will you pray for me about this?

And you say, oh, this is convicting.

You say, oh, yeah, I'll.

Sure, I'll pray for you.

And when you really have no real commitment in your heart to really do.

That, that's a major one.

And you know what else I think about?

Like, parents that promise their kids, tomorrow, we'll do this, or next time, I'll make sure I get to your game.

When they know that there's no way they can work that out.

It's just to pacify the child at the moment or the spouse at the moment.

So that's, you know, making a commitment when you absolutely know there's no way you can do that.

Yeah.

And.

And then what about the, I don't know, lie?

Okay.

That's so easy to use.

I think about.

Okay.

Sam, what happened to the ice cream?

I don't know.

I didn't eat it.

When, you know.

When you know that you absolutely did, you know, it could be so many things with that.

Yeah.

I don't know.

That's way of.

We use to get out of things when the truth is we do know.

Yeah.

Or diversion.

You know, somebody asks you about something, so you what, just avoid their question?

They ask you and change the subject to something else.

Right.

That's.

That's a form of deception.

Yeah.

No question about it.

Or how about acting?

We don't think about this so much.

But what do you think about acting?

Acting would be like if you give the appearance of one emotion to cover up the existence of another emotion.

Like maybe you are disgusted about something, and instead of being honest and expressing the irritation or the disgust, you just start crying.

Like, this is just tearing me to pieces.

I'm so upset about this.

When it didn't really bother you to that point.

You're just.

You're just covering up for a true emotion.

Or like, you laugh when you're really scared.

Yeah.

You know, I think that's a big one we see in relationships, for sure, with husbands and wives.

So that's covering.

Giving the appearance of one emotion to cover up another one.

And it's so easy to do that.

How about half.

Half truths?

Or we might say convenience lies, you could call them.

Yeah.

What do you mean by that?

Well, you know, let's say, for example, you know, we squeegee our shower after we take showers.

And you always.

You ask me and say, did you squeegee the shower?

And so I think to myself, well, you know, I did squeegee part of the shower.

I didn't finish the whole thing, but I thought.

But I could say Yeah, I squeegee the shower.

And I wouldn't you say, well, that he is telling the truth, but really I'm not.

Because I know I'm deceiving you because you're thinking I did the whole thing when I didn't do but half of it.

Right.

That's an example.

I'm putting it on myself.

Someone could say, did you go into the office today?

And yeah, they might say yes, but really they made several other stops at places they knew they weren't supposed to be.

And that's kind of half lies.

How about deceiving yourself?

Self deception?

This is huge.

This is really huge.

I think one way we do that is telling ourselves that our sin is not really that bad, that everyone else does it, and it's not that big a deal.

I think that's one way we might deceive ourselves.

Yeah.

You know, my spouse doesn't really need to know this truth about this because it ain't gonna really matter anyway, you know, when you know in your heart that it will matter if they knew the truth about it.

I think one major one of self deception is when things don't go the way that we want them to, when there's huge disappointment that we buy into this deception.

That God doesn't love me.

Yeah, that's, you know, and that's lying to yourself.

And just.

I put that on here last because I think it's so big, and I think this is such a big one.

Because the devil does not want us to know who we are in Christ, so he'll continue to whisper lies to us about who we are, and we might lie to ourselves about that and believe them.

We do.

When we start backing it up with reasons that we think we're inferior or reasons that we think we're superior, we're deceiving ourselves and we're lying to ourselves.

When we know the truth of the word of God and what God says about it and we accept these lies, then that is total deception.

And that is huge.

All right.

As we kind of close out this episode, maybe we can just draw this all to a conclusion.

You know, in considering all these different ways of deceiving, it makes me realize that all of us have hearts that look for an escape when the truth is uncomfortable.

And we choose to use deception in order to escape.

And how dangerous this is, how unlike Christ it is, how very much like the devil it is.

And I think this calls me especially, and it calls all of us really to examine ourselves and to go to the Lord and say, make me very aware of when I am choosing to deceive, when I am using this mode of dialogue or conversation, and cause this to stand out to me.

And then we can always take it to the cross.

We can see how damaging it is to our life and to the lives of the ones that we're deceiving and ask the Lord to forgive us and to strengthen us against this temptation.

I think that's such a good point because we really do need to examine our own hearts and we have put together a reflection guide that you can download from this episode that asks some questions to really help you and assist you in doing that.

So I hope you'll take time maybe to do that prayerfully do that over the next few days while this message or this episode is on your heart and mind.

And next time we're going to talk about really being a truth speaker and overcoming the temptation to lie in your life.

And I think it's going to be a very powerful episode you won't want to miss.

Look forward to it.

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Click on the link to download a free reflection guide to help you apply the teaching in this episode.

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