p. 722 | ABOUT LYING by Advance

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 1, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 46.

ABOUT LYING.

By Advance

ALL decent people, and some that are not quite decent, have a prejudice against downright and willful lying and liars. And yet not all even of decent people are guiltless of deviations from the truth, that are none the less lying for not being downright or intentional.

It is always to be insisted on that the intent to deceive constitutes a lie. The moral quality of the purpose gives quality to the resulting word or act. But it does not follow that without the consciously-formed intent to lie there is no lying. That depends on the intent not to lie. There is lying where due care is not taken to avoid lying. A man who fires a ball-cartridge out of his window may not intend homicide. But if homicide result, he is held for homicide, because he took no care to avoid it. The man who fires off rash and damaging statements without due care to sift fact from fiction and truth from falsehood, or without the same respect for his neighbor's right to the truth that he has for his own right, may have no positive intent to lie. But so far as his statement is false, he is guilty of lying in proportion to his neglect to guard against lying.

To guard against this careless lying about another, good-will toward him is indispensable, at least the good-will which scrupulously regards his rights. All admit this who are in the habit of making abatements in disparaging stories or criticisms proportionately to the amount of ill-will discoverable in them. The incompatibility of ill-will to another with a true account of him, is so well understood that an unfavorable criticism or damaging story is often buttressed by the protest that there is no ill-will in the matter. Nothing is more certain than the saying of the book of Proverbs, that "deceit is in the heart of them that imagine evil." We can understand no man truly except through the medium of the good-will which feels for another, as for one's self, the wrong of the false construction, the stab of the false report. Good-will, indeed, does not always secure the truth being told in a way that is not one-sided or exaggerated; but beyond question there is nothing that so prevents the bearing of false witness as the bearing of good-will, which shrinks from the invasion of another's rights as from the invasion of one's own.

But the lack of such good-will is not innocent. The falsehood that results from it cannot be innocent. There is no name for guilty falsehood but lying. It may be unconsciously committed, as other sins may be. But it is none the less to be stigmatized by its proper brand as lying.

Tongue cannot exaggerate the mischief of the ceaseless misrepresentation that goes on between people that bear one another scant good-will—rivals in business, envious neighbors, parties in politics, and parties even in theology. . .

If a man who is careless about the truth, or his neighbor's right to the truth, feels hurt to be called a liar for his misrepresentation, he deserves to be hurt. Think of the heart pangs,

the irreparable damage to reputation, to fortune, to friendship, to social usefulness, that are wrought by the reckless fiction-mongers who protest they meant no wrong. . . .

We are too much in a hurry to speak before we understand, before we know, but especially and oftenest before we have laid the necessary preparation for speaking truly in the foundation of a good-will, which is as scrupulous toward our neighbor's right as toward our own. It is in speaking of a friend that we speak nearest to the truth. When friendship goes out falsehood comes in, first in the false construction and next in the false report, which fills the mouth with the husks that the swine eat. This may not be consciously purposed as lying. But as the result of an unfriendly neglect to avoid invasion from our neighbor's right to truth, it does all the damage and incurs all the responsibility of a lie.

—Advance.