The Habit of Untruth by N. Y. Examiner

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 22, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 20.

The Habit of Untruth.

By N. Y. Examiner

SOME men seem to have a constitutional inability to tell the simple truth. They may not mean to lie, or to tell an untruth, but they are careless—careless in hearing, careless in understanding, careless in repeating, what is said to them. These well-meaning but reckless people do more mischief than those who intentionally foment strife by deliberate falsehood. There is no firebrand like your well-meaning busybody, who is continually in search of scandal, and by sheer habit misquotes everybody's statements.

This carelessness is a sin of no small magnitude. A man's duty to God and his fellows requires him to be careful. For what else were brains and common sense given him? Of course that other class, the malignant scandal-mongers, who take a fiendish pleasure in promoting strife, deliberately garble men's words, and twist their sentiments, is in the minority, and people have a very decided opinion regarding them. Most men seem to misrepresent because they do not seem to think that care in speaking the truth is a pre-eminent duty.

The effects of this careless misrepresenting of others are seen everywhere. Its effect on the individual is to confirm him in a habit of loose, distorted, and exaggerated statement, until telling the truth becomes a moral impossibility. No other thing causes so many long-standing friendships to be broken, so many dissensions in churches, so much evil everywhere. It is an abuse that calls for the rebuke of every honorable man—a rebuke that should be given, not only in words whenever occasion demands, but by example. "Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbor; . . . and let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbor."