Problems with Lies

The well-know problems with telling lies are:

• One lie tends to lead to others, and "small" lies to more dangerous "big" lies with worse consequences.
• You have to work very hard to remember whom you've told which lie to, so you don't get caught.
• Once people find you're telling lies, they'll trust you less.
• Lies erode the strength of relationships.
  

There is another problem with lies, less obvious, less spoken of, but every bit as dangerous:

Once you're accustomed to telling lies, you steadily lose your ability to sense them in others.

Oh you may assume they lie frequently, as "everyone" does. But telling our own lies cripples our discernment, our ability to see what it true and what is not. I cannot point you to a specific verse in Scripture, but we do see this by observation.

Others have written about this:

"There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition." --Thomas Jefferson

I believe this is one reason why relativism has such an insidious hold on much of the world population.

Fathers, let us do what we can to help our children understand these problems with lies.