Do you think telling lies, whether a little or a lot, isn’t that big of a deal? Well, that depends on the situation. A really hurtful lie is very much a criminal act against someone.
For example, consider a candidate who was running for mayor in a major city. We’ll call him Jack. Jack’s opponents wanted to kill his candidacy, so they told a lot of people Jack had mental problems.
We also know of someone victimised by liars, who is principal of a high school. She is so nice and so beautiful, her colleagues started a rumour that she had been raped.
“The more you deny some lies, the worse it gets,” she told us. When she tried to trace the lie to its source, she only succeeded in fanning the flames. People talked more about her, not less.
If someone asks, “Does this dress make me look fat?” we might all lie somewhat. We might say, “Of course not. You look great.” Lying to spare someone’s feelings is one thing. Lying to destroy someone’s character or dignity is another.
“What’s really awful is that you can’t undo a big lie,” says a minister we’ll call Morgan. “I promise if you go house to house to say: ‘I feel terrible I wrongly accused my neighbour of cheating on her husband,’ the lie will spread like a fire fuelled by gasoline. You can’t call back a lie very easily.”
Morgan goes on to say that lies have hurt more people than firearms.
“We have a grandfather in our church whose former son-in-law told people the man molested his own children,” Morgan says. “To this day, we don’t know if the rumour is true or not. I would tend to doubt it, but still, I watch this older man like a hawk. I can’t take a chance, especially if he is working with young people in our church.”
Disarming someone who lies is tough. It’s like disarming someone who’s toting a loaded gun. That’s why our society is full of people who are forced to cover up the lies of other people.
“I worked with a man who was stealing money from our employer,” says a man we’ll call Fred. “He was so good at lying and doctoring the books, it would have taken an FBI agent to stop him. I worried, “If I told on him, and he wriggled out of it, my career at our company would be cooked.”
Fred says he came up with a plan to drop hints to the company owner. “I found printed materials on monitoring potentially dishonest employees. I started anonymously mailing them to the company owner. Then one day, over lunch, I told my boss he should have the books audited carefully. He got the hint.”
Fred told us that when the books were audited, the dishonest co-worker tried to blame him for the errors! However, Fred told the company owner he had been dropping hints for some time. The boss got the picture. Fred kept his job. The dishonest guy was fired.
Figuring out how to expose a liar takes work. It can be done, but you might have to move at the pace of a turtle. The slower you move, the more control you will have in exposing the culprit. You have to give others time to absorb the truth.
- Judi Light Hopson is the executive director of the stress management website USA Wellness Cafe at www.usawellnesscafe.com. Emma Hopson is an author and a nurse educator. Ted Hagen is a family psychologist.
