WHAT IS A LIE?

Often people refer to things opposite of the truth or not the truth as a lie, but is that really what it is? I was brought up to understand that lying is bad, but sometimes I ask myself who ever said lying was bad. This makes me recount almost every action of man with every statement of man. There are those who claim to hold integrity in high esteem but do things that makes one wonder what truly integrity is. For example, my company has an integrity policy, which they claim to hold in high esteem, but yet would ask me to forge a legal document they wish to use for an audit that would give them a job worth hundreds of millions. Now Imagine I decide to hold up to that policy then should I really help them do such a thing?

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When people say “you’re lying” do they mean you are actually telling a lie or not saying the truth. Is not telling the truth a lie? I’ve asked myself this question a lot, and a lot of people will be quick to say yes. I have even discovered that christians who seem to hold the knowledge of truth and lie in high esteem do not say the truth all the time and call it wisdom not to tell the truth. This also applies to one of the many vises stated in the bible. For example, the story of a woman who killed a king on the run. Didn’t she commit murder, didn’t she deceive him? Why was she celebrated for it? Now these are controversies that a lot of people tend to ignore but I like to point them out as I share my view on lying for a reason.

I think a lie is a perversion from the truth with intent to mislead a person or people into fulfilling personal or selfish desire. Now note my definition did not say opposite, but perversion, and I ended it with a selfish desire. I think the only way to judge a lie is intent and purpose for which both the end and the means are justified. If I tell you white is black, it can be an opinion and not a lie. And even though I know it’s white, I can choose to call it black and it doesn't make me a liar. What makes me a liar is when I convince people with an intent to lure them into doing my bidding. This intent will craft how the story of black comes into play, I might start with telling them to look at it as white, but give them a fake meaning to it, something so strong that it can change their ideology of site. And this is something no one should do to a person.

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But what if I want to save their life by making them believe it’s black and not white, knowing full well that the knowledge of white can kill them. I think this would make the approach and story different. I could come up with a story based on fact and evidence, something a lie doesn’t really have. Think about the lies we believed as kids that we stopped believing today, they were lies with an intent to scare us and thus a story was told and given a different meaning knowing how children tend to believe stories. When we discovered the truth we couldn’t get angry, because at that point we already understood the reason even though we didn’t agree with the methods. In my own opinion, A lie is regarded as evil, only when it comes with a selfish desire for which the end result will always expose.

THIS IS MY RESPONSE TO HIVE LEARNER'S PROMPT FOR WEEK 166 EPISODE 2