‘Liar, liar, pants on fire’… As a young child my Christian upbringing taught me that the ten commandments said, ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness’; the moral imperative was to ‘speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’ My vivid imagination added humour to the undoubted truth about truth.
A young man I know was recently taken to court by some girls who had made allegations about his behaviour. He was delighted that he was acquitted. Truth had prevailed.
One school-lesson I enjoyed teaching was ‘Is it ever OK to tell a lie?’ Discussions about situations at home and at school where truth was important led to occasions where it wasn’t quite so straight forward. From the ‘does my bum look big in this?’ and ‘do you like my new outfit?’ through to hidden Jews in wartime, or the mother explaining her terminal illness to young children…
Discussions often took an interesting course…
Last night I heard a lovely story about a Methodist minister who had prepared a sermon on ‘Do not lie’. He had crafted it around scriptures that required unquestioned truth.
On the Saturday night a fox killed his young daughter’s pet rabbit. He remembered his carefully prepared sermon, but chose to tell his daughter that her rabbit had died peacefully… The following morning. he preached an unprepared, but heartfelt sermon on ‘compassion’.
This morning I read the story of Rahab. Through the first 220 pages of my Bible the heroes are all men… Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses… Now Rahab’s not just a woman; she’s also a prostitute.
Joshua, about to attack Jericho, sends spies, that Rahab hides. When she’s asked by the authorities to hand them over, she lies, saying they aren’t with her… Yet this lying prostitute is held up in the Bible as a prime example of faith. She was the great-great-grandmother of King David and direct ancestor of Jesus…
Musing… Liar, liar, pants on fire… truth, compassion and faith… how do they fit together?
malcolmsmusings.org 
No teacher can teach without the odd white fib.
“That’s really good Malcolm/Alan but I wonder if it could be made even better by……?”
The name is obviously interchangeable.
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Having been brought up to believe truth=white=good, lies=black=bad, I enjoy the notion of white fibs, Alan. Can you have a spectrum of whiteness?
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Some of the things I told the kiddies was probably on the white lie speculum, oops I mean spectrum
For instance, when I covered an MFL lessons I usually told the year 6s that “they all speak English behind our backs.” I still remember their little gullible faces.
Of course now that is virtually a truism.
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Sometimes us imperfect humans lie by omission to skirt around bearing false witness. Interesting post, Malcolm. 🙂
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I think you’re right, Nancy. There are lies of omission and lies of commission. I’m still intrigued that Rahab was commended for her blatant lie!
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