lying, when is it ok?

Her answer should have been more accurate and then she wouldn't have had to lie: "There are no guilty children here." or "There are not dogs here." Both are accurate without lying. Her definition of guilt and dogs would have been interpreted by the Nazi as being Jewish where her definition is "innocence is here, not your interpretation of evil children." Many use this circular argument because they lack the ability to artfully communicate. Jesus, in your scenario, would never have lied, so why should we? It is never right to do wrong to do right. Especially as children of God, 1 Cor 10:13; Luke 12:11-12.

A more accurate answer would arise suspicion. The best case scenario is to not lie, agreed. But that would require literal intervention from God. Something like this 2 Kings 7:6 for the Lord had caused the Arameans to hear the sound of chariots and horses and a great army, so that they said to one another, "Look, the king of Israel has hired the Hittite and Egyptian kings to attack us.
 
Lot of good answers which I will try to bail out! LOL! But I almost got into trouble yesterday night. As I was reading the posts I was smiling. My wife knows something has to be good if I am smiling at my laptop. I don't have a happy face when I am doing office work on laptop :) When she asked what it was, I was telling her the replies. She went about asking "if these are funny, then did you really answer truth when I asked such questions before?" I was stunned!! ha ha!!

We both laughed about it :)
 
Lot of good answers which I will try to bail out! LOL! But I almost got into trouble yesterday night. As I was reading the posts I was smiling. My wife knows something has to be good if I am smiling at my laptop. I don't have a happy face when I am doing office work on laptop :) When she asked what it was, I was telling her the replies. She went about asking "if these are funny, then did you really answer truth when I asked such questions before?" I was stunned!! ha ha!!

We both laughed about it :)
Well, you know the scripture says that if we can "control" our "tongue" we can control our bodies.

Jas 3:2.. For we all often stumble and fall and offend in many things. And if anyone does not offend in speech [never says the wrong things], he is a fully developed character and a perfect man, able to control his whole body and to curb his entire nature.

Now the question would be if I can control my body by what I say, then can I control our wife's body by what I say also since we are one in the flesh.
We need some volunteers to try this out. :) If we can speak to the mountain why not the mountain of FAT on our bodies? :)
 
A more accurate answer would arise suspicion. The best case scenario is to not lie, agreed. But that would require literal intervention from God. Something like this 2 Kings 7:6 for the Lord had caused the Arameans to hear the sound of chariots and horses and a great army, so that they said to one another, "Look, the king of Israel has hired the Hittite and Egyptian kings to attack us.
Well see that's the problem isn't it? It's easier to live in the world like the world than to have an intervention by God in faith.
 
Proverbs 6:16-19:
"There are six things which the Lord hates,
Yes, seven which are an abomination to Him:
17 Haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
And hands that shed innocent blood,
18 A heart that devises wicked plans,
Feet that run rapidly to evil,
19 A false witness who utters lies,
And one who spreads strife among brothers."


I hate lies. I am not in favor of cruel bluntness which completely disregards people's feelings, but I believe we should always tell the truth in love. This is not to say we need to tell everyone everything which goes through our minds, i.e. there is a difference between exercising wisdom in knowing when to speak and when to keep silent and just outright lying to people. For instance, if I think you look horrible in pink, I am not lying to you if I don't tell you what is going through my mind. Nevertheless, withholding the truth from those with whom we should share certain things is the same as lying. Yet, a person may feel that as long as he or she is not questioned directly as to certain activities that he or she is not responsible to volunteer the information.

For example, if a man or a woman cheats on his or her spouse, withholding that information is the same as a lie, especially if he or she then proclaims to his or her spouse how much he or she loves them, i.e. they are living a lie. Viewing pornography is committing adultery, so if a person views pornography and keeps this from his or her spouse, not only is he or she guilty of adultery, but he or she is also guilty of lying, i.e. of withholding information that is critical to their marriage relationship, i.e. a confession of sin of adultery so that the marriage relationship can be restored and healing begun, and steps taken to rectify the situation so that it does not repeat itself, or in the hopes that it would not keep repeating itself.

The same may apply if a spouse is getting too chummy with someone with whom he or she works, and the spouse ends up getting emotionally close to another other than his or her spouse to where the spouse shares more intimate thoughts and feelings with someone he or she is not married to while withholding affection and/or withholding the sharing of heart and emotion with his or her spouse. This is emotional adultery. Or, it could be that the spouse reconnected with an old classmate via social media, and has kept this relationship a secret from his or her spouse. Hiding things from our spouses, keeping things from them because we don't want them to know what we are doing is lying. When we marry, we become one flesh. We should not have secrets or hidden things which we keep from each other that we would not want our spouse to know about.

Yet, lies are so commonplace today, even within the church and among those who call themselves believers in Jesus Christ. So many, many Christians watch so much TV and movies which glorify sin - lying, stealing, cheating, adultery, fornication, etc. What we take into our minds influences how we think, what we value and how we behave. Many who call themselves Christians lie as a normal part of every day life as though it is an acceptable practice to engage in. They lie and they cheat and don't even feel a nudge of conscience in many cases. It has become so acceptable. But, God hates lies. Satan is the father of lies. One of his biggest weapons against us is his lies to us in order to attempt to deceive us and to try to trick us into doubting God and into disobeying our Lord and in order to try to convince us it is ok to cheat on and lie to our spouses. And, this is the downfall of many marriages.

To me, lies hurt so much more than the truth.
 
Lot of good answers which I will try to bail out! LOL! But I almost got into trouble yesterday night. As I was reading the posts I was smiling. My wife knows something has to be good if I am smiling at my laptop. I don't have a happy face when I am doing office work on laptop :) When she asked what it was, I was telling her the replies. She went about asking "if these are funny, then did you really answer truth when I asked such questions before?" I was stunned!! ha ha!!

We both laughed about it :)
Sounds like a very good woman you have there my friend! Always good to laugh and enjoy the one God has given you.
God bless you all!
 
"Better is open rebuke
Than love that is concealed.
Faithful are the wounds of a friend,
But deceitful are the kisses of an enemy."

Proverbs 27:5-6
 
:
"There are six things which the Lord hates,
Yes, seven which are an abomination to Him:
17 Haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
And hands that shed innocent blood,
18 A heart that devises wicked plans,
Feet that run rapidly to evil,
19 A false witness who utters lies,
And one who spreads strife among brothers."


I hate lies. I am not in favor of cruel bluntness which completely disregards people's feelings, but I believe we should always tell the truth in love. This is not to say we need to tell everyone everything which goes through our minds, i.e. there is a difference between exercising wisdom in knowing when to speak and when to keep silent and just outright lying to people. For instance, if I think you look horrible in pink, I am not lying to you if I don't tell you what is going through my mind. Nevertheless, withholding the truth from those with whom we should share certain things is the same as lying. Yet, a person may feel that as long as he or she is not questioned directly as to certain activities that he or she is not responsible to volunteer the information.

For example, if a man or a woman cheats on his or her spouse, withholding that information is the same as a lie, especially if he or she then proclaims to his or her spouse how much he or she loves them, i.e. they are living a lie. Viewing pornography is committing adultery, so if a person views pornography and keeps this from his or her spouse, not only is he or she guilty of adultery, but he or she is also guilty of lying, i.e. of withholding information that is critical to their marriage relationship, i.e. a confession of sin of adultery so that the marriage relationship can be restored and healing begun, and steps taken to rectify the situation so that it does not repeat itself, or in the hopes that it would not keep repeating itself.

The same may apply if a spouse is getting too chummy with someone with whom he or she works, and the spouse ends up getting emotionally close to another other than his or her spouse to where the spouse shares more intimate thoughts and feelings with someone he or she is not married to while withholding affection and/or withholding the sharing of heart and emotion with his or her spouse. This is emotional adultery. Or, it could be that the spouse reconnected with an old classmate via social media, and has kept this relationship a secret from his or her spouse. Hiding things from our spouses, keeping things from them because we don't want them to know what we are doing is lying. When we marry, we become one flesh. We should not have secrets or hidden things which we keep from each other that we would not want our spouse to know about.

Yet, lies are so commonplace today, even within the church and among those who call themselves believers in Jesus Christ. So many, many Christians watch so much TV and movies which glorify sin - lying, stealing, cheating, adultery, fornication, etc. What we take into our minds influences how we think, what we value and how we behave. Many who call themselves Christians lie as a normal part of every day life as though it is an acceptable practice to engage in. They lie and they cheat and don't even feel a nudge of conscience in many cases. It has become so acceptable. But, God hates lies. Satan is the father of lies. One of his biggest weapons against us is his lies to us in order to attempt to deceive us and to try to trick us into doubting God and into disobeying our Lord and in order to try to convince us it is ok to cheat on and lie to our spouses. And, this is the downfall of many marriages.

To me, lies hurt so much more than the truth.

This is basically where I am camping too! It all started when I was a brand new convert, and a commanding officer asked every single soldier in rank before me (there were thirty of them) : "Do you like it here, soldier ?" Everyone answered a very energetic "Yes Sir!", when in fact the climate had become so poisonous that the base commander had to intervene in this fashion. Now I had been at the time for seven years a Military Police in the Canadian Armed Forces, and I understood that a "no" answer on my part would be interpreted as an act of rebellion in that particular context.

So I prayed : "God please rescue me from this situation, I don't know how to get out of it, but I don't want to lie".

When the commander came to me, and saw the UN Peace Keeping Medal on my chess, he changed his question from "do you like it here" to "Where do you were before you were here, Corporal ?" My answer : "In Chibougameau" my general". Then the General said, "Do you like it here, Corporal Garneau?" to which I replied, "There is much more action here than there was in Chibougameau, my General".

From then on, I knew God would help me find ways to not lie whenever it was necessary. But I was also ready to face the consequences of not lying. So at work, when a male colleague asked me to lie to about his whereabouts if his wife happened to call, I bluntly told him to find another mouthpiece. Same thing when I was working for the Quebec Government several years later, if one of my bosses asked me to write an inacuracy on a report, I bluntly refused. This turned out to build trust, and led to responsibilities that could be performed by someone who would not lie for you.

To be fair to the rest of the responses I read on this thread, I must say that I was subjected to lies quite early in my life, so as a young adult, before my conversion, lying was very natural to me. But when I turned my life over to Christ, it became extremeley clear to me that lying was to be repented from.

This being said, a thread like this one is very useful, because there are situations that are not at all easy to deal with, so I found several of the answers above very useful, indeed.
 
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I inverted a few words in the second quote of the third paragraph in my previous post, and I was wondering if a moderator could delete the present post after replacing the third paragraph of preceding post to read like this:

When the commander came to me, and saw the UN Peace Keeping Medal on my chess, he changed his question from "Do you like it here" to "Where were you before you were here, Corporal ?" My answer : "In Chibougameau" my general". Then the General said, "Do you like it here, Corporal Garneau?" to which I replied, "There is much more action here than there was in Chibougameau, my General."

Thank you so much !
 
Interesting to see some of the lies that are captured in Bible

Abraham calling Sarah as sister
Isaac calling Rebekah as sister
Rebekah/Jacob deceiving Isaac to get blessings of first born.
The famous lie by Rahab to save the lives of spies

All these ended up with favorable outcome. God did not strike down the people who told the lies. But all were with right intentions. May be God honored the intentions rather than lie? While lie is never the right thing, God will honor the intention? Like CCW quoted, we cannot say what we would say or do in such difficult situations

There was also David lying to the priest Ahimelech about being on a "secret mission" from Saul and then pretending to be insane before Achish.

And I would point out that Rahab was lauded by James specifically because of the lie she told.

But you missed the most critical examples: Those of the Lord Himself.

“Go, assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—appeared to me and said: I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt. And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—a land flowing with milk and honey.’

“The elders of Israel will listen to you. Then you and the elders are to go to the king of Egypt and say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. Let us take a three-day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God....'"
-- Exodus 3

"'By what means?' the LORD asked. "'I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouths of all his prophets,' he said. "'You will succeed in enticing him,' said the LORD. 'Go and do it.'" -- 1 Kings 22

"'I will go and be a deceiving spirit in the mouths of all his prophets,' he said. "'You will succeed in enticing him,' said the LORD. 'Go and do it.'"--- 2 Chronicles 18

Jesus’ brothers said to him, “Leave Galilee and go to Judea, so that your disciples there may see the works you do. No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.” For even his own brothers did not believe in him.

Therefore Jesus told them, “My time is not yet here; for you any time will do. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that its works are evil. You go to the festival. I am not going up to this festival, because my time has not yet fully come.” After he had said this, he stayed in Galilee.

However, after his brothers had left for the festival, he went also, not publicly, but in secret.
-- John 7

Now here is where people rush to protect the Lord's virtue and make up excuses for Him, such as "Well, it wasn't actually the Lord Himself telling the lie." Or "Jesus meant He wasn't going up to the festival right at that moment, but He changed His mind later."

But we all know that the king is responsible for his commands and the Lord is responsible for His words, for: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. -- Isaiah 55

However, up in post #3, Peter Luke said something significant to understand:

The only time I see a lie/deception is possible is to deceive what is already deceived.

This is the fact in every case that the Lord Himself was the cause of deception: The people were already deceived and did not want the truth.

We see this played out again in Romans 1: And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind....

To those who will deny the truth, God gives what they desire: Deception.

This is tactical deception, the deception of the enemy, which is not "excusable by circumstance," but is, in fact, a good thing.

Rahab is not "excused" for her tactical deception of the enemy, she is praised in scripture for her tactical deception of the enemy.

To our comrades and to our Command, no, we must never lie. But God Himself deceives our enemies.
 
I have asked this question long time ago and I have been searching for the thread but couldn't find it.

So, I have to ask this very important question to me, and that is: Is it ever OK to lie. What when the lie brings good results and the truth bad?

Thanks




Keep it simple, all lies are bad, including the white lies. Sin is sin. There is no need for it. You will be surprised how life can still be enjoyable without the white lie.

Scripture says that Satan is the father of ALL lies.

--MoG
 
This is an ethical issue that has a long history of unresolved debates.
The only time I see a lie/deception is possible is to deceive what is already deceived. For instance, lying to an evil (deceived) person to protect the truth / innocent.
A classic ethical example is a true case of WWII when the Nazis were looking for missing Jewish children to be exterminated. The children were taken in and hidden by nuns at a convent. When the Nazi leader asked the nun if Jewish children were in the convent, the nun said 'No". The Nazi's believed her and left.

Here the Nazi's intentions were evil. The nun's deception was pointed at what was already a deception/evil. IMHO

Hi there!,

This is the mental reservation, casuistry, and equivocation doctrine of the RCC/Jesuits which I dubbed the "art of lying with out lying." Scripture disagree whole heatedly with it. There is never an occasion that justifies lying for a Christian.

Blessings to you!,
--MoG
 
And I would point out that Rahab was lauded by James specifically because of the lie she told.
There is no "hall of liars" in the Book of Hebrews. Rahad was never lauded for her lie, but for her faith.

Heb 11:31 By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not, when she had received the spies with peace.

There is no such a thing as lying by faith!
 
Therefore Jesus told them, “My time is not yet here; for you any time will do. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that its works are evil. You go to the festival. I am not going up to this festival, because my time has not yet fully come.” After he had said this, he stayed in Galilee.
What is the problem here? If Jesus said he was not going up "yet" to the festival, does that mean he is not going at all? Timing is everything with the Lord. One, or two hours can mean a person life if not done by the Holy Spirits leading.
 
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