PEOPLE
22
By Very Reverend Michael Demkovich, OP, Episcopal Vicar for Doctrine & Life
A
s a child I was taught “Thou shalt not lie” and that meant I should always tell the truth. When my little friends and I found one of us lying I recall
us chanting “Liar, liar, pants on fire, nose is longer than a telephone wire.” The story of Pinocchio also taught us to not tell lies. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t tell our share of lies. I know that I did lie mostly because I thought lying was better than getting in trouble. At the time it seemed safe but somehow my parents could detect my lies. So how did they know? How could they tell I was lying? More importantly, how can we tell when
of
GOD
someone is lying? First off, the key is recognizing there is truth and we are best served by knowing the truth. But what is truth? Thomas Aquinas tells us truth is “Veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus” (“Truth is the correspondence of things and intellect”). Our knowledge of a thing is true because it matches or corresponds with reality itself. This is the gold standard of truth telling and it is essential to our common good. Truth telling is a moral task that defines a person’s integrity and a society’s justice. This is so important that in the Genesis account the fall of humanity came about because of a grand lie that created doubt -- “Did God really say…?” Doubt and deception, suspicion and mistrust, are the tools
SEPTEMBER 2020
that undermine reality and truth. The Master Lie Teller always uses deception so we think the lie is truer than truth itself, the counterfeit more real than the masterpiece. The serpent deceived humanity saying “that’s not true” and sowing doubt, “God said that because….” Calumny, creating doubt and suspicion by slander and defamation, remains the Great Lie that undermines and destroys human trust and creates enmity. The danger in lying is that it becomes addictive and the lie distorts reality itself. The old saying, “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive” is true, because it names the real price of deception. I fear we have come to the point in American society where truth is
