What place does truth have in our society? When a woman asks if these jeans make her butt look big, and a man lies in order to provide the answer that the woman wanted than where does the truth lie? Each of us has told a "white lie" which calls into question the capability of any individual to be truthful at all times. Even if we look only at our life after the point of moral development we have all lied, and even worse we have probably all lied to ourselves. Lying about taking a cookie from the cookie jar before dinner as a five year is not what I'm talking about. I have lied to myself in the most heinous of ways. I've been lying in bed telling myself that I loved the individual sharing that bed when honesty is pulling at my heart and contradicting everything I've been saying. Where was truth that night at 3a.m.? I had certainly loved her, and if I had once loved her then how hideous is my deceit?
How does lying to myself differ from lying to another person? If I had only met this girl a few weeks before, and told her I loved her in order to get her in my bed than I would argue that to be a much worse offense than lying after she has spent every night in our bed for the last two years. I realize that by being dishonest with myself I am also being dishonest with her, and therefore I am compounding my mistakes. But should I really tell her the first time I think that this may not work out? If so I would never have made it past two months with any person I've dated in my entire life. There are always doubts in everything we do, especially those events that always and forever change the course of our lives.
Most people I know in the world have complained about an x who lied repeatedly. We have all seen countless politicians who make the promises we all want to hear, o
nly to realize later that they were telling us these things in order to get a job, not to actually help us. We have seen celebrities from OJ to Jim Bakker to the thousands of infidelities that occur every years, in and out of the public eye. Is it because we have seen so many people lie over the course of our life time tha we no longer place a high value on truth? Baseball players are swearing before congress to tell the truth, and yet we are to believe that Barry Bonds never took steriods or HGH? Sosa and Palmeiro both claimed never to have touched the stuff, only to fail a drug test later. And now these politicians want to charge these men with perjury while they have become rich from lying to the American people for decades.I have always believed that the only thing no one can ever take me from is my word. My word is my bond, and therefore I chose my words intintially and intend to keep my promises every time I make one. Truth is important to me, will continue to be important to me for as many days as I have left on this Earth. My truth is subjective, and while I admit that truth is subjective and therefore at times unverifiable, I promise that the truth expressed according to Reverend Daniel will take my life and display the result of it for you in order that you may think about he choices you have made and the value that you hold close to your heart. No one can ever force you to give up your integrity, but many of us at times have handed it way for nothing more than a warm body next to them or a couple of bucks in their pocket. Having given away your truth for so little a price we have all lessened the value of truth and made it possible to trade truth for even less value objects.
But it is important to remember that one act does not define you as an individual, and that your self definition can change every day in order to become the man or woman you chose.
"You can bend it and twist it...You can misuse and abuse it...But even God cannot change the Truth" - Michael Levy
