White lie, n. a minor or harmless lie. Who hasn't at some time found an

excuse for fibbing?

Either the truth would embarrass the other person or be too inconvenient

for ourselves, so we lie. From "Tell him I'm not here!"to "Honestly,

you look thinner in that dress!" harmless face-saving lies. No big

thing.

No big thing unless you read St Augustine (354 - 430 A.D.). Bishop of

Hippo, Doctor of the Church and one of the most intriguing and influential

Christian writers of all time.

He makes the case that even the slightest intention to mislead others

in their pursuit of truth is a sin. His stand is unequivocalwhenever you

tell a lie, you violate your sacred obligation to the truth. You cannot

be a liar and still pretend to serve God who is Himself truth. But what

about those times when we are just silent and keep the truth to ourselves?

Silence is vague.

Somebody can take from your silence whatever they want. That isn't lying,

is it? Well, to Augustine it is.

Many of us would probably quibble, saying that we cannot be held responsible

for the way someone interprets our silence. We might argue that it would

be the same as a listener getting a different meaning than we intended

because a word we use has more than one meaning.

The crux of the matter is our intention: neither silence nor vagueness

protects us from lying if we intend to deceive our listener. Oh, by the

way, should our deception fail, we are still lying because that was what

we were trying to do. According to Augustine even if we speak the truth

but know that for some reason it won't be believed and that is what you

want, you have lied.

Wow! You would have to be a saint to live up to that standard!

But if we see a lie, the intention to deceive, as a betrayal of our shared

search for truth, Augustine's arguments are understandable. Lying is a

barrier to that search.

Studies in the dynamics of communication show that people who lie often

begin to believe their lies are truth. A sort of cognitive dissonance

sets in whereby one's mind becomes so conflicted that truth is unrecognizable.

Lying also affects relationships. Once a deception has been practiced

in matters where all should be fair and open, confidence can never be

completely restored. Indeed, the worst of all deceptions is to think one

thing and say another.

It cheats both the other and one's self. Other sins are easier after that.

Augustine would be the first to say he knew something about sins. His

mother Monica prayed for his conversion, even as he lived a rather earthy

life. Yet he struggled for years with his own search for truth. Finding

his answer in God, he then spent the rest of his life trying to live out

his belief in the One Eternal Truth.

I suspect that most people aren't ready to swear off the occasional "white

lie." But as we travel on our own search, we might reflect a little

more not only on what truth is, but Who Truth is. As Augustine prayed:

O Omnipotent Good, who cares for each of us as if no one else existed

and for all of us as if we were all but one! Your law is truth and truth

is Yourself. You made me for Yourself, and my heart is restless until

it rests in You.

For a free copy of The Christopher

News Note, SEEING AS GOD SEES, write to The Christophers, 12 East 48th

Street, New York, NY 10017.