The Beauty of Truthfulness. . .

(Posted by Roma—from an essay in my Beautiful Girlhood Study)

Truthfulness is a very good character quality to have. If you are not truthful, how could you ever have anyone put their trust in you, and feel safe with you? If you are not truthful, you could get yourself into a lot of trouble you would have never wanted to get into in the first place.

The root cause of a lie is cowardice. You think that you can get out of trouble by lying, when really, you are taking the hard way. The easy way out of every situation is to be truthful. When we are tempted to lie, we should always remember that if you want to be trusted by others, and you want to have good character, and you want to please God, you must tell the truth.

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob each lied. In Genesis 12:10-20, it talks about Abraham going to Egypt with his family because there was a great famine where he lived. And Abraham realized that the Egyptian men would like Sarah because she was very beautiful. So Abraham told Sarah to lie and say she was his sister, because he thought they would kill him if they knew she was his wife. If affected Sarah’s life, because Pharaoh almost took Sarah to be his wife.

Genesis 26:1-11 talks about Isaac doing the same thing Abraham did. He and Rebekah went to Abimelek, king of the Philistines, in Gerar. Isaac told the king Rebekah was his sister, because he was afraid he might lose his life on account of her. This affected the king’s life, because he said that it would have brought guilt among him and his people.

Jacob lied to his father, Isaac. Isaac had given Jacob’s brother Esau a blessing, and Isaac was old, and didn’t have good eyesight, so Jacob disguised himself as Esau, and took that blessing from Esau. Jacob did a very terrible thing, but God does forgive.

The most common lie is where you lie because you are afraid of the consequences you will get if you tell the truth. So you think you can just hide your faults, and forget about the whole thing. But that guiltiness won’t go away. When I was younger, I would always be so afraid of telling the truth, because I didn’t want to get in trouble for it. But I always tried to remember that the truth will set you free.

The meanest lie, is when you deliberately tell a lie just to hurt someone. For example, you might tell your friend that the new girl in school has terrible clothes, hair, and is overweight. But what if that wasn’t true? God wouldn’t see this girl that way. He would see her as a beautiful child of God. If you have ever said any unkind word about someone, you should make things right with that person now.

The silliest kind of lie, is where you lie about yourself, and you act like you have fame, riches, and you pretend. I remember one girl who wore the fanciest clothing, high heels, and acted like she was the best. She would ask others—including me—what was their house like; that way she could compare their house to hers. I don’t know that she does that anymore, though. These kind of lies are just being prideful, and it isn’t worth it.

“He who permits himself to tell a lie once,

finds it much easier to do it a second and

third time, till at length it becomes

habitual…this falsehood of the tongue leads

to that of the heart.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)