The Lie As Violence

     "The lie is the father of violence. It is the word, act, sign of cunning or silence which makes use of wiles to deceive whoever has a right to know the truth. Consider the position of the listener who, in simplicity and ingenuousness, is eagerly expecting the truth. Then consider the attitude of the liar who, full of subtlety, audacity and, at times cruel cynicism, misleads his neighbor into the quicksands of falsity. The use of the lie reveals the liar as a person of evil intentions. ~ He who tells lies as a way of getting ahead lacks a love of truth. Now truth is an objective social good meant to be shared by all mankind through the activity, pleasant or even at times not so pleasant, of communication. 'The truth,' Christ tells us, 'will make you free.' And this freedom is the freedom of the children of God who is Truth itself. What the liar lacks is not only frankness, honesty, uprightness in his shady pronouncements, but also a love of his neighbor whom he deliberately defrauds of a needed good - the truth - which is necessary for binding in closer communion of  justice and trust the community of mankind. The liar is a self-centered dissimulator, cunningly manipulating his fellowman for his own evil purposes. He or she cannot be trusted. And herein lies the psychological violence which is the evil fruit of violence. The clue to the mentality of the liar, in his hatred of truth, is his hatred of God. And this hatred of God floods over into hatred of those whom God loves, the innumerable millions for whom his divine son died. At other times the hatred of the liar begins with hatred of his fellowman and then inevitably expands to hatred of God. But in both cases the liar's animosity is visually cloaked under the facade of friendship. Shakespeare condemned this tactic of the liar's cunning when he wrote: 'O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!' ~ What does the lie do to interpersonal relations? It becomes the self-poisoning of the 'I' of the liar and at the same time the spiritual abductor of the 'Thou' of the deceived. When the deceived realizes that he has been taken advantage of, while he remained open in good faith to receive the truth, a variety of hostile reactions blaze up into the relationship. Immediately the healthy, interpersonal in dwelling of  persons in communion and community begins to disintegrate. Intellectual harmony is shattered as storms of distrust beget the turbulence of aggravation. Suspicion now of all that the liar says and does reigns supreme." - V. Miceli