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RUSSELL SANDERS
1-17-2024
THE HALF-TRUTH – PART 3
As we saw in Genesis chapters 12, 20, and 26, the half-truths told by Abram (Abraham) Sarai, (Sarah), Isaac, and Rebekah clearly were lies because it was a deliberate attempt to deceive by concealing the truth.
However, when one declares that “all half truths are lies,” that is not entirely true. A lie is something that is deliberate. It is the intention to not tell all the truth that makes it a lie.
When is a half truth not a lie? Let me share my opinion. Let us say as a hypothetical example that man’s wife was going to go to town. The husband might ask her where she is going and she replies, “to the grocery store and the gas station.”
The husband uses his tracking device, and it shows that she goes to the gas station, and the grocery store but also to the beauty supply store. When she arrives home, he accuses her of lying because she did not tell him that she was going to stop by the beauty supply store. She is accused of telling him a half-truth because she did not tell him that she was going to the beauty supply store. It appeared to him that she lied, concealing her going to places other than what she had said.
However, when she left home, she honestly thought she was only going to the gas station and grocery store. But as she passed the beauty supply store, she remembered something she needed and stopped there. She did not go there deceptively to deceive her husband.
Her statement before she left home was only a half-truth but not a lie because it was not done to conceal or deceive her husband. There was no intent on her part to conceal anything.
A half-truth or false information given is a lie when there is an intention to deceive or conceal something. If there is no such intention, then in my opinion it is not a lie. It is a mistake, and in her case, she should have let her husband know she was going somewhere else so he would not worry. It is a lack of communication, but not a lie.
Keep in mind, however, that a lie is a serious matter not only with other people, but with God also. How seriously does God take it? Revelation 21:8 tells us. It says, “…all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
If you do tell a lie, then repent of it. God will forgive you (1 John 1:9). A habitual liar is the person that is unrepentant (one who does not change). Hell is reserved for this person. While the other, repentant person, is forgiven. God puts that repented sin in “the sea of forgetfulness” where He never remembers it again.
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