The Small Lie Everybody Tells

Every workplace has one, and everybody in it knows what theirs is, and almost nobody has ever said it out loud.

Picture the man saying his. Somebody asks where a piece of work is, and he says it is with the client.

It is not with the client. It is on his desk and he has not started it, and it will be with the client by Thursday, and by Thursday nobody will remember the question.

Nobody is harmed. Nothing goes wrong. It is the smallest possible untruth and it is what everybody in that office says, and the culture would find the true version faintly aggressive. Saying, actually I have not started it, would land in that room as a strange and confrontational thing to do.

So he says it, perhaps twice a week, and has for six years.

And here is the thing that happened last Tuesday, which is why this message exists.

He heard himself.

Not in a dramatic way. It was less than a thought. He said the sentence and something in him registered it as it went past, and for about four seconds afterward he felt something he could not name and did not enjoy.

That noticing is the whole of the opportunity, and it is worth understanding why. A thing said twice a week for six years is roughly six hundred times, and a thing done six hundred times does not usually get noticed at all. The noticing is the unusual event here, not the sentence.

And there is one more thing sitting underneath it, which he has not looked at directly. He has begun to wonder, in a vague way, whether he is honest, and that is a much bigger question than a sentence about a piece of work.

What was asked for through Zechariah

There is an instruction in Zechariah that is startlingly ordinary given the size of the book it is in.

These are the things that ye shall do; Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbour; execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates. (Zechariah 8:16, King James Version)

Speak every man the truth to his neighbor.

Not to the court. Not in a formal setting. To your neighbor, which is the person you deal with routinely, in the ordinary exchanges of a week.

And notice the setting named at the end. In your gates. That was the marketplace, the place where business was done and disputes were settled. It is a workplace instruction.

You are being asked for something in the ordinary exchanges rather than in the formal ones, and Zechariah 8 says speak the truth to your neighbor and names the gates (Zechariah 8:16), and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an ancient marketplace instruction land on a sentence said at a desk.

And notice the framing at the start. These are the things that ye shall do. It is a list of ordinary practices rather than a call to a great moral stand.

You have been handed a practice rather than a stand, and Zechariah 8:16 introduces it as a thing to do rather than as a cause to take up (Zechariah 8:16), and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a small correction small.

Delight rather than tolerance

There is a proverb about this with an unusual word in the second half.

Lying lips are abomination to the LORD: but they that deal truly are his delight. (Proverbs 12:22)

His delight.

Not his requirement. Not his minimum standard. Delight, which is a word about pleasure, and it is attached to people who deal truly in ordinary transactions.

That is worth sitting with, because a man in this situation is usually operating out of a vague sense of falling short. The verse is not offering him a way to stop falling short. It is describing somebody being pleased.

You are able to be a delight rather than merely compliant, and Proverbs 12 attaches that word to people who deal truly (Proverbs 12:22), and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that motive available instead of guilt, which never works for six years running.

And Ephesians gives the reason, and it is a reason about connection rather than about rules.

Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another. (Ephesians 4:25)

For we are members one of another. The reason given is that people are connected, and a small untruth between connected people puts a small gap in the connection.

You are connected to the people you speak to, and Ephesians 4 gives being members one of another as the whole reason for it (Ephesians 4:25), and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that a felt reality rather than an argument.

What this is not

Let me be plain, because this could become impossible to live with.

This is not telling anybody to become the person who corrects everybody else. That is not honesty, it is a personality, and it makes a man unemployable and helps nobody.

It is also not saying he has been living a lie for six years. He has said a small conventional sentence in a place where everybody says it. That is not the same as being a dishonest man and it is important not to inflate it.

And it is not asking for total transparency about everything at all times. There are things at work that are genuinely not anybody's business.

And plainly: if the pressure at that place has gone past this, if you are being asked to do things that are actually dishonest, or if you cannot get out of bed, or if some part of you wants it all to stop, that is bigger than a habit. Call or text the 988 crisis line, and say the true version out loud to a doctor or a counselor or a pastor you trust. That is not a lack of faith.

You are not being handed a new standard to fail at, and Zechariah 8:16 asks for one practice in ordinary dealings rather than for perfection (Zechariah 8:16), and the Holy Spirit is the one who does this in a person slowly and without humiliating them.