Is There Any Way To Cope With Persistent Pathological Liars? Is Lying a Mental Health Disorder?

The destructive aspect of pathological lying and liars, is like having a thousand pound weight on your shoulders. You cannot get out from under them.

Pathological liars will not let go of their lies. They stick them on you with crazy glue. Regardless of the absurdity, the incontrovertible proof, or the amount of time that goes by, the pathological liar will not give up on lying. He will add more lies. He will double down on the lies. But the last thing he will do, is admit the lies, apologize and tell the truth.

The Healthline gives some insight on the mental health, and potential reasons for pathological lying. It has some fancy diagnostic terms; mythomania, and pseudologia fantastica, and is believed to be associated with certain sociopathic personality disorders.

A pathological liar is defined as someone who lies compulsively. There are various reasons for this. It might be to make them look good, to distance themselves from accountability, to punish or project faults onto someone else, to scapegoat, and often to set up an alternate reality or identity. If they lie to alter another person’s identity, they are also lying to alter their own identity.

People lie for all kinds of reasons. They lie to cover up crimes. They lie to steal money. They lie to cover up affairs. They lie to abuse power. They lie to gain job opportunities. They lie to exploit, and dominate weaker people. They lie to climb the ladder in a corrupt organization. They lie to do favours. They lie to escape accountability. They lie to manipulate others.

They even offer bribes and rewards to those who advance their lies. The more they lie, the easier it gets. Perhaps the more they lie, the more likely they are to believe their own lies, and become delusional. In psychiatry, it is known as a fixed delusional system.

When lies are broad in scope, such as in creating a fiction surrounding a person’s upbringing, there is actually a body of lies, and if repeated often enough, the people around them may believe the lies. What good is a lie if no one believes it? After awhile, all liars lose credibility. They may not realize it, but lies eventually do get exposed. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the more deep-rooted the lies, the more likely the foundational lies will crumble.

The Alex Murdaugh case is a classic example of a pathological liar who carried out a lifetime of power and prosecution of others, only to be exposed as one of the most vile pathological liars in recent years. Before his lies unravelled, he had the privilege of success, respect, and innocent people believing him. Once his foundation cracked and eroded, it all came tumbling down.

Although all pathological liars do not necessarily become murderers, in my opinion, they are far more likely to become murderers, than those who are not pathological liars. All liars may not be murderers, but most murderers, in particular those who commit premeditated murders, are also liars. First and foremost, they have to lie to themselves, in order to justify what they are planning to do. Perhaps it helps explain why so many spousal murders are first steeped in affairs, and lies, before the deed is done. 

How many times do you hear a murderer claim they carried out a mercy killing? One woman who shot her husband said, “Oh my goodness, he was making such an awful gurgling noise, so for his own sake, I shot him again.”

Brian Laundrie claimed he killed Gabby Petito because she begged him to put her out of her misery. So out of kindness, he was forced to oblige. What a croc. Especially when you consider he wrote those lies in his journal, before shooting himself in the head. One would think, if there ever was a time to come clean, while wallowing in a swamp, that would be the time. But instead, true to form, he told more lies, right to the bitter end. 

Women and men who kill their children, will often claim they “sent them to heaven”. Others will say, “they are in a better place now.” How do they know? If they think they sent them to heaven, where do they think they are going to go, for doing what they did? There is no real logic in any murder. 

There are also those who think they did God, and the world a favour, such as those who kill abortion doctors, or carry out other vigilante crimes. The thing about vigilante crimes, is that often a person is manipulated into killing someone based on false accusations. A woman might manipulate someone to kill her spouse, claiming he abused her, or the children. When what she really might be after, is a life insurance policy. Those who become ensnared in lies, and carry out grisly crimes, are often duped.

In another case, a teenage girl from a very religious family, was told she could no longer see her boyfriend. She manipulated him into shooting her entire family. The boyfriend recruited another friend who had been in the military, and together they shot both parents, and her two younger brothers before lighting the house on fire. The military recruit’s girlfriend was waiting in the car while they carried out the crime.

Miraculously the father, after being shot five times, escaped the burning building, and crawled to a neighbour’s house, something like 500 metres away. He was motivated to tell someone who had shot them. He then had to face the fact that his own daughter had manipulated, and orchestrated the crime.

All these kids were just teenagers, and all four of them got sentenced to between forty and fifty years in jail. The sweet, pretty, petite, wide-eyed seventeen year old daughter, will not get out of jail until she is sixty years old. Her lies wiped out her family, and put three other young people in jail for life. Lies can easily lead to catastrophic outcomes. The girl was so good at lying and feigning innocence, if her father had not survived, the crime may never have been solved, as they lived in a remote and rural location. 

All of these people who created devious plots, regardless of whatever contrived reasons they managed to come up with, are lying. They killed for selfish reasons, such as greed, lust, jealousy, cover ups, revenge, or resentment. Those are the known, and established reasons for murder. Justification, excuses, false accusations, and denial, are born out of self-centred preservation, not mercy.

In my opinion, the biggest mistake a murder victim makes, is that they believe their killer, and would never even suspect they would do such a thing. However, murder has common denominators, with lies, money, and revenge topping the list. How could Alex Murdaugh sit down and have an evening meal with his wife and son, just prior to killing them? He must have acted completely normal, which is bone chilling, considering what his plans were. 

In cases of exposed criminals, the lies become painfully obvious. The Alex Murdaugh case demonstrated how pathological lying can create a monster without a conscience. It showed how his character turned from an outgoing successful lawyer, to a despicable murderer, who killed his own family for revenge, and money.

He will spend the rest of his life in jail. What will happen to his other son? At one time, he basked in entitlement and wealth. Now he will have to make his own way in life, recover or succumb to it all, with no family left, and no one to pay his way. 

If only Alex would have accepted the consequences, and set up a payment plan for the damages caused in the boating accident. If only he would have accepted that his wife was fed up, could not trust him, and was divorcing him. He could have let it all play out through the proper legal channels he knew so well.

If he would have put the brakes on his schemes, at any point, and stopped stealing from his clients and law firm. If he had done anything to change the course of his actions, he would have had less money, but he would not have destroyed his own life and family legacy in the process. His life appears to be all that mattered to him. But he crashed and burned regardless. 

In the case of Lindsay Clancy, whatever the outcome of her trial might be, she too, lied. She lied by pretending she was fine in one sense, and by setting up a psychiatric defence of sorts, in another sense. She carefully documented her psych complaints, and constantly got her medications changed or added to. She pretended to be normal to all those who knew her.

She fooled people on both sides of the coin, on one side to create a psychiatric defence, and on the other side, to pretend to be normal, so she could create a window of opportunity, to kill all three children. It appears she carefully crafted, and structured a plot with intention to commit murder. 

Personally I don’t buy her claims of having a “moment of psychosis”. She had to be mad in a certain way, just like Alex Murdaugh was mad in a sense, but she was clearly cognitively intact. I seriously doubt she will be able to mount an insanity defence. The only way she might be able to, is based on sympathy surrounding postpartum depression. Personally, I don’t think that was the crux of her issues either, because the oldest child was already eight months old. Eight months is a fair bit of time for hormonal adjustments to be made.

Although postpartum depression is very common, very few women kill their children because of it. The most critical period would be in the first three months, when sleep and hormones are disrupted the most. It seems that Clancy was more averse to going back to work than anything else, and was nearing the end of her maternity leave. 

People who are truly psychotic, look and act psychotic. There are those who will deny this, but ask anyone who has worked in psychiatry. A truly sick and psychotic person will become disheveled, and nonsensical. Often they will get severely dehydrated, because they are unable to care for themselves at all.

They do not act completely normal, when in a state of psychosis. While working in mental health, I saw many people with psychotic and delusional thought processes. They did not come across as normal by any stretch of the imagination. They were often extremely paranoid, and thought every car that went by was slowing down to stare at them. Every police car was looking for them, to arrest them and put them in jail. Every person who visited the facility was a spy, or an agent of some sort.

They thought there were spikes in the couch, pins in their pyjamas, or cement in their shoes. Some of them thought they had every physical ailment in the book. They obsessed over these things all day long. You name it, they were wholly focused on what they thought was going on, and it had no basis in reality.

If they were not instructed on what to do throughout the day, and given very simple basic tasks, they could not function. You had to tell them when it was dinner time, when it was time to take their pills, when it was time to take a shower, and so on. They could not care for themselves, let alone anyone else, for any length of time. They did not drive cars, make meals, make phone calls, arrange appointments, or go to appointments by themselves. One guy spent all day creating nonsense equations, pages and pages of chicken scratch, in order to cause pollution from cars to go away. 

I remember one kind of comical incident, when I was busy doing a bunch of paperwork, and one of the patients started saying they saw men with guns, who were dressed in black, and climbing over the fence next door. I thought, oh yeah sure, and kept on doing paperwork, without even looking.

Then another patient said the same thing. I think by the third time I heard the same “men in black delusion” I got up and went to check it out. Sure enough, they were right. The place next door was swarming with police, and SWAT team members, all dressed in black.

There was a big house on the adjacent lot, with a major drug bust in progress. I did get some flak over it afterwards, from a couple of the patients. One of the guys said to me, “see, we told you so, but you didn’t believe it, did ya?” I did apologize, and called the police department, to see if there was any danger to the patients. They told me to keep them inside. 

Clancy lied when she sent her husband on an errand, after pretending to be doing well. She lied when she called the pharmacy, and then to further stall her husband, she sent him on the additional errand. Was she delusional and psychotic? Or was she structuring an entire cohort of lies, in order to carry out a plan of murder she had been dwelling on for unknown reasons? Revenge could have been her motive. Apparently the youngest child, a baby boy, was found in her husband’s basement office. There was a method to her madness, for whatever reasons. 

Lies have no respect for the rights of other people. They revolve around the liar, and what the liar wants to achieve, no matter how outlandish it might be. They abuse trust. They abuse the laws, the systems, and the societal values that are supposed to prevent people from destroying the lives of innocent people.

Are all people who lie pathologically delusional? Are all people who are psychotic delusional? Are all people who believe lies delusional? In my opinion, the answer is no. People who are truly psychotic believe what they are seeing, or hearing is real. They are not lying, nor do they have a motive to lie. They are experiencing a complete break from reality. What they are seeing and hearing is not real, but to them, it is real.

Therefore the psychotic person makes no attempt to cover up a crime. They do not have the capacity to organize, or make detailed plans, because their thoughts are too confused and disordered. How can a person who is in a state of psychosis with extremely disordered thoughts, carry out a well orchestrated plan? How can they “pretend” to be normal part of the time? Even if they are hearing voices commanding them to do something, they do not know that what they are about to do is a crime. They are hallucinating, and don’t know what is rational or real.

People who are delusional, may or may not be lying intentionally. For instance, they might believe they have an ailment they don’t have. But they are sincere in what they believe, and are not lying about it to exploit or harm anyone, unless they are malingering for insurance claims, or sick time etc. The definition for delusion, is simply to believe what is false. So theoretically, all false beliefs are delusional. But many are also intentional, which is not the case with psychosis. 

People who are delusional can often function, and take care of themselves. You may not know they have a fixed delusional belief system, until they start talking about UFO’s or invasions from another planet, or having a relationship with someone that is completely fabricated. Celebrity stalkers are an example. They may think the singer is singing the song just for them. They may think they are going to marry a certain celebrity. Just like someone might think or claim they have adopted someone, when there was no adoption. These ideations are clearly false, and involve a fair bit of deception, especially self-deception. They are also delusional, but the mental illness aspect is variable depending on the intent, and whether or not they know they are deceiving. 

Some people believe in the power of crystals, or that they can communicate with the dead. There are many odd belief systems where the person can still function, and does not set out to harm others. If they persist in certain esoteric beliefs, they may bring harm to themselves, and they may become mentally deranged. It just depends on whether or not they can stay grounded in reality, when it comes to the functional aspects of their lives. 

People who dabble in oddities, might be deceived themselves, but they do not they think they are lying. If the beliefs become so extreme, or consuming, that they cannot function, or if it causes them to do harm to others, then they border on psychosis. True psychosis is the most debilitating, because there is a complete break from reality.

Pathological lying is very different, because there is intent, motive, and a certain amount of rational thought processes associated with lies. In my opinion, the pathological liar is functionally delusional, but is in complete control of his faculties. He is not psychotic. He is able to craft a plan, and carry it out, for reasons only he may know, but nevertheless, in his mind, the reasons are rational ones. Pathological liars are more likely to have personality disorders, as opposed to being diagnosed with psychosis, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. In other words, they know full well what they are doing. 

It is understandable why the distinction must be made between rational thought, psychosis, delusions, and criminal intent. I can see why many criminals try to use an insanity defence, but the laws usually do not permit it. In my opinion, even if a person does meet the criteria for insanity while committing a crime of violence, he or she should still get the same sentence. The vast majority of people who are mentally ill, do not commit violent crimes.

Government lies are perhaps among the most convoluted lies of all. They can demonstrate an evil force that goes against every law, and the entire populations they are entrusted to serve. They too, eventually get exposed, and the liars go on their merry way, all the richer for the many devious schemes. In some cases, there will not be justice for lies until the great white throne of judgement happens.

The Healthline article does state that self interest, is the primary cause of pathological lying. It goes on to say that in some cases, there is no clear benefit, which makes it increasingly frustrating, because the lies are adhered to for no apparent reason.

The underlying motives though, seem to revolve around the liar portraying him or herself as being the hero, or the victim. The lies are designed to gain admiration, or sympathy. They create a shallow attempt to bolster their own self image.

Although we should avoid telling lies, many people lie infrequently, and in ways that are not pathological. These are often referred to as “little white lies”. The intent behind this type of lying, is to avoid hurting someone’s feelings, or to get out of doing something you don’t want to do. Examples like saying you are sick, and going fishing. Or saying you have a headache when you don’t want to go somewhere. Or telling someone you like their outfit or hair do, when you think it looks ridiculous. Then behind their back, you tell someone else what you really think. 

The difference between white lies and pathological lies, is that white lies are small fibs, are not longstanding, are not repeated over and over, are not part of a devious scheme, and have no malicious intent. In fact, many decent people who do have a moral compass, will immediately feel guilty for lying, especially if it caused harm to another person. 

Whereas pathological lies become an entrenched, and personal pattern, until they become a central part of the character, and a disordered character at that. The lies are told repeatedly, consistently, and often for no apparent reason. They are designed to make the liar look heroic, or to gain sympathy, or to intentionally and sadistically abuse another person.

The liar might get enjoyment out of causing distress to others. He might find it amusing, or it might be like a trump card for him, proving to himself how clever he is. Even though it is all about self exaltation, paradoxically, liars like this, are not deterred by guilt, or getting found out.

The primary objective of a structured falsehood, is to create a false history. They then carry the false history into the future, and build upon it. Another recent example of an exposed pathological liar, is Mary Turpel-Lafond. She is clearly of European heritage, yet she lied pathologically about her origins, and family history, making false claims to be of Indigenous heritage.

In her case, she did this so she could boast academic accomplishments, after coming from hardship and adversity. Her lies were not only about her heritage. She also made false claims about having a family background of alcoholism and domestic violence, which gained her more sympathy. She made numerous false academic claims, and got several honorary doctorate degrees from different Universities, all based on lies. She started lying as a young person, claiming to be a child prodigy, which was also false. Her family, and the people around her, must have enabled these lies, because they went on for years.

But she too, with her legacy of lies, disgraced all she had accomplished, when if she hadn’t embarked on such a course, she might have done well, and kept her integrity intact. Now, one by one, all the Universities, and people she was associated with, are taking away her honorary degrees. She has been put out to pasture, with a stain on the truth of her background, bigger than a cow field full of manure.

These are just some of the examples of the outcomes of pathological lying. They are also based on the exposure of the known lies. A pathological liar is likely to have lied about almost everything in their lives. They leave a trail of broken victims, who are left to pick up the pieces, or who may never be able to get out from under the lies.

Although not all lies lead to drama and murder, all lies most certainly can lead to murder. If greed, revenge and lies are part of the equation, it can become a more serious and diabolical plot. Millions of true crime stories attest to the fact. The majority of people are killed by someone they know, and saddest of all, it usually involves a family member. People are harmed by those they love and trust the most. It is as old as the story of Abel and Cain. 

Some of the tips in the Healthline article on coping with pathological liars tell us; don’t lose your temper. But in my opinion, we do have to find a way to fight back, if the lies are about our own lives and history. After repeatedly pleading with liars to give it up and drop it, if nothing else works, there is no choice but to fight back.

We cannot live our entire lives under a pack of lies about who we are, and where we came from. Liars can lie about themselves, but when they drag other people into it, what are the options? It does make you angry. I can attest to that much from my own experiences with this pathology.

The next bit of advice is to; expect denial. Of course. Or else they are likely to become enraged, express shock at the accusation, and punish you for the confrontation. That is a true statement, based on my own experiences.

The article then tells us that the “lying is not about you”. It is about the underlying issues with the liar. I don’t really buy it, because if they make the lies about me, then it is about me. I don’t really care if people lie about their own lives. Malicious lies about other people are not just about the liar, although they may be the ones who are creators of the cause of harm, they are also intentionally involving other people.

The next tip is: don’t engage them. Well guess what? The liars engage us. We have no choice in the matter. If you mean, walk away when they lie? Avoid the lies? I can guarantee you, that does not work. They keep right on lying. And they will add layers to the lies, calling you mentally ill just for challenging their lies. It is a never ending vicious cycle.

From personal experience, I have to admit, I did not always handle all the lies directed at my own life well. I was plagued by a high school teacher, who in collusion with a family member, made false claims to have adopted me. He claimed to have adopted me, just months before I graduated from high school. He also made false claims to have put me through nursing school. Much of this do-gooder facade was based on the fact he was steeped in a religion called the Exclusive Brethren. I was constantly ordered to have gratitude for such a wonderful Christian. It took me many years to realize the Exclusive Brethren religion is an abusive cult. 

None of it was even remotely true. I was not up for adoption. None of my siblings were adopted. It was an absurd pack of lies. The teacher went so far as to tell me what he “liked to believe” and would go on to say, he wanted to believe he had me since I was a very small child. He also told me God had told him to adopt me. Clearly he was delusional from the start. I had never even laid eyes on this guy until I was in high school. He was a complete stranger to me, and he only got stranger as time went on. 

Another one of the teacher’s repeated lies, was when people would raise an eyebrow expressing doubt about his motives, and question him about his relationship with me. He would then drop his head with a look of feigned concern, and say, “intervention was required.” He would also repeatedly tell me that I had the “exact same IQ as his wife.” When I would argue or say, How is that even possible? He would puff up and repeat it with even more emphasis on “EXACT SAME”. Why would any teacher say that to a student?

He would also tell me he had unconditional love for me. He told me I would never get away, never escape, because he would HUNT me down. He told me my family would never support me. He repeatedly said our mother was wicked and evil. She did not deserve to be my mother. He had a profound hatred for our mother, even though he did not even know her. 

In addition to the false accusation about intervention, the lying teacher would also claim I was mentally ill, and used it as another avenue of abuse of power, to coerce and control me, and force compliance. Every single time I said no, or showed defiance toward him, and his false adoption claims, I was accused of being mentally ill. In collusion with my own family, he used this accusation, as a way to slander, and maintain control for years. He was invited to every family function, and treated with absolute reverence. He really should have been held accountable for his lawlessness, and abuse of power. To this day, I am punished relentlessly for finally terminating that relationship, and making sure he has no further access to me. 

I would feel enraged at his lies, yet I could not say a word, because he was all puffed up with his all encompassing authority. It was a self-appointed, self-righteous authority over my life that followed me for years and years, long after leaving the hick town school. When this guy embarked on his lying scheme to take over my life, he was just twenty-eight years old. He was a brand new teacher, with a god complex, who was totally obsessed with a teenage student in a public school. He never shut up about me. He lied to other teachers, other students, members of the community, my own family, extended family, ad infinitum. Clearly, he was the one who needed intervention. 

How is it okay from a teacher’s perspective, or anyone’s perspective, to claim that a kid who accelerates through school, consistently passes with honours, comes from extreme adversity, and graduates at the age of sixteen, required intervention? I was also President of the Student’s Union, was active in all kinds of school activities, and played various sports.

After graduating, I continued to play basketball at Mount Royal University. As far as post-secondary education was concerned, I continued to get good grades, when I was living almost two hundred miles away from the lying teacher. I wrote the RN exams at the age of nineteen, and scored in the top two to five percentile in all of Canada. The teacher had absolutely nothing to do with my academic inclinations. He most certainly took credit for them though. It was a form of inescapable thievery, through nothing but a pack of lies.

All of what I am describing is provable. But regardless, the lies continued, and continue to this day. How can anyone claim to have adopted someone when it is false? You would think of all lies one can come up with, it is one of the easiest to prove. But did it matter? Not one bit.

Pathological liars have more gall than most people can even imagine. Are they mentally sick and delusional? Or is it just a propensity for evil? Do they have the devil on speed dial? Who knows? All the years I have been plagued and punished by these lies, I still cannot comprehend why anyone would do such a thing to another person.

Any relationship that involves force, and will not take no for an answer, is not a relationship of choice. It is structured by an extreme imbalance of power. There is no such thing as equality in such a relationship. That was proven time and time again, by the dominance, superiority, and orders I got from my own family to “be grateful for this wonderful Christian”. Wonderful Christian? He was nothing of the sort. In fact he was the extreme opposite. Some day, he will face the music for what he did to my life, and my family life. I cannot even drum up any mercy for him, and have to pray for the capacity to forgive him, because I don’t even want to forgive him. 

Although the shaming, and stupendous unfairness of his lifelong accusations, combined with forcing a pseudo-adoption relationship on me for life, and also forcing me into nursing, to be sure I had no other career path, it wasn’t even the half of it all. Not even close. I did well in school because I wanted to go to University, and excel academically, as I viewed it as the only way to get out of a trap of familial abuse and violence. I did not want to end up in a trap like our mother did. I should not have been chased down, and forced into anything, just months before graduating from high school.

It took me years to realize that no matter what I was doing, even if I was flunking out, running away, in trouble with the law, he had absolutely no right to do what he did. If I really did require intervention, he would have had no interest in me. His goal was to exploit for his own selfish reasons. It does not matter, if I had been dumb as a sack of hammers. It does not matter if I would have been crazy, and out of control. It was NOT up to him to follow me around, obsess over me, chase me down, force me into a car, and repeatedly take me home with him for a night of tortuous brainwashing. Teachers do not normally get to do that to anyone, for any reason. So the aspect of being gifted academically is actually a moot point. He was an opportunistic predator, no different than any creep who becomes obsessed with vulnerable young girls. 

But I was bullied and dominated into subservience and compliance, even though I repeatedly said no, I could not escape the lies. I had to pretend to go along with it, in order to be able to finish school, and in order to be a member of my own family. There were threats of violence and previous violence involved, so I was conditioned to find ways to get along, in order to avoid more punishment.

Even telling my story creates a huge risk of more backlash and punishment. Rejecting the teacher has turned me into the evil monster, and brought about even more false accusations and lies. They simply will not give it up, and there is enough power and wealth behind it all, to keep it going. I have no power. The only power I do have is to tell the truth. 

It went on for years and years. I tried every conceivable way to convince the teacher, and my own family, to drop the lies about my life, my heritage, who I am, the family I was born into, and the fact this teacher did not put me through nursing. I was underage for crying out loud. What kid has a lifelong debt bondage, for post secondary education received while under the age of eighteen? 

As a result of these experiences, I came to absolutely loathe liars, and lying. Eventually my heart broke into open rebellion. I barely knew the teacher, and yet for years he would stare me down, and then tell me I was his daughter. He lied without flinching. It sickened and embarrassed me. I was always trying to shrink away from the lies, but they followed me wherever I went. The lies have caused me endless grief, to this day. But, I cannot change what happened, or the fact the lies became entrenched. I just have to find a way to let go of it all. 

One thing for certain, I will not allow anyone to lie about my background, or the family I was born into, ever again. I will never give that teacher access to me again either. I even check the obituaries periodically to see if he died yet, so maybe I will finally be free of the constant repetition of those lies. The plot to take over who I am, and rob me of my own identity, was cruel to the core of my existence. I am so done with it. But the punishment for ditching the teacher never ends, just as he promised I would never get free of him. He would growl, “Oh no, you will never get away, your family won’t support you.” Or he would say, “Don’t you even think about getting away, ’cause I will HUNT you down.” Nice guy eh? 

I think the measure of the depth of pathology or evil, when it comes to lying, is proportionate to the harm it causes to an innocent victim. I also believe the persistence in maintaining the lies, in spite of the knowledge it is causing extreme distress, and losses for the victim, indicates an underlying mental health disorder or sociopathy.

If there is also an imbalance of power, threats, and punishment for non-compliance with the lies, it demonstrate the degree to which a person will abuse power, and manipulate others to inflict harm, and carry on with the lies.

In my opinion, all of these traits are indicative of a dangerous individual, who will do anything at all to another human being, without a shred of remorse. He is also capable of corrupting, and manipulating others, especially if he has power, influence and wealth. Tick all the boxes, and what do you have?

The diagnosis of a pathological liar depends on whether or not there are underlying medical or psychiatric conditions. Primarily though, it all depends on whether or not they get caught, and held accountable by a higher authority. But in the absence of charges, or the progression to more serious crimes, such as what happened with Alex Murdaugh, the pathological liar leaves a train wreck in his path, and never looks back.

The devil loves a liar, and will reward those who lie without remorse, with no end in sight. He will exalt the liars, and lying in a multitude of ways. At the same time God, through His word, tells us over and over, what is going to happen to the liar, and to those who harm others for their own gain.

It is like the two forces of good and evil, are travelling through time toward each other, headed for one big clash of wills, and ultimate takeover of power. When God’s patience finally runs out – we already know who is going to win the battle.

It is the reason God keeps telling people over and over, to repent. He said people are given the time and space to repent, and yet they “repented not”. As it all progresses toward the end of the line, God’s wrath increases. He knows every lie, and every reason behind those lies. Just like he knew the original lie in the Garden of Eden. He knows them all. He repeatedly promises, and warns, that they will not go unpunished. 

For the downtrodden, and all the victims of lying and liars, the day of reckoning will come. It seems to take forever, but when it does finally happen, look out, and look up! Give thanks. It will be a colossal relief. 

Some insightful quotes I looked up about liars and lying:

“Honesty is of God and dishonesty of the devil; the devil was a liar from the beginning.” Joseph B. Wirthlin

“If you are a liar, a person of low moral fortitude, really any explanation you need to be true can be true. Especially if you are smart enough. You can figure out a way to justify anything.” Samuel Witwer

“A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth.” Aesop

“Sometimes the point isn’t to make people believe a lie – it’s to make people fear the liar.” Anne Applebaum

Hmm the first and last quote really ring true. Now it’s my turn to come up with a good quote about liars and lying. I don’t really wish to see anyone face the ultimate lake of fire punishment as described in the Bible. But I do want to see the lies go up in flames. We all have to separate ourselves from lies, and learn to seek and love the truth. Lies are very destructive. There is no doubt about it. 

All sins, including lies, can be forgiven by Jesus, since that is the gospel promise to all of us. A person has to seek forgiveness, and recognize what they did, as well as believe and trust Jesus. For some unknown reason, some people will never admit wrongdoing, repent, have remorse, or even acknowledge harm done to another person’s life. It just goes to show how persistent lies can harden hearts.

I have felt much guilt over my own difficulty in forgiving these lies, and just have to let it go and trust God, knowing the teacher tried to mimic God, and pretend he was some kind of saviour, even though I said no and told him to leave me alone at the onset of it all. Even as a young person, I knew there was nothing Godly about his actions and attitudes in spite of how religious he pretended to be.

He would never once take no for an answer, or listen to my arguments. It was like I was a non-person, an object he thought he owned for some reason. My opinion of him, and all his lies is rather harsh, but I do hope he repents, and stops manipulating punishment and family breakdown. The Exclusive Brethren cult is known for ripping families apart. The fact this guy was a random teacher in a public school really burns me to this day. He had an incredible sense of entitlement because of his false religion. The arrogance was staggering. We do not do the judging, and nor are we to take pleasure in the concept of the fate of those who do not repent and stop causing harm to others. 

As all Christians know, the Bible has many descriptions about the lake of fire, and the second death, on the final judgement day. Truthfully, if not for the grace of God and what Christ did for us on the cross, we would all be destined for the fire. I have much gratitude for having recognized the magnitude of my own wrongdoing. Only Jesus can forgive us, and save us from the ultimate judgement. No matter what we have done, we should search our own lives and hearts, seek forgiveness, and then turn away from the old ways. Our eternal life depends on it.

“Lies create a monument, where self becomes the worshipper of self. They are built upon a foundation of loose rocks in the head, and shifting sand under the feet. They are watered with kerosene. The day will come, when the liar’s soul will reek, smolder, then collapse and burn. But before it ignites, the degenerates are lit up for all to see, in the backdrop of the shadows they themselves have created.” Valerie Hayes

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