The Shady & Dense Road ~ Of Liars & Lying

Sir Walter Scott’s well crafted quote from 1808; “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” is a classic axiom.

None of us are totally innocent when it comes to lying. It is just that some people are very brazen, and lie with a purpose. They have no shame, or conscience when it comes to lying. It is as natural as breathing.

Most of the little white lies, are designed to avoid hurting someone’s feelings, or to embellish a good story.

But the pathway for chronic liars, and lying, is a crooked one indeed. There is no excuse to be made for any lies, because little white lies, can easily become whoppers. It is especially so if the liar has made gains out of lying, without ever facing any consequences.

A chronic liar, eventually will not be believed about anything, even if he does tell the truth. It is one thing to lie about your own life, but it is another story when a person lies about someone else, and tries to create a false narrative around their life.

They will do this sort of thing to cover wrongdoing, to set the stage for exploitation, and to create a pretence of being something they are not. Once they embark upon those big lies, and repeat them often, they cannot easily back out of them. They create their own trap. 

It happens in businesses, in religious circles, in schools, in communities, in families, in marriages, and in true crime. I always used to think, “If your wife can’t trust you, who can?” No one.

Pathological liars will take things a step further, and manipulate others into advancing their lies. They seem to think if they repeat the lies often enough, and corrupt those around them to maintain the lies, they will create concepts set in stone. Lying creates an unstable foundation. It will eventually crumble. 

Lying goes with all kinds of ulterior motives, from stealing, to sexual assault, to adultery, to crime, and to cause harm to the reputation of those who are being lied about. Often, if a person becomes a threat to someone who has something to hide, that person will become a target of a malicious, and deceptive character assassination.

Even though we have all told lies, it does not make it okay to lie. In fact, it is one of the things God hates most. I can see why too. It leads to countless problems, and is often the precursor to serious crimes. In the bible, the devil is called the “father of lies”.

Deception is probably the single most damaging thing in the entire world. It leads to all kinds of injustices, murders, cover-ups, family breakdown, and broken relationships across all walks of life. It rips families apart, destroys businesses, and worst of all, it erodes trust. Trust is part of the foundation of love.

In true crime, police detectives will interview a suspect over and over, to catch him in his lies. A person has to have a very good memory, in order to lie effectively. Once they are caught in a lie, their whole story starts to unravel.

Politicians are known to lie. Some are far worse than others. We rely on political leadership. Lying erodes the foundation of democracy, and leads to widespread corruption. All politicians are in temporary positions where they can, and do, wield power. But if they deceive the masses, and abuse that power, they will get voted out, and leave the stain of their own flawed character, on the political party they represent, and the history of a nation, a province, a municipality, or a city. All for what? 

One of the key things to note about almost all liars, is they are also arrogant. They seem to think they will never get caught. They must view lying as a sign of their own cleverness, and guile. They are invincible, untouchable, and as slick as a greased pig.

I have watched several tell all interviews on a YouTube show called Soft White Underbelly by Mark Laita. He interviews people from all walks of life, in particular the seedy side of life. Some of the interviews are quite amazing, some are sad, and some are too off the wall to even listen to.

Those interviews do shed some light on crime, addiction, prostitution, porn, child abuse, organized crime, self-destruction, Only Fans, strippers, nudists, thieves, murderers, etc.

He also features war veterans, Navy Seals, survivors, homicide detectives, and every kind of extreme – from heroes to hackers, to whackos. 

One of the guys he interviewed was a counterfeiter. He had a degree in graphics arts, and was also a functional addict. He had a girlfriend, and the two of them would travel from city to city, and live out of hotel rooms. They had all the counterfeit equipment in their luggage. It actually did not require much equipment. A laptop, a printer, the right kind of paper, some colours to mix, and a few small tools for applying the seals, and fine touches.

Their pattern was to get up in the morning, and make the money, which required concentration, precision, and care. He was quite disciplined to get the work done first thing in the morning. Then when they had a wad of bills, they would go out on the town – shopping, buying drugs, fancy dinners, and then hit the clubs.

The next morning they would move on, before the shops, and restaurants found out they had taken in counterfeit money, and where it came from. The guy was so good at making it, he even stood confidently, while people put the bills under intense counterfeit scrutiny. He had managed to find ways to overcome almost every test they came up with.

Eventually they did get caught. He got caught because he started using the money to buy larger quantities of drugs. The dealers figured out he was using counterfeit money. Because it was well done, they wanted more of it. In the end, he got busted because of the drug dealers he became involved with.

As it turned out, instead of a ten year prison sentence, the FBI offered him a deal to teach classes on the methods he used, and to disclose where he got the special seals, pigments etc. He had perfected the colour shading, using the pigments in eyeshadows, of all things. He said he spent hours and hours in the cosmetic sections of department stores looking for the right shade of green.

One of the counterfeit tests, is to hold the bill up to the light, and tilt it, to see if the colours, and metallic glint is perfectly matched. There is another test that picks up a counterfeit silver mark, which is applied separately to help distinguish the real from the fake. He found a place online that sold those silver symbols, as perfect undetectable replicas. 

He ended up breaking up with his girlfriend, and gave up the drugs, which was a blessing. After that, he got a plea deal, and went on to teach about counterfeiting, how it is done, and how to recognize it. Part of his plea deal was that he must tell the truth, and hold nothing back, which he agreed to. 

The same thing happened to a brilliant and sophisticated hacker. He went from being homeless to becoming a multimillionaire, until he got caught. He was not an addict, but out of desperation, living out of his car, after his parents kicked him out as a teenager, he met a girl who believed in him. He moved in with her, got a computer, and started hacking to make money. His story is mind boggling. He was able to hack into anything, and everything, as well as to point out the vulnerabilities in any system.

So he too, got busted, and then got hired to identify vulnerabilities in computer systems, and demonstrate how easy it is to hack into them.

The interesting thing about both of these guys, compared to the other criminals he interviewed, is that they were humble. They did not brag, and they came clean on everything they had done, and how they did it. They knew it was wrong, and they were relieved to find a way to confess, and then go on to lead more honest, law abiding lives, while still using their exceptional talent.

But in the cases of hard core addicts, convicts, and mafia bosses, one of the biggest differences, is they were profoundly arrogant. In many cases you could tell they were either embellishing, or hiding things, to make themselves appear less barbaric, or more heroic.

Some of them had absolutely nothing to be arrogant about. They were shameless though, and were arrogant over the worst behaviours known to humans. It is perplexing to see how much people can deceive themselves.

In many of the interviews, you can tell the person has a penchant for self deception more than anything. One 74 year old, overweight woman, who was portraying herself as a star on Only Fans, as a well seasoned sex symbol – claimed to be making hundreds of thousands of dollars every few months.

Some of her video shoots were cringe worthy. Not that I am body shaming a 74 year old woman. But, when combined with some of the outfits, attitude, language, and activities she was advertising, it was hard to believe. Only Fans definitely has an “anything goes” hypothesis. But the big question is – where does it go? 

As the interview went on, she started talking about buying a truck for her son. She described a used truck for $4,000.00 and then went on to say she put a $1,000 down payment, and then financed the rest. She was proud of being able to make the purchase for her son, when in the past, she had no means to do so. 

There may have been an element of truth to her story, but if she really was making hundreds of thousands of dollars every few months, wouldn’t you think she could just buy a truck for her son?

So many of those stories are obviously, and dramatically embellished, yet if you read the comments, they all seem to believe every word of it.

First of all, drug addicts, ex-convicts, strippers, thieves, and prostitutes are not known for being brutally honest. In such a world, and with lifestyles that rely upon deceiving people, they are not likely to be telling the truth. The interview itself is opportunism, and in the case of Only Fans, porn stars, and escorts, they are using it as another marketing platform.

Chronic and pathological lying is a character disorder. Not all liars are murderers, but you can be pretty sure that most murderers are also liars. Chronic lying will erode a person’s character, and will often lead to worse things.

Even if a person does not get caught – eventually all those lies will catch up to them. Like getting caught in a squirming school of jelly fish, every single one of those lies will come back to bite, and entangle them. 

We should all do a lying inventory, on a regular basis. If we have lied, we should confess, and apologize. If we keep lying, God will send us strong delusion, and we will lose the ability to discern the truth.

Ultimately God has no mercy for unrepentant liars. We cannot keep truth, and lying in the same household, or even within the same soul. We have to honour and seek the truth. There is no middle ground.

Now you might say, what if someone asks you if you like their horrible green and yellow hair do? Do you say, it’s nauseating and hideous, because it is what you are thinking?

Or worse yet, what if your good friend asks you if you think their wife is having an affair, and you have seen her with the other person? You might know it is no secret, and he is the last to know.

Even for people who seek the truth, and want to be honest, we can be put in some dicey situations. Perhaps with the green and yellow hair, you could ask them if they like it, and are happy with it. And then let them know, it does not matter what everyone else thinks. After all – it’s their hair. 

The same with the question about the affair. You could ask your friend why they are suspicious, and what has caused the trust to erode? You might be able to be honest, without being brutal.

In one awful true crime case, a young man was suspicious of his wife, because of the way she was acting. He talked to his best friend about it, without having a clue it was his best friend who was having an affair with his wife. Of course the best friend lied to him.

These two guys had been best friends since childhood. Their parents went to the same church, and they both met their future wives in Sunday school. They were each other’s best men and bridesmaids at their weddings, and gave an outward appearance of living happily ever after.

The lying best friend sold his buddy a million dollar life insurance plan, and then plotted with his wife to kill him. One can hardly imagine the shock that poor man felt in the moments before his best friend shot him in the face.

He lured him into going duck hunting, and then pushed him overboard, thinking his waders would drown him. However, he managed to get out of the waders and swim to a nearby stump. As he clung to it calling for help, his buddy circled round, got close to him, and shot him point blank.

He then hid and buried his body in a murky swamp, where it stayed for over twenty years. This case was kept alive by the victim’s mother. She was relentless in her search for her son, and wrote something like 9000 letters to law enforcement over the years. She knew who had done it.

The reason the mother knew who had done the crime is because of the way her daughter in law had acted after the disappearance. She did not want anyone looking for him. In fact she was furious when her mother in law put up billboards, seeking help from the public to find her son.

The daughter in law collected the million dollars on the insurance policy, and after just a few months, the murderer moved in with her, and they got married. Both of them were steeped in adultery and deception, and the marriage fell apart.

After the marriage dissolved, they were out to kill each other, because of all their secrets. He hid in her car with a kill kit and a gun, and kidnapped her at gunpoint. He ordered her to drive to a remote location, but she drove into a busy downtown area and parked under a surveillance camera. She managed to convince him to get out of the car, and they could resume the conversation later on, with the hope of resolving and reconciling. She had no such intentions, and promptly drove to the nearest police station and reported the kidnapping.

When she reported the kidnapping, the detectives wanted more background, as in – what about the missing husband from twenty years ago? She adamantly refused to talk about it. She gave them orders to deal with the kidnapping, and don’t ask questions. She was haughty and arrogant.

They arrested her ex for the kidnapping, and offered him a plea deal, which he took. He had to show where the body was, and give all the details of the crime, as well as her involvement. When they found the body, after twenty years, he still had his wedding ring on his finger.

The woman, to her shock and dismay, got a longer prison sentence than the man who carried out the murder. He got the maximum sentence for kidnapping, and she got charged with conspiracy to commit murder.

The mother of the victim finally got her wish, which was to find out what happened to her son. She never let the case go cold. She lived to see justice, even though it was heartbreaking to realize the adultery, lying, and eventual murder that evolved out of these church families who knew each other all their lives.

The guy who killed his best friend was one of the sleaziest men you could ever imagine. Even when he gave his detailed testimony, and described all the affairs, the murder plot, and the crime itself, he was arrogant. He said they believed they were like David and Bathsheba, and would be forgiven by God, so it was no big deal. What an incredible way to rationalize a most horrific betrayal and crime. 

One of the big differences is that David was immediately filled with remorse, and confessed what he had done. He was devastated. 

In this case, the killer got away with the crime for twenty years, and they lived on the insurance blood money, without a conscience. Neither one of them had any remorse. Nor did they have any compassion for the grief stricken mother. The murderer only confessed to save his own skin. 

He ended up whining incessantly over the fact he was given the maximum sentence for kidnapping, because they had agreed not to charge him for the murder. Talk about a delusional couple. They both believed they had been mistreated by the system when they got sentenced. Neither one of them ever demonstrated remorse. The victim was a faithful, hardworking husband. But they never had a shred of remorse. 

We cannot be free of all character flaws, and lying is certainly one of them. But we can be aware of how important it is to avoid lying, to be trustworthy, and to confess any lies we do find ourselves caught in.

When we recognize and admit wrongdoing, it is an opportunity to abandon such things in the future. If we don’t acknowledge our faults, how can we change? If we keep lying, we can become hardened, and not even care after awhile.

The advice to guard our hearts, is not only to protect ourselves from wolves in sheep’s clothing, but also to protect ourselves from becoming the wolf. If we become chronic liars, chances are, we are a wolf too.

So purging the lies, is a way of keeping a pure and honest heart. You may not get any credit for it in the short term, but a clear conscience in the long run, is more valuable than gold.

If we can manage to stop deceiving ourselves, and deceiving others, we can pray for wisdom and discernment. We will not have either, if we cannot first seek the truth.

A path of lying can take people on a journey into the dark underbelly of life, and death. While the pathway to truth, is the journey to our sanctification, and redemption. If we believe in Christ, He will show us the way, the truth, and the life.

In many ways we are all solitary travellers, and the road we choose to take, is a matter of life and death. Although it was probably not written from a Christian perspective, Robert Frost captured the importance of a divergent path, and the choices we make in ‘The Road Not Taken” written in 1915.

As a child, I still vividly remember hearing this poem, and being fascinated by it, envisioning the scenery, and the man who stood pondering which way to go:

The Road Not Taken