Oh What a Web We Weave

Do you remember the old adage, “What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”  This came out of a play (‘Marmion’ by Sir Walter Scott) telling how complicated lives can become when people first start lying.  Isaiah 59, is titled “Sin and Confession”.  Here we read, “Your lips speak falsehood, and your tongue utters deceit.”  It then says, “They trust in emptiness and tell lies; they conceive mischief and bring forth malice.  They hatch adders eggs, and weave spiders webs.  The way of peace they know not and there is nothing that is right in their paths; Their ways they have made crooked, whoever treads them knows no peace.“

All of us should reflect on this, for God tells us there are seven abominable sins, one of which is lying (Proverbs 6:16-19).  Later God says in Proverbs 12:22, “Lying lips are abomination to the Lord, but those who are truthful are his delight.”  God calls us to be a people who live by honesty and speak truth in our conversations.  When people are lied to, it creates tension and distrust.  Even among Christians, St. Paul reminded them, “Stop lying to one another, since you have taken  off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed, for knowledge, in the image of its creator.”  If a person has a problem in this area of their life, they could try the following from the Hopeline run by Dawson McAlister.  (https://www.thehopeline.com/how-to-stop-lying-part-1/)

1. Admit you have a problem.
2. Remind yourself how lying messes up your life.
3. Try to figure out what pressured you to lie.
4. Tell someone when you lie.
5. Be realistic about what you promise to others.
6. Talk to others about their expectations of you.
7. Practice telling the truth.
8. Finally, commit to a life of honesty, at all costs.

This makes for a good start.  As Catholics, we know church teaching is to repent and reform our ways.  By admitting we have a problem, we bring it to confession to find healing and strength.  But then we are called to turn from the direction taken and reform our lives through the grace God gives us.  These steps also call us to find someone to walk with in this struggle and to look at how we got here in the first place.  Then we must strive to live a life of honesty at all cost.  Again, this is what the church teaches in the Catechism of the Catholic Church 2482, “The eighth commandment forbids misrepresenting the truth in our relations with others. This moral prescription flows from the vocation of the holy people to bear witness to their God who is the truth and wills the truth. Offenses against the truth express by word or deed a refusal to commit oneself to moral uprightness: they are fundamental infidelities to God and, in this sense, they undermine the foundations of the covenant.”

If we believe in God, then we are called to live completely for God in all we do and follow Jesus, no matter the cost.  This is never easy, but as disciples, we are called to take up our cross daily and follow him.  May you consider the cost investing in God.  The payout is eternal life on high in Christ.