“Did you get into the cookies?” I asked my four-year old. “No, Dad,” he said with chocolate smeared around his mouth. He looked so innocent, and as a father, I really wanted to believe he was telling the truth. But, there was incriminating evidence all over his face.

I had to do what too many parents don’t want to do: discipline him for lying. Do you remember hearing, “This is going to hurt me more than you”? The child thinks the parent is a liar, but if you’ve been that parent, you know that it does hurt.

So, then, why discipline someone for something so minor? Why not just chalk it up to childhood innocence? Because if we don’t stop the habit of lying when our children are young, then the lies will only get bigger and bigger as they grow older.

I explained to my children that, as they grew, if someone accused them of doing something they hadn’t done, but they had the habit of always telling the truth, then I would know I could believe them. If they lied to me often, then I could not have the assurance they were telling the truth.

The process works if you have the courage to be consistent, which many parents do not. Unfortunately, we are living in a world where many of us parents fail to do a lot of things as we raise our children to be trustworthy and, most of all, honest.

In the words of Thomas Jefferson:

It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world’s believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all of its good disposition.

As a boy growing up, I remember a TV game show called “To Tell the Truth” in which a panel of four guests were called upon to question three contestants to see who was telling the truth about who they were or what they had done. Two contestants could lie about the truth and say anything. Only the “real contestant” had to tell the truth. It was funny to watch, but I never thought the concept would become a training guide for being a reporter.

Today, we have a huge believability issue with what’s called the “mainstream media.” Growing up, we were told not to talk about religion or politics, yet both of these issues are critical to how we live our lives. This is a heart issue!

Thankfully, Patriot Post contributors are exceptional at covering both politics and culture.

As we look at the political scene today, there are so many accusations being thrown around, and many get lost in the rhetoric, not knowing what to believe. The media has gotten to the place where the majority of Americans don’t believe them because they have been caught lying so often. Yet instead of being honest, they double down on the lies. While this is a political issue, it’s also a moral and spiritual problem. As Jefferson aptly stated, lying leads to a depraved heart.

This is just the tip of the iceberg with regard to the Left’s well-thought-out strategy to topple America as a Christian nation. We’ll go deeper next week.

Something to pray about!
Semper Fidelis