Little White Lies

"I don't actually read your blog," he told me. "But it's really good."

I could have asked why he didnn't read it if he really thought it was good. Or I could have asked how he had an opinion about the quality of my blog if he didn't actually read it.  But I didn't feel like going there.

Besides, we both knew he was lying.

The truth, we both knew, was that he read my blog all the time, and that we both thought it sucked.

But I wasn't mad at him for lying to me. He was just trying to be nice.

That's the reason people lie about small, seemingly harmless stuff all the time.

If your significant other asks where you've been, you can't say that you've been out shopping for his or her birthday present, even in the rare case when that's actually true. You can't ever tell someone that they look fat in that dress, even if he's an NFL offensive linemen.

You have to pretend to like your friend's new boyfriend, even if he wears skinny jeans and constantly talks about how all the formerly good rock bands have sold out. You have to pretend to like your friend's girlfriend even when she starts a fight with him about what toppings should go on a salad, and then calls you at 2:00 a.m. to complain about the exchange.

I grew up in Southern Baptist circles hearing that it was always, always, wrong, not to tell the truth. 

That, of course, was a lie.  

The Bible is packed with people who became heroes by lying.  The wise men told King Herod they would report back to him the location where he could find Jesus, that newborn king all the herald angels were harking about. But then they figured out that kings like Herod usually don't just love to come worship challengers to their throne, so they found a detour home.

If the wise men had fallen into that trip, we probably won't include them in our manger scenes (and we certainly wouldn't refer to them as "wise men").  Of course, you'd think baby Jesus could have had the situation covered without needing the wise men resorting to deception, but He moves in mysterious ways.)

In an Old Testament story, Rahab the harlot's is remembered for telling a well-placed lie. Her life was saved because she lied to the locals about not knowing where to find those invading spies she was hiding, who would ultimately conquer the land, spare her life as a reward, and then write flattering words about her in the both the Old Testament and New Testaments. True, they were probably writing the stories in the King James version, but that's still more acclaim than you and I have ever achieved.

Jacob lied to Esau and to his father Isaac. Jacob's uncle lied to him, tricking him into marrying the ugly duckling sister of the woman he'd labored seven years to marry, both of whom happened to be his cousins. But, other than having dueling sets of inbred kids (who sold their brother Joseph and his amazing Technicolor dreamcoat into Egyptian slavery), Jacob still managed to do just fine with his life.  He could never put together a team to go on Family Feud, but that creepy Richard Dawson guy was the host at that point anyway, so it wasn't a big loss.

But that is not my central point.

The point is, that in light of these examples, maybe, just maybe, is it ok to fib sometimes?

Not when you're under oath or part of an investigation, mind you. Not to get away with something you shouldn't have been doing in the first place. But maybe when being a little fuzzy with reality prevents some greater evil directed at someone else?  Or maybe when it spares someone's feelings from unnecessary pain? 

Even those exceptions are tricky, though. If you tell your sensitive nephew that he's a good singer in order to preserve his feelings, he might end getting hurt even worse when he's ridiculed on American Idle as the latest tone-deaf, geeky kid lacking any semblance of self-awareness.

If you befriend the lonely guy at the office and pretend to take an interest in his never-ending stories, he might start coming back twice a day and offering you sneak peaks at his forthcoming comic book series.

Which you would also have to pretend to like.

So what's the answer?

I've thought about it for at least 135 second, and only have one solution: deliberate vagueness.

Open-ended answers prevent you from having to lie to save your friends' feelings, but also save you from directly encouraging whatever bad decision it is that you're trying to avoid having to confront. They also cause the people to whom you speak to think about what the heck you just said,  even after you've left. You remain in their thoughts even after you've gone.

Everyone wins.

"What are you talking about," you might ask? "Can you give me an example of what you mean by 'deliberate vagueness?'"

No.  I'm not going to tell you anything more. You can interpret my previously given answer any way you like.

And that's exactly the point.