A Lie Begets A Lie

Telling lies is not just a lifestyle, it becomes more than attitude when one learns to cover up what the real situation or outcome of an event or occurrence is. It is a big responsibility to tell lies. Come to think of it, one would have to street his or her brain to design an unreal situation to make it real. It is a lot of brain work to tell lies.

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One way or the other, we have all told a lie at one point in time or the other. Just today, I was in a public place, a banking hall, and an offensive smell spread round the hall. There were just about six customers in the queue. One of us had farted and no one could own up to having done that.

Some years ago, a huge amount of money, running into hundreds of millions, got missing from our place of work. It was a very serious issue that the police picked some prime suspects for interrogation. After the first series of interrogation, none of the prime suspects owned up to having indulged in the loot.

After several months of intense investigation, the culprit was caught. The accountant had connived with the account officer to rip the company of the missing funds. It was a shocker to the accountant because he later confirmed that he never knew that what had been syphoned could run into hundreds of millions. It was disgraceful because the accountant is one of those who criticise the low hierarchy staff of laziness and lacking contentment.

The two criminals were mailed seventeen years each for conspiracy, forgery, impersonation and collecting funds under pretense. The length of years they were sentenced was higher because they made the investigation process even more tedious for the detectives.

So, there is no time of event where lying could be judged to be right. This is why we at all times tell the truth and "put the devil to shame".
As humans, we tend to find this a difficult task because we are already used to telling lies in the bid to cover up our evil tracks. Lies do a lot of mess to individuals.

Yan Krukau

Trust

When an individual is caught telling lies, it could lead to damaging his reputation and even break his or her relationship with others. The dangerous part is that when trust is broken, it could be hard to regain it.

Aftermath

Like in the foregoing story, when the truth is revealed after one had told a lie or series of lies, the consequences could be severe and the trouble could be intense. If the case is in a legal tussle, the effect could even claim the life of the liar.

Guilt

When a lie is told, the liar usually feels guilty even before he or she is caught. A remember a story of a maid who bedwets and each time she wets the bed, she lies against the children. One day, she opened up to the madam who employed her because she needed help. The guilt pushed her to tell the truth. This may not be in all cases as most liars do have their conscience seared.

One could lose his integrity. Do you know that some lies that we told is already revealed before it is established as a lie with facts. Can you remember a time in Nigeria when one civil servant testified that snakes and monkeys swallowed up raw cash. That's quite unbelievable. Hence, such people involved in that saga have lost their integrity and may never have the opportunity to serve in the capacity where money would be entrusted in their hands.

One more dangerous thing that lying does is that it makes one justify the need to lie the more to cover up. One lie begets another and it becomes all encompassing. A typical example is the case of King Saul in the Bible. He was asked to wage war against the Amalekites and not to bring back any war loot to Jerusalem but he became agitated and brought back beautiful women, fat calves and delicate ornaments against the will of God. His intention was to use all the loot for himself but he lied that he wanted to sacrifice them to God. A lie ended his reign and his entire household.