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Mail Bag - Lying 2

By Michael Pearl

[intro music]

Debi Pearl:  Pop and I are going to record, so, you all go ahead and shut the door.

Child:  Simon says. Simon says, touch your ear. No, you put your finger. [laughter]

Announcer  Welcome back to vintage answers. This week, the conclusion to this tough subject of lying.

Michael Pearl:  But it is the same concept. Let me see if I recount what she said. He said, if the child lies...I think the indication was if the child lies, but you cannot prove it, in other words, you don't have absolute evidence to that effect, he said, it is better to let it go.

He said, it's sad, your losses and his losses are less, if you walk away, that is from a situation or you believed the child has lied but you can't prove it. His losses and your losses are less if you walk away, than if you call him a liar.

It says, if what he has done reflects deceit, you will have other opportunities to address it. Much better to fail this time and preserve relationship than to damage your relationship and fail to address the deceit as well.

Finally he says, if you are not sure what happened, how can you secure an acknowledgement from your child in spanking? Your credibility when you know what occurred increases if you will not discipline when things are unclear.

There is a psychological principle working here that you need to understand. It doesn't matter if it's a child or an adult, we all feel like our friends owe us benefit of the doubt. And it is family members, we expect family members to believe us. We want our integrity to be held high.

Now, an if an individual is caught at lying or any other sin, and the evidence is clear, then you expect your friends to believe it. In other words, if your friends cannot help but believe that you are a liar if the proof is showed right in their face, then we don't blame them.

We don't feel ill for them, for hanging their head down and shaking sadly and saying, "Oh, no, no! I just can't believe it, but it's obvious you have lied. You are a liar." And in that case, we accept the blame fully. We realize we are the one that is guilty, and our friends have not betrayed our trust. They have not jumped to conclusions about us.

But they have been forced to that position through our deceit and through the evidence that has been shoved on them. What happens is, if an individual has lied, and a friend sees some evidence to that effect, but not complete evidence, and the friend jumps to the conclusion that you are a liar, then the liar looks at the evidence and says, "Why do you think I am liar?"

Because thus and thus. "How do you know I am a liar?" And the conclusion the liar draws is, "My friend is jumping to conclusions. My friend has misrepresented me. My friend doesn't understand me." So, it's very import when you accuse someone of being a liar, that the evidence is not only clear to you, but clear to them that it is clear to you.

Otherwise, they feel misrepresented. They feel misunderstood, and they will lie even more to defend themselves and try to prove their innocence. So, the evidence has to be irrefutable for there to be clear conviction, for them to be brought to repentance.

They have to know that you know, without any shadow of doubt, without jumping to any conclusions, without having any kind of bias towards them. You know what, the offer you read, what he was pointing out was that if you do accuse your child of lying, and he has reason to assume that you're making some assumptions, then he feels that you're slighting his character.

He knows he is a liar, but he also knows that you don't know for sure. So, if you jump to conclusion, then you are slighting his character. You're not believing him. You're not believing in him, and he feels that you have some kind of a bias, some sort of predisposition toward him.

So, you prejudged him. You're prejudiced. You don't like him, so you're accusing him of being a liar. And he knows that he is a liar, but he knows that you don't know, he can see that little bit of doubt. He can see that little bit of lack of assurance in your voice, in your tone, and the evidence that you present.

And so, it does break down the relationship. For that reason, I would agree with him. If you suspect your child of lying but you don't know for sure, it is better just to gloss over it, and get then wary. In other words, I think the Federal Government does what they call entrapment.

That's when you start setting up scenarios where you're watching and you're taking down the evidence. Now you don't need video cameras or concealed audio tapes, though they might work.

But what you want to do is, whenever kids or you may know that when the children are playing together, the liar is going to do something or be a part of something, and then deny that he was.

So when you begin to see the tensions build up in the other room, and you know they are about to reach that place where conflict is going to occur, then slip in and look through the crack in the door or get where you can hear, and stand for half an hour and listen, and hear the scenario develop.

And then wait, and let it reach its full provision, and then walk in to the room like you didn't know what was going on, and say what happened here. And then let the little liar say, "Well, he did this and that, and I didn't do anything." And then very plainly repeat exactly what the liar said.

And you need to bring the judgment of God down then. You need to do the Great White Throne Judgment. It needs to be a time of chastisement and judgment. So, bring the evidence up, call him a liar, make it clear to him that liars are damned.

God hates lying, and you hate lying. And then give him a very severe spanking for the lying. And once you give him a spanking, turn around and give him another spanking for his misdeed.

Now we had a rule in our house. If the child did something wrong that deserved a spanking, he got his spanking. But if he lied about it, then he got another spanking. So, a kid will lie to avoid a spanking, but if he knows that by lying, that he will also get a lying for the misdeed and one for the spanking, then it doesn't pay to attract or avoid that spanking.

Another thing that you can do is, if you know that a kid is prone to lying, don't ask questions that will make him lie. In other words, if you don't know what happened, then don't ask, it may make him lie.

While at times when conflicts occurred, it is better just to leave the conflict alone and say, "Well, I didn't see it, I don't know what happened," and let the thing just gloss over, let it go. So, agree with this author. Make sure that you know exactly what happened, and that you have the evidence in hand.

Now if you have three children, and two of them testify against the liar, the Bible said that the mouth of two or three witnesses let a thing be established. So, take that verse of Scripture and read it, and say, "The Bible says that the mouth of two or three witnesses... now if a person witnesses falsely, thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."

That's also breaking one commandment which is very severe. You explain to your children that it is important to give an accurate witness. And so, based on the witness of two other children, then you can assume that your child is lying also and just him know that it is not a matter of you personally doubting his character, but there are two witnesses to testify against him, so you have to act on that.

So, if there is any fault, then the fault would lie with the witnesses, not with you. Now the judge has to act on the evidences presented to him. So, it's really important to break that habit of lying and you are going to have to be alert, be keen to find out, and be able to anticipate when he is going to lie and start gathering some evidence.

Now what they did there in deciding to spank Nathan everyday at a certain time for being a liar, we don't want to start a rash across the United States. People lining their kids up and spanking them every day at noon for being a liar. Because, probably half of you out there have at least one kid in the family that is a liar.

And we have to think about 25,000 families on our mailing list. That would be somewhere about 12,500 spankings occurring everyday at noon, and then it would be a horrible thought, to be responsible for that.

And furthermore, that might not work at all in your situation. We never did that again on any of the other kids. That was just a moment of inspiration. So, we don't offer that as a cure‑all, but the personality of Nathan, the situation, his personality and all that combined made it effective at least in that particular instance.

But you may have to come up with some creativity. Sometimes, the things that parents have to do are not written in any books. No one else has thought of it, and it suits your family, it suits your need, it suits your hour, and search your own heart, search your own spirit, and then examine what you anticipate, discuss it with your husband or your wife, and then take action.

It's your family, it's your children, and you are the one who is going to be responsible. All right, do you have any more thoughts on that, they don't mind.

Debi:  It reminds me of an interesting tale. This mother told me that she had two boys that were just almost the same age this doesn't mean they were laying, but it shows how a mother gets creative. And you know, they were like a year apart, maybe a year and two months apart or something. And they were just constantly fighting, just all the time at odds with each other. They were maybe six and seven, or seven and eight years old, something like that. And she tried everything she could think of to get these boys in harmony with one another.

And finally one day, she taped their arms together where one's right arms was taped to the left arm, and they had to do everything together, including go to the bathroom, zip each others pants up, and you know, they had to do everything together because they were taped together.

She explained to them, they are brothers, they are blood brothers, they share the same blood, they need to learn to love each other. And she said, it made a difference, because she said, at first they were just angry and hostile.

And gradually over the day, it got to be funny, and entertaining, and it was a creative day that brought down the hostility, same thing with lying, mother and father needs to be open to...don't be be too serious and sober and overbearing about it.

You need to just think, "How can I teach my children that this is not something mild? This needs to be dealt with and I need to get a hold of it, and use some creativity. Also, I went to tell you going back to the fact that children seem to be, more clever the child, the more often the deceit.

We have seen with really sweet, gentle, kind, clever children often being deceitful to the parents, and the parents almost feeding that deceitfulness. Like a parent will say, "Sweetheart what happened?"

And the very fact that they say, "Sweetheart what happened? What did they do to you?" lets the child know tell a big lie and make yourself look like a sweetheart, and make the other kids look bad.

And it can cultivate so much that a child gets a relationship that is really close and really sentimental with the mother, it is all based on the child lying about themselves. And the mother gets to feeding on it.

You'll read about that in "No Greater Joy", Volume I, about how a mother's tender heart was causing her child to become a first‑class liar to condemn other people while himself out to be a wonderful, sweet, loving child.

And how the mother finally understood her position of wanting that relationship with that child so much, that she was willing to let his character go. And she got a hold of it, and so did he, and they come out on the better side.

Michael:  I think, it's important to reiterate this point one more time. Don't allow your condemnation to continue to prevail your attitude toward your child. When a child is called a liar, when you know that he is a liar, and that's an ongoing tension between you, that can be very destructive.

In other words if you spank or rebuke your child for lying, once you spank them, that should be a total payment for sin. In other words, the sin should be dealt with. It is finished, it is over, the child has paid his dues, and he forgiven. It is settled, he is not a liar anymore, it is over with.

So, let the air be cleared so that you can walk in fellowship with your child throughout the day, and you can enjoy his presence. A child is more likely encouraged to not lie if he knows he is breaking fellowship with you, than he would be if fellowship was already broken.

Then he might lie just to as a game to spite you and to see what he could get away with, since it hurts you for him to lie. So, fellowship is a mighty, strong impetus to not lie, to not sin, to not rebel, to not do the wrong thing. Maintain that fellowship above all.

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Announcer: Thanks for listening. I hope it blesses your day. Don't forget to check out Cane Creek Corner for this week's specials.

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