Why Do Some Get Away with Lying?

By now, everyone in the country and around the world has heard of the downfall of Brian Williams, former host of NBC Nightly News. Personally, he was quite likable, but he proved to be untrustworthy in many of the things he reported—particularly personal things that never happened to him. The kindest thing one could do would be to accuse him of exaggerating; the worst would be to label him as a liar. In either case, he is probably finished as someone who can be trusted to relate serious news.

The first lesson that might profit all of us is, “Don’t make stuff up.” Don’t embellish the facts to make yourself look more important than you are. As a human being made in the image of God, you are already important and valuable. You do not have to cite the names of important people to impress anyone. You do not need to include details that never happened in order to increase the amount of esteem people have for you. People liked Williams without and apart from the imaginary details he chose to include.

Second, when you do include untruths in your story, you run the risk of being found out. The first of Williams’ accounts to be falsified was one that he repeated too many times. His helicopter was not hit and forced down. He was in one that landed more than an hour later under no fire at all. Eventually, someone present with Williams came forth to set the record straight. Is this an example of, “Be sure your sin will find you out” (Num. 32:23)?

A third danger in having an “active imagination” is that you run the risk of believing the story yourself. Although this alternative may not have occurred with Williams, many have convinced themselves of their version of the truth. One individual convinced herself (over a period of years) that her husband was at fault for their divorce when everyone knew she was the unfaithful one. Time has a way of changing the facts in the minds of people if they are not careful.

In the fourth place, people will probably lose respect for you; thus, your efforts will have the very opposite effect that you envisioned. It’s fairly difficult for a national figure to hide from his errors. Williams will have a difficult time being believed about anything, even with his apologies. Why? Because it did not involve just one “mistake.” At least half a dozen enhancements have now been discovered. No one could be mistaken that many times.

But suppose the individual is not someone of such notoriety. We have all known of people who did the same thing as Williams—only in a smaller venue. They made up stories about themselves and other people (famous or not), and were willing to repeat it at every opportunity. Most people know that such a person is not telling the truth (it could even be the boss). They will probably not challenge him on it because they don’t want the hassle. But they know he’s making things up, and they, 1) find it difficult to believe anything he says, and 2) they have no respect for him.

Question

Probably, some people will not appreciate this question, but it deserves an answer: “Why don’t our citizens become as outraged when other public figures tell lies—say, for example, politicians? How many times has someone run for office in favor or opposed to some issue and then flip-flopped after the last hanging chad was recounted? One governor of the state of Pennsylvania back in the 1970s ran a pro-life campaign and immediately took a pro-abortion stance practically the moment he was sworn in. (Was a Bible used for that ceremony?)

Oh, right. Candidates don’t contradict the platform they ran on; they just “grow.” That’s always a good copout. Mac Deaver used it in the debate with Ben Vick on the Holy Spirit. A tape was played of his remarks about a decade earlier in which he castigated a brother who had said his position would eventually lead him to believe in Holy Spirit baptism for today. Deaver denounced him with a scathing rebuke, saying that the man mischaracterized his position. Yet ten years later, it was the case that Deaver had indeed come to that conclusion. His reaction? “I’ve grown.”

Some people count those reversals as lies. And some things clearly are and have been proven to have been lies which the candidate knew at the time. But those things aside, how does a politician who does precisely what Brian Williams did continue to be taken seriously? Consider the following documented incidents.

For years Hillary Clinton claimed that she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, a mountain climber from New Zealand, who was one of the first men to climb to the summit of Mount Everest. This information was used in Hillary’s informal biography, and it appeared in Bill’s autobiography, My Life, published in 2004. The only problem is that Hillary was born in 1947, and Sir Edmund climbed Mount Everest in 1953. Later, Mrs. Clinton admitted that it was a story her mother made up about the origin of her name in order to inspire her. That is plausible, or it could just be one lie covering for another.

Like Brian Williams, Mrs. Clinton experienced a harrowing landing—that didn’t actually happen. The documentation is available on the Internet.

In a foreign policy speech last week at George Washington University, Clinton used the description of a dangerous arrival to bolster her argument that she has the foreign policy experience needed to be commander in chief.

She said when she arrived in Bosnia on March 25, 1996, “I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”

But news video footage of her arrival at Tuzla shows Clinton, then the first lady, calmly walking from the rear ramp of a U.S. Air Force plane with her daughter, Chelsea, then 16, at her side. Both Clintons held their heads up and did not appear rushed.

The video shows Clinton spending several minutes talking with the group, including an 8-year-old Bosnian girl who presented her with a poem, and later greeting U.S. troops.

Hillary had told this fabricated incident two previous times. So, when it was called to attention, what did she have to say about it? She said she “misspoke” and added, “I say a lot of things—millions of words a day—so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement.” In a later radio interview, she said she wasn’t worried about the incident hurting her credibility. “I have been in the public eye for many, many years, and this is something that I think happens to anybody,” she told radio station KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Then there was the attack on Benghazi, in which four Americans were killed. Several times it was affirmed that the protest there was the result of an anti-Muslim video, which was not true. Hillary herself made this claim. When Mrs. Clinton, who was Secretary of State at the time the attack occurred, appeared before a Congressional Committee, she tried to say that things were confusing at the time and that the intelligence was imperfect. Frustrated by repeated questioning as to the cause of the attack, she said, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

Obviously, to the four who died, the cause of the attack is irrelevant, but why was something inaccurate given to the American people at the time? Some probably do not know to this day that the attack had nothing to do with the video; it never did. The difference it makes pertains to credibility. If they did not actually know the cause of the attack, then they could have said, “We do not know at this moment but are investigating and will have an answer soon.” But instead they invented a cause for the attack that they knew was not true at the time—and repeated it frequently.

Why the Difference?

So why is a politician, who does essentially what Brian Williams did, not discredited? Someone might offer up the following comment, “But a newsman is someone who is in a position of trust.” Uh, so does that say that we don’t ever expect to believe politicians? That’s a low view of the world. Do we really want to affirm that, when we vote for someone to become the most powerful person on earth, we are voting for a person we don’t trust or that cannot be counted on to tell the truth? How sad, if true!

Another might say, “You just can’t expect politicians to tell the truth; they would never get people to vote for them.” Although some issues are deal-breakers (someone being pro-abortion or pro-homosexual “marriage,” for instance), most voters know they are not going to get a candidate who will agree with them on every issue. But all should insist on knowing what a potential President’s core beliefs are. Is there really not anyone willing to do that? Surely, some tell the truth.

“But a leader has to know how to lie in order to deal with other world leaders.” Really? Do world leaders not have the ability to say, “Yes, no, or I cannot give you an answer on that right now”? What makes us think that a leader cannot be a person of integrity? Jesus always told the truth. Sometimes the multitude loved what He said; sometimes they went back and walked no more with Him (John 6:66). Yes, and they crucified Him for telling the truth (Mark 14:61-62), but to tell lies would have been like His opponents who were of their father, the devil (John 8:44). The point is, if a politician lies to anyone, what is to keep him from lying to everyone?

Is lying the best option? How well did it work for Nixon? If he had come clean at the outset and said, “I did not order the break-in, but I have learned about it since, and those men have been fired,” he might well have served out his term, but he lied to the American people, and they resented it. Did the outraged press really care that much about the lies? Some of the same ones who led the charge then backtracked when another President was caught in a lie; the difference was, they hated the former and liked the latter.

If a President, under duress and tremendous pressure told a lie, most Americans would forgive him. If Brian Williams had only exaggerated once, most would have given him the benefit of the doubt. But as already noted, there were several. Perhaps the most insulting thing is that they were needless. They did not result from having to make a statement on the spur of the moment or not having had time to think things through. The incidents that were made up were frivolous; Williams had no compelling reason to say them. Anyone who determines to tell a lie ought at least to have a compelling reason for doing so.

Rahab lied to keep the spies safe. Although she had faith, it was probably not deep enough to trust that God would preserve those men. Because she perceived it to be a necessity—to save their lives as well as her own and her family’s—she lied about their location. It was wrong, but we understand her reason for doing so. She may have lived in a culture in which such deception was acceptable; many people today certainly think so. She did not lie, however, for no reason whatsoever. Undoubtedly, God forgave her, and later she probably learned that telling the truth was a viable option. For the Christian, it is expected.