This goes out to all you religious folk out there

[kookomula]

Taken from 'The Roots of Violence' Rev. Vincent P. Miceli

The Lie as Interpersonal Violence (Chapter 3)

The lie is the father of violence. It is the word, act, sign of cunning or silence which makes use of wiles (trickery) to deceive whoever has the right to know the truth. Consider the position of the listener who, in simplicity and ingenuousness, is eagerly expecting the truth. Then consider the attitude of the liar who, full of subtlety, audacity and, at times cruel cynicism, misleads his neighbour into the quicksands of falsity. The use of the lie reveals the liar as a person of evil intentions.

He who tells lies as a way of getting ahead lacks the love of truth. Now truth is the objective social good meant to be shared by all mankind through the activity, pleasant or even at times not so pleasant, of communication. "The truth," Christ tells us, "will make you free". And this freedom is the freedom of the children of God who is truth itself. What the liar lacks is not only frankness, honesty, uprightness in his shady pronouncements, but also a love of his neighbour whom he deliberately defrauds of a needed good - the truth - which is necessary for binding in closer communion of justice and trust the community of mankind. The liar is a self-centred dissimulator, cunningly manipulating his fellowmen for his own evil purposes. He or she cannot be trusted. And herein lies the psychological violence which is the evil fruit of violence. The clue to the mentality of the liar, in his hatred of truth, is his hatred of God. And this hatred of God floods over into hatred of those whom God loves, the innumerable millions for whom his divine Son died. At other times the hatred of the liar begins with hatred of his fellowmen and then inevitably expands to the hatred of God. But in both cases the liar's animosity is usually cloaked under the facade of friendship. Shakespeare condemned this tactic of the liar's cunning when he wrote: "O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!"

What does the lie do to interpersonal relations? It becomes the self-poisoning of the "I" of the liar and at the same time the spiritual abductor of the "Thou" of the deceived. When the deceived realises that he has been taken advantage of while his defences were down and he remained open in good faith to receive the truth, a variety of hostile reactions blaze up into the relationship. Immediately the healthy, interpersonal indwelling of persons in communion and community begins to disintergrate . Intellectual harmony is shattered as storms of distrust beget the turbulence of aggravation. Suspicion now of all that the liar says and does is supreme. Hesitations, reservations, a state of cold suspense are predominant in the now shaky personal encounter. Resentment which is the poisoning of self and society, is the fruit of perversion of the truth. Simultaneous with the flight of the intellect from confidence and faith in the liar who is recognised as acting as an agent of Satan, the emotions and passions of lovers of truth explode........For grievous lies stir up rancor, the desire for justice, at times, even for revenge. The fear that one deception will beget a chain reaction of lies paralyzes dialogue and normal social relations.

We are living in the Age of the Persistent Lie (1989-). The art of disinformation has advanced spectacularly. This is partly due, in a material way, to the magnificent improvement and refinement of the means of communication - radio, tv, satellites in space, new telephone techniques. But the instruments created by man's technocratic genius are morally neutral, neither good nor bad, though they are certainly physical benefits in man's normal life. The scourge of the lie arises from the heart of the wicked who know how to abuse our marvelous media to propagate instantly, all over the globe, their distortions of the truth. False words are not evil in themselves, but they corrupt the souls of millions of unaware listeners with evil. For often those who pervert truth on the media do so acting as agents of parodies, creators of caricatures that lead men to the most biased and heartless decisions against God and their countrymen.

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We must all take responsibility for what we have allowed to happen......without us they are nothing.........we are the one's who give them legitimacy

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