To combat lies, we must radically be self-honest

By Msgr. John Wynand Katende

Posted on: Wednesday 8th April 2026

“When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day”. (Matthew 28:11-15).

This lie has, fortunately, been overtaken by efforts to combat it. The Holy Spirit that raised Christ continued to work through all the Christians to spread the truth. The Apostles were foremost and exemplary in promoting the truth of Jesus' resurrection. They demonstrated supreme courage, mirroring the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, often when facing torture or death, for the sake of the truth. 

Abraham Lincoln is quoted as having said: "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time". It emphasises that deception cannot be sustained indefinitely. It highlights that truth eventually prevails despite temporary manipulation. Most cultures have powerful social sanctions against lying.

Certainly, there is nothing as psychologically and morally dangerous as lying, as denying the truth. Deceivers often target people’s vanity, pride, or desire to believe, assuming that if they act with confidence, they will not be challenged. They rely on the victim's willingness to entertain lies, hoping the person will not stop to analyse the deception, especially if they are already biased to believe it.  

Evidently, prolific liars share the personality trait of Machiavellianism. It is characterised by manipulation, exploitation of others, a cynical disregard for morality, and a focused self-interest in gaining power. Yet, to quote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “One word of truth outweighs the world.” 

God is truth itself. In Christ, God entered the world and set up the criterion of truth in the midst of history. Jesus says He came into the world to "bear witness to the truth”. He calls the devil a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44). The very first lie by Satan to Eve was: “Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?” (Genesis 3:1). Satan deceived her that God was a liar!!

Jesus warns us that when we reject the truth for a lie, we can commit a sin that is unforgivable, which is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. He had just cast out a demon, and some of the people who had witnessed this believed, as a hard religious doctrine, that only someone who came from God could cast out a demon. But they hated Jesus, so seeing Him cast out a demon was a very inconvenient truth that they chose to deny what they had just seen with their own eyes. And so, against everything they knew to be true, they affirmed instead that Jesus had cast out the demon by Beelzebub, the prince of demons (Matthew 12:24).

Psychologists say that when something has happened and is subsequently denied, that doesn’t just make a mockery of truth, it plays havoc with our sanity, not least with the one who is telling the lie. Whenever we lie or deny the truth, we begin to warp our conscience and if we persist in this, eventually we will pervert our soul so that for us, falsehood looks like truth, darkness looks like light, and hell looks like heaven. Thus, whenever we lie, whenever we deny reality, whenever we deny truth, we are stepping outside of God’s spirit, blaspheming that spirit by disdaining it.

We cannot challenge others if we ourselves lie. We must radically be self-honest and forsake any and every temptation to lie. We are encouraged to combat lies through prayer, the Word of God, and reconciliation/ Confession. As long as we are looking at Jesus, the Truth Himself, Satan’s lies have no power. “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." (John 8:32). Let’s rejoice afresh in Christ’s victory!.