Deception

A half-truth is worse than a whole lie. It is, to begin with, necessarily more deliberate, and while it lacks the courage of the flat lie, it assumes the pretense of truth. It is, in other words, deception in its most despicable and dangerous form. "A lie," Mrs. Eddy writes, on page 17 of "Unity of Good," "has only one chance of successful deception, to be accounted true. Evil seeks to fasten all error upon God, and so make the lie seem part of eternal Truth." A man who takes refuge in a half-truth, with the intent to deceive, really makes the attempt to extract two chances of deception from his action. He tries to get the full imaginary benefit of his lie by making a partial something instead of an absolute nothing of it. In other words, he seeks to give evil the hallmark of good, in the insane hope that he can make it real and eternal. It is, therefore, the very deliberation and calculation involved in the half lie that makes it so dangerous to its perpetrator, in the long run; for there is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed.

The thing, of course, which the practicer of deception always leaves out of account is the solid, practical fact that in reality he is never deceiving any one but himself. If he is not a metaphysician he may have some difficulty in perceiving exactly what this means, and how it works out, yet it is extremely simple. Nothing that is not true can be real. Consequently, a lie is an unreality. No matter if a man were to say a thousand times a day that two and two make five, it would not make them do so. He might deceive a thousand ignorant people in the course of the day, he might turn their ignorance to his own apparent benefit for some financial end or to bolster up a false position. But what is really occurring all the time is that the perpetrator of the lie is falling into the error pointed out by Paul, when he wrote to the Galatians, "For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself." The liar, in other words, in imagining that he is taking advantage of others, is thinking that he is something, when he and his lie are nothing, and thus is deceiving himself. So long as the lie seems to effect its purpose, the deception may seem to be successful. But, unfortunately for such reasoning, life is eternal, and, as time goes on, those who have been deceived through innocence or ignorance, through credulity or willingness, awake to a sense of the truth, whilst the deceiver also slowly awakes to the fact that all that has been happening, so far as he is concerned, is that he has so tangled his own sense of integrity that he finds himself in the position of the foolish virgins when they knocked at the door of the marriage feast, saying, "Lord, Lord, open to us. But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not."

Therein lies the metaphysical meaning of divine protection. A man can suffer from the malicious intention of a lie only to the extent of his own belief in the supposititious power of evil. Consequently, it is his business to protect himself against every such effort through a clear obedience to the intention of the Manual, where, in Art. VIII, Sect. 6, Mrs. Eddy has written, "It shall be the duty of every member of this Church to defend himself daily against aggressive mental suggestion, and not be made to forget nor to neglect his duty to God, to his Leader, and to mankind. By his works he shall be judged,—and justified or condemned." Now the suggestions of mortal mind, in the effort to counterfeit infinity, are not to be numbered. It is impossible, therefore, that they should daily be denied individually. But in the exact proportion in which a man lives in obedience to Truth, he withdraws himself from the radius of evil, and this effort to devote every moment of his day to the exclusion of evil, by dwelling upon good, is the very surest protection he can afford himself. This is manifestly what Mrs. Eddy was saying to the members of the Church when she gave to them that wonderful counsel, printed on page 210 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany": "Beloved Christian Scientists, keep your minds so filled with Truth and Love, that sin, disease, and death cannot enter them. It is plain that nothing can be added to the mind already full. There is no door through which evil can enter, and no space for evil to fill in a mind filled with goodness." Would it be possible for the individual to protect himself daily, against the myriad aggressive suggestions of evil in any other way?