Article April 4, 2005 Issue

WHEN MY BOSS WANTED ME TO LIE FOR HIM

Laura Matthews

He wanted me to lie. It was simple stuff, like telling my boss's callers he wasn't there when he just didn't want to take the call. It felt wrong to lie, but it was my first week on a new job, for which I'd only been hired on a trial basis. What if he fired me?

But I couldn't bring myself to lie. Why was I making such a big deal out of what seemed so harmless? My reluctance stemmed from a concept about God I'd always held dear—nor that God is a big person up in the sky who will get mad at me if I lie, but that God is Truth itself.

Truth is one of the names for God that Mary Baker Eddy uses in her book Science and Health, which I'd read all my life. Her descriptions of God made sense to me. It made sense that truly to be God, this divine Being had to be Truth—unwavering, always accurate. I could be certain about the facts of creation, because God made it. So it also made sense that to align myself with that creation, I needed to be truthful.

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