Little Lies

I have a secret. Sometimes I lie. Mostly, I lie to myself, thankfully.

I also cheat. I realized this the other day while brushing my teeth. I have one of those fancy toothbrushes with a microchip that makes it vibrate every 30 seconds—with the goal of achieving two minutes of brushing time and Hollywood-envy-bright-white teeth. Some nerd figured out that you need to brush your teeth for two minutes to avoid cavities.

Whatever.

Confession: Sometimes I cheat and only brush my teeth for three of the four rotations needed to achieve the goal—instead of brushing for the full two minutes. What’s worse, I have not suffered any negative consequences. I haven’t had a cavity in years. So, my subpar brushing habits are negatively reinforced.

More secrets: Sometimes I cuss under my breath—so you can’t hear me. At other times, I cuss not under my breath—so hopefully you don’t hear me…**

My mom was from south of the Mason-Dixon line, and I guess they did cussing differently down there. I rarely heard my mom swear, but sometimes she would spell out her curse word one-letter-at-a-time. Apparently, it didn’t count if you didn’t actually say the word out loud! (I’ll spare you the spelling, but it often happened when she would botch a recipe or possibly when one of her three male offspring was a bit unruly).

But let’s agree to be better than the Average Joe out there ... Heck, even better than the average Christian!

And while we are telling secrets: My wife cheats at board games. Yep.

Mostly when playing Uno, but she has no problem stacking the deck with any game if she can get away with it. I believe she thinks because she has the MOM CARD, she can blatantly lie, finagle, and downright double-cross when playing games with her family. Her kids don’t mind –if they are on her team. (I never get to be on her team. Geesh.)

Let’s be honest with ourselves for a sec. God gives us a lot of grace for being human—perhaps a lot more than you were discipled to believe. But let’s agree to be better than the Average Joe out there. Better than the average politician. Better than the average American citizen. Heck, even better than the average Christian!

Not because we might get caught—but because it is RIGHT. Period. Little lies matter. Exaggerations can spin out of control and become habits that are imperceptible to us (but not to others). We like to sound interesting to the people in our sphere of influence, so it can be easy to streeeetch the truth like well-chewed bubble gum.

Let’s double down—on ourselves—and take the road less traveled. Let’s be better than average.

** If you were raised like me, we were taught that saying certain words that society had deemed a cuss word would be on the Major Sins List. While I don’t recommend unwholesome language, I also think Jesus doesn’t get all twisted up inside when one of his creations says a certain word when they smash their thumb with a hammer. I’m pretty comfortable that he has bigger fish to fry.

For extra credit, meditate on Romans 6:1, Proverbs 12

To respond to any Pilgrimage devotional, you can email me directly at [email protected]

PS. Speaking of being truthful, if you were humming Sweet Lies by Fleetwood Mac—tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies… while reading this article—be the first to let me know and I will send you a little something from FCW! 🙂

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