Have you ever thought how crazy the world would be if no one told the truth?  How would anything ever get done?  It would be like living in a three dimensional maze and trying to find your way out.  Truth brings peace into our life and helps us plan our lives and live them in an orderly fashion.  Without it, the world would be pure chaos.

 

If you ever go into a court room and have to testify the first thing they make you do is swear in “to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you God.”  Not only are you made to swear in, but if you lie under oath you can go to jail for a long time.  There is a reason for this and it is because in a court they need to know the truth in order to administer justice.  Without the truth, the courts would not have the ability to figure out right from wrong and there would be no justice. 

 

Sometimes when we lie we try to justify the lie.  It will benefit my family, my career, or my child, so what is the big deal?  Well the big deal is the person on the other side of that lie.  The person you are lying to or about.  Just because you want to benefit yourself or your loved ones doesn’t mean that someone else should pay the price for your lies.

 

If any of you have ever been involved in youth sports then you are familiar with the term “daddy ball”.  Well in the town where I coached little league some of these dads have taken that term to a new level.  They wrote the book, Get Out of My Way, My Kid Wants To Play.  They held back nothing to benefit their sons at the expense of someone else’s son even if the other kid was a better player. 

 

After a boy is done playing in the Majors (up to 12 years old) they move up to juniors.  Juniors is made up of boys 13 and 14 who are in the 7^th and 8^th grade and are still playing baseball in the hopes of making the high school freshmen team.  So these two years are crucial in their development to get them ready to play on the full size field like the Pros do.

 

The first year we played Juniors our Little League decided we would play on 80 foot bases for the first half of the season and play on the 90 foot bases (Pro) the second half.  Since most of the boys were in the 7^th grade we wanted to ease them into the bigger field.  I am a big believer in physics.  If a big object hits a small object the small object will give way.  Using that logic; the larger my big object was the further he could hit and throw the small object, the constant being the baseball.  Keeping this in mind, I drafted all the big kids while all the other coaches drafted all the All Stars from last year.

 

By mid season my record was 5 and 2 and with ten teams in the league we were tied for second place.  For the second half of the season we moved up to 90 foot bases and my big objects hit that ball a lot further than the little all stars from last year and we finished in first place with a record of 14 and 2.  Physics won out as we went 9 and 0 for the second half of the season. 

 

The good old boys weren’t real happy for a few reasons.  First, I got first place, the five teams from Northwood Little League, who we combined with to make a ten team league took second through sixth place, and then they got seventh through last place.  Second, it was our standing rule that the winning coach got the all star team.  I got that team and we made it to district’s final game and lost.  The team we lost to won the World Series for thirteen year old juniors that year and the year before seven of them were on the same US Team that lost to Japan in the Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA.  So all in all it was a good year for me in baseball.

 

I just assumed that next year we would all play together and draft our teams as usual.  There were about 60 boys trying out so once again we would have 5 teams and Northwood would have 5 to make up our ten team league.  I noticed a funny thing at tryouts though.  If you have 60 boys and 12 to a team, then you only need 5 managers there.  Well there were about eight managers there rating the boys.  The good old boys all sat together and rated the kids, but once their sons were done they left and didn’t watch the rest of the boys try out.  I started to wonder what was going on so I went to our Little League board meeting. 

 

I was told there would be one team of twelve going up to seniors, and the rest would play in juniors at the 80 feet bases all year.  I told them I wanted a senior team as well and felt I had earned it.  I was told there was a manager picked for the senior team and that my services were not needed.  Then we were told which 12 boys were taken out of the draft, because they were already going up to the senior team and would not be available for the draft.  It was basically my last year’s all star team minus my son.

 

I told the league commissioner that this was not fair, but he told me due to the overall ratings for the boys (from all the coaches) this was how it would be.  It was funny I had never heard of this commissioner before in Little League.  I had been a manager for eight years now and had never run into this guy as a coach or a board member.  I told him if this team was already picked then I would like to take the next 12 boys and have my own senior team.  I wanted to play on the 90 foot bases, and if the first team was hand picked then I would not upset the apple cart, I would just take the next 12.  The next 12 boys were just as good as 10 of the boys on the senior team (two were really good); they just didn’t have daddy running interference for them.

 

The commissioner told me, “I have been told that these 12 boys on the senior team are the best.  They are the only ones with the skill to play at this level and the rest of the boys are not good enough to play at the senior level.”   

 

So here I was, willing to forgo any fairness on the part of our Little League, and take 12 boys who I would be proud to play baseball with and they said no.  Their reason for not letting these 14 year old boys play up was a lie and they knew it.  It was a lie about 14 year old boys who were still in the 8^th grade.  Remember how I said there were eight mangers rating boys and only 5 teams.  The four managers for the one senior team were rating all their 12 players as fives and the rest as threes and twos.  This way when they combined all eight score cards and took the average, twelve boys jumped to the top and the rest fell to the bottom. 

 

Here is how the math made the lie appear as truth on paper.  If two kids had a true skill level of four and each of the five mangers gave them a four he would have an average rating of four.  Now, one of them is already predestined for the senior team and the other is not so here is what happened.  The kid going to the senior team gets a total of 36 points (4 x 5 plus 4 x 4) and an average of 4.5 (36 / 8).  The kid not going to the senior team gets a total of 28 points (4 x 3 plus 4 x 4) and an average of 3.5 (28 / 8).  As you can see, on paper they supported their lie by showing their sons were better than the rest of the boys and lied about innocent kids.  Their justification was they were doing it to help their son. 

 

When I told the commissioner what a lie this was and how they worked it out so it would appear as the truth to him, he told me how thankful and fortunate he was to have these other fathers take time out of their week-ends to rate these kids.  I told him it was ridiculous and unfair to the next 12 kids in line who deserved to play up and had the ability to do so and he told me he had made up his mind and to drop it. 

 

I called up the Little League District Office and explained everything that was going on and asked for their help.  They told me as long as all the boys tried out, they were eligible to play and how our league wanted to create teams at different levels or play was up to them and there was nothing they were going to do about it.  After all, all the boys were rated on paper and the numbers showed they were better.

 

So lies have no bounds as to who will be hurt by it and who will not.  In this case, these dads lied about their sons and lied about the other boys in Little League so their sons could benefit.  Their sons were no better than the next 12 kids in line, and they lied about 14 year old boys who still played the game for the love of the game and nothing else.  Innocent boys slandered and cheated just so 12 other kids would have a head start on the bigger field and therefore a better chance to make the high school baseball team over them.  Out of the 12 boys who played up, only two (that I know of) played baseball their senior year of high school.  One was a second baseman and truly a 4.5, and the other was a pitcher, the main pitcher on my 14 and 2 team from the year before.

 

The irony of this story is at the end of the school year my son was at a junior high dance and saw one of the kids who had played on the senior team.  He had been my catcher the year before and was the catcher on my all star team that had done so well.  This kid was truly a great baseball player.  Brad asked him how baseball was and he had two things to say about it.  “Baseball sucked, and it was a lot more fun playing for your dad.”  So not only did these dads lie about little boys and cheat them, but they also ruined the game for some of the boys they dragged into their lie. 

 

Think of all the people who get hurt because of lies being told about them.  You may say something to a friend about someone you do not like.  It may be a lie or only your opinion of him, but since you told your friend they will believe what you told them.  Now another people has a negative view of the person you do not like, but that person only wronged you.  You may see that person as bad, but if you lie about him you are causing others to dislike him as well for no reason. 

 

Once someone’s reputation is ruined it is very hard to get it back.  We have all been victims of lies at some time or another and it hurts.  As a rule people go with the opinion of the crowd and if you are on the outside, a victim of a lie, then you are going to have a very hard time regaining your good reputation and a positive light in which people view you.

 

Let me tell you a story about a man who became the only victim of the lie he told, and how it changed his life forever.  I worked for a company in the early 80s which sold private telephone systems.  After the deregulation of the phone companies Corporate America started to buy their own phone systems instead of leasing them from the local phone carrier who supplied their phone service.

 

This was a good thing because the phone systems were cheaper to buy than rent from the local phone company.  They had total control over changes they wanted to make to the system and they received large tax credits for buying new assets.  The accelerated depreciation also helped to reduce their tax bill for a few years as well.  The company I worked for sold the Northern Telecom SL1 phone switch which, at the time, was one of the best phone switches on the market.

 

We bid a contact to sell the County of San Diego a $24,000,000.00 phone system.  This was a great idea for the county to own their private phone system.  They could put all the county phones on their own private network using microwave towers and bypass any carrier.  Then they planned on letting all the cities in the county tie into the network as well and charge them a lower price than the local carriers would to use it.  It was truly an incredible design at the time and it would save the County of San Diego, as well as all the cities in the county who wanted to get on the network, a lot of money.

 

The county took the design, went out to bid and we won.  We were doing $18 million a year in sales at the time we were awarded the contract.  If you added on another $12 million a year in sales for the next two years we immediately forecasted an increase of 67% in sales for the next two years (just from this one contract).  When you take into consideration other counties would also see the advantage of owning their own network they would also look into this design, which would bring more business to us since we were the contractor who designed and implemented this new technology.

 

Put in terms of today’s technology we had created for our client their own private world wide web for their voice and data network.  Yes, he had hit the big time and we were in the lime light.  The trouble with the lime light is you are truly under the light and people begin to take a closer look at what you are doing. 

 

Pretty soon that light got real hot as the other companies, who lost the bid, started to call foul.  They claimed the bid was rigged and we should not have won it.  One company’s bid was above us, and one below us, so they wanted to know how we won if we had a higher bid price. 

 

We showed everyone our Customer List which proved we were capable of completing the project and having all the equipment work.   We were very familiar with the Northern Telecom SL1 phone switch and had a very large installed base to prove it worked well and we knew how to install and maintain the system.  We felt if you took into account our expertise and years of experience we were the most qualified company to install this system and make it work, regardless of price, and we were.

 

About a month after this, I walked into my office only to see a cop sitting on my desk and he did not look real happy.  His first words were, “don’t touch a thing.”  He proceeded to tell me he was waiting for a search warrant to search the offices.  Since we had grown so fast (6 to 18 million in sales in two years) my accounting office had been moved out of the main building and was put in another office suite in the building complex.  I guess the DA didn’t know that, so it was not on the original search warrant. 

 

Four months later the real fun began.  The DA realized they had no case on a state level so they sent it up to the Federal Grand Jury.  What is a Grand Jury investigation without some subpoenas and they started to fly.  One of the subpoenas wound up in the hands of the salesman in New Jersey who worked for the company that had submitted a bid higher than ours.

 

When he was sworn in on the stand they asked him if he was ever approached by anyone to submit a bid for this contract.  Since his company was in New Jersey and the contract was to be performed in California it seems like it would not be the most ideal situation for his company to bid on this contract and then have to install this phone system over a two year period.  He informed the prosecutor that no one had approached him to submit a bid for this contract. 

 

The prosecutor then asked him if anyone had ever asked him to bid on this contract and told him what number he should put down as the final bid price.  At this point the salesman should have realized that the prosecutor was on to something.  If he just testified under oath that he had not been approached by anyone to submit the bid he did, why would the prosecutor ask if this person (who he just denied existed) told him what amount to bid.  At this point the salesman should have pled the Fifth, shut up, asked for an attorney and gotten on the next jet back to New Jersey.  Instead, he told the prosecutor this had not happened either.

 

He was then asked if anyone ever paid him to submit a bid for this contract.  He told the prosecutor he had not been paid by anyone to submit his bid.  He was then asked if he had ever accepted any gifts to submit a bid for this contract.  He reassured the prosecutor that this had not happened. 

 

The prosecutor then brought over a deposit slip from the salesman bank in New Jersey which showed where he had made a $10,000.00 cash deposit to his personal account about a week after the bidding process had closed.  The prosecutor then asked him if he wanted to change his story at all, but he did not.  Then the prosecutor brought over a cancelled check made out to cash from the bank of the consultants who designed the phone system.  He showed the grand jury how the date on the check from the consultant’s bank was a few days before the salesman’s deposit was made to his personal account for the same amount.  The prosecutor also showed an airline ticket showing the salesman had been in California right after the consultants withdrew the money from their bank account.

 

Next the prosecutor complimented the salesman on the nice Rolex watch he had on.  He asked if he could see it.  The salesman took it off and handed it to the prosecutor.  The prosecutor in turn read off the serial number of the watch.  He then produced a receipt from a jewelry store in California showing the exact serial number of that Rolex watch in his hand.  The only problem for the salesman was the name on the receipt was the consulting company who designed the phone system for the county.  This time the prosecutor did not ask the salesman if he wanted to change his story.  He called the bailiff and had the salesman arrested right there on the spot and put in jail for perjury!

 

If you are wondering how this consulting company got into the story here is how it worked.  When a big company needed a new phone system they would hire consultants to design the system and put into the design an equipment list showing all the equipment needed to make it work.  They were supposed to be independent consultants who were hired and paid to design the system.  After the system was designed and all the equipment was called out in the bid package the company was ready to go to bid.  Since the company knew little about reviewing the bids they would sometimes ask the consultant to come back and help evaluate the bids.  If they were not asked this consultant would offer to help in evaluating all the bids to make sure apples equaled apples, oranges equaled oranges and the customer would get the system they had decided to buy. 

 

By evaluating the bids, the consultants got to look at all the bids including the bottom line.  When all the bids were submitted and evaluated by the company the consultant could explain all the positives and negatives of each bidder.  At some point the company would ask the consultant for their opinion.  Since the consultant had held their hand through this whole process; from a blank piece of paper used to design the system to the numerous bids on the table which represented the reality of owning their own phone system and getting these benefits the company naturally valued their opinion very highly.  These consultants had designed the phone system for the County of San Diego.

 

About a year after the salesman was hauled off to prison, the government was ready for the first day of the trial.  There were about six people who were indicted, from both the consulting company and our company, and they were all there with their attorneys and the federal prosecutor in front of the judge.  One of the attorneys for the defendants asked if he could approach the bench and speak to the judge and here is what he said.  “Even though the contract was awarded to my clients, the county never proceeded with it so as a result of not proceeding they never paid any money to any of these companies or persons for the contract.  The county stopped the project before it ever got going.  So my question to you is this.  If this did not cost the County one penny, where is the crime, who got hurt?”  The judge thought about this for a moment then faced the prosecutor and asked if this was true?  The prosecutor stated that the County had not spent any money on this awarded contract.  The Judge then dismissed the case.

 

The only person who went to jail in the entire ordeal, which took about two years from the search warrants to the trial, and involved about 50 people testifying before the Grand Jury was the person who lied.  So yes, you should not lie because it can hurt you.  If the salesman had kept this Commandment he would not have gone to prison.

 

It is pretty easy to see how lies can hurt, but sometimes telling the truth can hurt also.  I own a small business which sells networking equipment.  I also have what is called a GSA Contract.  That is a contract between my company and the U. S. Government which states I agree to sell the products on that contract for a set price for a five year period. 

 

The reason the government does this is so when anyone in the government wants to buy your product and she sees it is on GSA Contract, she can just buy it and not have to go to bid.  The theory is I have already negotiated with the government for the best price possible and the people who want to buy it can rest assured they are getting the product they asked for at this predetermined price.  As you can see this was designed to save the government a lot of time in procuring equipment.  An example of how this works is if they see my fiber patch cord on GSA for $13.45 and they need 100 of them, they just buy them for that price and not have to go out to bid.

 

In January one year, I quoted a customer a lot of cables on my GSA contract.  He came back a few weeks later and asked me to add other things to the quote.  They wanted to place one order for the entire project.  In June he called again for a final price and told me he would send it off to Contracting to buy it all.  About July Contracting sent me an e-mail and asked me if all the items on the quote were on my GSA schedule.  I told them no.  They came back and had me identify what was on my GSA Contact and what was not. 

 

In August another person called to ask if every item was on my GSA contact.  I could tell they hoped I would say yes so they could place one order for all the items.  It hurt me a lot to say “no” because the quote was for $8569.24 and I was going to make a pretty good profit on it.  Since this had been a very slow year for me, I really needed the money.

 

I knew I would get another call for this quote so when I woke up the next morning I told God, I am not going to lie, I’m going to tell the truth.  Well sure enough a few days later they called with the same question, “is all of this on your GSA schedule?” and my answer was “no”.  She told me they would have to go out to bid then, and with those words I knew I would lose this order and I did. 

 

It hurt me financially to tell the truth, because I knew if I lied they would have taken my word for it and placed the order with me, but I felt I was a better person that day for telling the truth.  I lost a pretty good sale on an order the Air Force wanted to place with me, but I gained a sense of strength in knowing I had made a commitment to God on this one issue and I had lived up to it at all costs.  It showed me that you will survive by standing with God and keeping his word.

 

A lot of times the truth hurts people’s feelings and the people you tell it to will argue with you over your answer.  More than once I have answered someone’s question truthfully only to say five minutes later, “Then why did you ask me?”  If you tell the truth then hopefully over time they will see it and appreciate what you said to them. You tell someone the truth, they may not like it, but if you are the one who asks then you need to be ready for the answer and if you are the one who gives the answer you need to be ready to back it up with the truth.

 

Lies hurt.  God loves all of us so he does not want any us to get hurt and he knows lying will do that. A pathological liar has no conscience.  What comes from his lips is the truth as far as he is concerned.  If you are not a pathological liar and you tell a lie then you will have to live with the guilt of it.  You will not have any peace of mind, because you will have this constant nagging reminder of the lie you told.  Your peace of mind will be replaced with anxiety because you will always wonder when that lie will come back and bite you and always feel guilty about the pain you caused someone else. If you tell the truth then you will have peace of mind since you will never be in a situation where you need to cover up or re-explain your lie.  When you tell the truth you can repeat the story a 100 times and it will always come out the same way.

 

If you lie to people then they will justify their lying to you as well.  You lie to them, so they will lie to you.  Now you will become the victim of lies, because that is the world you live in.  That is the only group of people who will have you.  You will live in a world of lies with other liars just like yourself.  How much fun is that?

 

The truth helps people.  How many times do people ask you, “What is wrong with me?”  How many times do you flinch?  I do all the time.  You love them so maybe you lie to them so you don’t hurt their feelings.  You just did them a great injustice, because they came to you and asked for the truth.  You did not help them at all and whatever is ruining their life will continue to do so.

 

At time my wife will ask me why her life is troubled.  I used to tell her and then hold my breath, now I just tell her.  Before she started asking for my opinion, I used to offer up the information freely and it was not taken in the spirit in which it was given.  Now when she asks I tell her.  She seems to agree with my answers more now and then she asks me how she can fix things.  I give her my honest opinion of that as well and when we are done talking she tells me how much she loves me and how I am always there for her.  I really didn’t do anything, I only told her the truth.

 

Telling the truth will benefit you in many ways.  People will trust you, which means they will be drawn to you and you will therefore have more warmer and meaningful relationships.  If you lie to people then they will not trust you and always keep you at a distance.  By telling the truth you will not intentionally hurt other people and you will not hurt yourself (as in the case of the salesman).

 

Our life on earth is a constant process of interacting with other people.  As you go through life you can either tell the truth and gain trust and live in harmony with the people around you who like you or you can lie and live in chaos with only people who will have you.  God wants us to live in harmony, so tell the truth. 

 

Be truthful with God as well when you go to him.  I try to be truthful with God and at times I have insulted him and instead of him bringing his wrath down upon me (as I deserve) he has shown me my sins.  He demands our honesty and the only way he can help us is if we are honest with him.  By being honest with God, he has shown me the errors of my ways and brought true peace into my life.