Liar's Poker

“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much… You cannot serve God and wealth”

- Luke 16:10-13

We started out this week playing a two player card game that my family calls “liar’s poker.”  Some of the kids said that their friends call it “BS.”  Here’s how it goes: Player One picks up a card from the deck, looks at it and makes a statement like, “I am holding a club.”  Player Two decides whether or not Player One is telling the truth.  She says “true” or “false.”  If she is right, she keeps the card.  If she is wrong and has been tricked, Player One keeps the card.  Then Player Two picks up a card and he makes a statement, and so on… When you reach the time limit or the end of the pile, each player counts their cards and the winner is the one with the most cards.  Essentially, the game rewards you for being a good liar.

When is it OK to tell a lie?  That was the question of the day.  The Ten Commandments say, “Thou shalt not lie.”  But we all do, at some time or another.  Some thought it was OK to lie if someone is having a surprise birthday party.  Some thought it was OK to lie in order to not hurt someone’s feelings.  Someone calls you and says they want to hang out.  You don’t really feel like it that day, so you say you have a lot of homework.  And this may actually be sort of true.  But it’s not the real reason you don’t want to hang out.  What if you had to tell a lie to save someone’s life?  Would that be OK?

And what is a lie, anyway?  Is not saying something a lie?  What if a teacher is late for class, and some kids are throwing around a ball and they break a window.  The teacher walks in and says, “Who broke the window?”  No one says anything, but everyone knows who did it.  Is that a kind of lie?  What if there is someone who is destroying property in your neighborhood, and you know who it is, but you are afraid to tell because maybe he will break something in your house?  Keeping silence in the face of injustice… is that a form of lying?  It may take a lot of courage to tell that kind of truth.

It seems that there are no easy answers here.  So we look to the parables of Jesus to guide us and help us to make the right decision.  What do you think?