It doesn’t take much dishonesty to be dishonest

A person who is dishonest is called a liar, and almost all liars take great offense to the designation. Normal people assume that you must lie often and intensely to be accurately called a liar. The fact is that most people lie, and because most people lie, most would like to think that there is some allowance for lying before one is considered to be a liar.

Just how often can you lie and avoid the designation? For most crimes, a person is designated a criminal after a single infraction. It isn’t the case that someone is a murderer only after killing many people, a rapist after claiming many victims, or a robber after burgling many places. How many times can you lie without being a liar?¹

Just how intense does a lie need to be before the person who utters it is a liar? Liars would have you believe there is some threshold of grace under which acts of dishonesty are waived. Is this true? To be dishonest is a question of dishonesty’s presence or absence, not its quantity or quality.

Liars would have you believe that they aren’t liars as long as they aren’t lying right now. Is this true? Would you be an honest person if you had continuously lied until now, even if you were telling the truth right now? Or could you be called honest if you were lying right now, even if it was the first time you ever had?

Liars would have you believe that the only way to lie is to state something that you know is false. Is this true? Defining the condition so narrowly does nothing to narrow the results. To lie is to act, feel, or think contrary to the truth, as far as you understand it, and this spans behavior much broader than simply saying what you know is untrue.

Liars are offended when you call attention to their dishonesty, even if they have no problem admitting other faults. In general, the more a person has rationalized their sin, the more offended they are at being called out on it, and most people have extensively excused themselves for lying. Most people hate being called liars a lot more than they hate lying itself, and this can only be because they incorrectly judge being called the title worse than performing the act.

The common allowances for lying—as with most other sins—are less about reasonable consideration of their effects and more about writing norms around the preexistent popularity of the vice.² There is no such thing as a lie that doesn’t harm the one perpetuating it and everyone exposed to it. Liars may scoff at the label being applied to what is (to them) normal behavior, but this doesn’t make their behavior any less harmful.³ Any degree of dishonesty comes with the full range of penalties that dishonesty brings. The effects of dishonesty come by degrees, each of which remove you further from the benefits of honesty —benefits which make all the difference in and after this life.

Honesty and dishonesty are not acts, but states entered into and maintained by honesty or dishonest acts. When you willfully ignore, distort, or deny any aspect of yourself or the world around you, you fall into a lower state of existence, where you remain until you admit and contend with the consequences of doing so. One who enters a state of dishonesty instantly begins to experience the full range of consequences of dishonesty, and instantly distances themselves from the full range of the benefits provided by honesty.

Honesty isn’t a question of how honest you are in the moment. When you ask yourself if you are dishonest, you are not asking if you are dishonest most of the time , but rather whether you are ever dishonest. Even a little dishonesty is enough to poison your life in ways far beyond what you are capable of noticing. Lies are never little. A little bit of dishonesty is enough to adulterate the entirety of your character, like sewage added to drinking water. Just one dishonest thought, feeling, or action is enough to place you into a state of dishonesty.

Maintaining a state of honesty is nothing like maintaining a healthy body weight, where the gradual nature of changes to one’s body composition allows great tolerances in the occasional indulgence. To live in the truth and not be a liar, your life must be free from any dishonesty; you must be honest in all things, all the time. The honesty of a person is not measured by how honest they are during the spans of time when it is easy, but how honest they are in the rare moments when it is difficult.⁴ Almost everyone is dishonest at least sometimes, and a surprising number of people are dishonest most of the time.

As you come to understand just how little it takes to be dishonest, you will come closer to realizing that, in all likelihood, you are a liar. As you come to understand the true cost of being a liar, you will find the necessary motivation to escape from this state.

Honesty is an exceedingly difficult state to achieve and an exceedingly easy state to fall out of. Honesty takes a long time to obtain, and only one moment to lose. Being honest requires you to be constantly ready and willing to do anything and everything needed to meet the demands of consistency and truthfulness in every moment. You never know when a challenge to your honesty will come or what it will cost you. The best defense is to decide ahead of time that honesty is worth any price.⁵