Level 1 dishonesty: Lies of neglect

A negligent lie is any unconscious failure you commit in measuring up to the ideal of which you would be capable. We are accountable to raise our thoughts, feelings, and actions to their highest potential; to align them as fully to reality as we know it, and to aim them at the most valuable outcomes for ourselves and others. The specific and general effects of doing less than your best will always become apparent over time, and always lead to regret for what could have been. Freedom from guilt here and eternal satisfaction hereafter requires you to do all you can to become the best person you can. In every way that you fall short of your potential, you commit lies of neglect.

Feelings. Failing to raise our feelings to their highest potential is one way to enter into a state of dishonesty. Our feelings will be their best as we intentionally recognize and prefer what maximizes longterm joy, even if it causes short-term suffering.

It’s impossible to maximize your long-term feelings while you spend your resources maximizing your present feelings. It is astonishing to consider how much energy the average person spends in artificially stimulating their short-term feelings. While reality ebbs and flows in the pleasure it provides, synthetic alternatives provide a cheap, unbroken stream of shallow and fake contentment. From sensenumbing drugs to scrolling social media, modern society offers an endless array of highly effective ways to ignore our internal and external realities. While all of these interventions can be used to support what produces optimal long-term feelings, they are overwhelmingly used as an end in and of themselves, to the detriment of long-term feelings.

Making choices that prioritize present emotions over long-term outcomes is dishonest, and the danger of promoting emotion over reason cannot be overstated. The scriptures describe this as “open rebellion against God” and “obey[ing] the evil spirit.”¹

Emotions can distort every step of the decision-making process. Emotions can block perfectly plausible options and distort the cost or benefit of those that are considered. Emotions can cause preference for an option other than what logic suggests is best. Bad choices are often obvious to outsiders, but invisible to those who make them because they are in emotional rather than rational states. Every time you cede your rational capabilities to your emotional condition, you are diminishing your ability to reason about future situations and your strength to prefer the long-term best outcome to the one that feels good right now.

In order to maximize your long-term feelings, you have to acknowledge that your long-term feelings are based on the utility of your short-term choices. If you feel terrible, investigate the quality of your past decisions and improve the quality of your present decisions.²

Actions. Failing to raise our actions to their highest potential will put us into a state of dishonesty. It is a rare person who shapes their actions based on the greatest good they could do.³ Instead, most people simply do the least good they can get away with.

Too often, modern people make decisions based on how visible their thoughts, feelings, and actions will be to others instead of whether or not what they are doing is for the greatest good, so far as they understand it.

Woe to those who contrive to hide their schemes from Jehovah! They work in the dark, thinking, Who will see us? Who will know? (Isaiah 29:15, Gileadi Translation)

Deciding what is good based on the reactions of others alone is a form of willful negligence. No matter how valuable the opinion of another, you are never free from the personal responsibility to evaluate the utility of any choice you make.

A popular form of negligence is committed by those who consider morality to consist of short lists of things that are bad and good while holding all other things as inconsequential. The problem with this perspective is that it guarantees the dishonest state of willful neglect. Those who live this way view themselves as good people, but their lives are actually incubators for deceit. They are developing and sustaining lies for the greater part of every day. They lie by ignoring most of their day, because everything matters—not just the short lists they pay attention to. They lie by refusing to think critically and situationally about what they consider to be good and evil. If their idea of what is actually best differs from the moral rules they’ve received from others, then what they consider to be good is actually evil, and what they consider to be evil is actually good.⁴

Those who refuse to exercise their ability to better understand what they do, why they do it, and what alternative options exist are living in a state of active dishonesty, even though they do not know this.

Thoughts. To fail to raise our thoughts to their highest potential is to enter into a state of dishonesty. Our thoughts not only include what we actively think about, but how well we are able to think and what we believe. What we think, why we think it, and how well we take advantage of potential improvements to each determines a great deal of how much happiness we experience in life. For example, our ability to obtain the best outcomes stems from the quality of our beliefs about reality: the options that exist and the cost and benefit of each. These are purely matters of thought.

It is common for people to lumber through life without thinking about what they are doing, why they are doing it, or whether a better option exists. By intentionally allowing yourself to act without making your intention conscientiously explicit, you enter into a state of dishonesty, choosing to decrease your awareness until and unless you begin to think about what you are doing, why you are doing it, and whether a better option exists.