Finding the truth in a world full of lies

[-Fire]

This is a message for all people no matter what you believe.

There are groups of people who believe that it is ok to lie for the honour of ones friends or family.

Such people would say that they value truth but it would seem they value honour as being more important than truth.

But if honour is more important than truth where does the lying stop? If a person lies for themselves, family or friends it wont be long before they are lying about their community, their country and even their enemies.

Any group of people who follow the reasoning that honour is more important than truth will eventually be encompassed in a world of lies. Many of those lies would be hard to detect because they would be spread by honest people who believed that they had been told the truth.

No one should place their own honour or the honour of their family, community or country above the truth. The truth might make people look small, but so what?

For those of us who follow a faith we are not supposed to be bringing honour or glory to ourselves but honour and glory to the one true God.

I have not been able to find any thing in the Bible which says that it is ok to lie for ones friends but I have found the following in "Sahih Bukhari"

("Sahih Bukhari" is one of the collections of Islamic traditions, the "Hadith". The above verse was found on the Muslim Students Association of the University of Southern California website.)

Sahih Bukhari, book 32, no. 6303 http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamen...html#032.6303.

"...A liar is not one who tries to bring reconciliation amongst people and speaks good (in order to avert dispute), or he conveys good. Ibn Shihab said he did not hear that exemption was granted in anything what the people speak as lie but in three cases: in battle, for bringing reconciliation amongst persons and the narration of the words of the husband to his wife, and the narration of the words of a wife to her husband (in a twisted form in order to bring reconciliation between them)."

"...In battle...". I wonder what that means? Does it mean Arabs can lie about Jews, Americans or the west in general in order to win an ideological war? From what I've seen on TV it seems that some regard the spread of their faith as a kind of battle against the infidel. Perhaps the above means they can lie about people of other faiths? (By the way, the verse above was taken from the Hadith. The Hadith are regarded as extremely important in Islam. Without the Hadith it is said to be impossible to rightly interpret the Quran.)

What ever the above verse means it is not hard to see how many people could use this or misuse it in order to justify lying in the name of their "good cause".

If you know of any other verses in books from other faiths which saying lying is ok (even if it is for a so called good cause) please let me know.

I want to find out which group of people values the truth most, even when it makes them look bad.

[akhmetbek]

http://www.dimensional.com/~randl/tcont.htm