Lent 2017: Big or Small, Lies are Lies

Lent: Day 20 of 40

Name: Samuel Lee
Lenten Commitment: Give up lying.

There are ten commandments, but the one that is probably broken the most is the commandment to not lie. Everyone lies, including me. It is not that I try to lie and I do not think that I am a consistent liar, but there have been times in the past where my lies have hurt people. That is why, this Lent, I committed to stop lying as much as possible.

I tell lies the most when I feel like I will be embarrassed if I tell the truth. These situations usually came down to peer pressure or my fear of the consequences. For example, I would lie if I thought the other kids at school would make fun of me for doing something. I would tell them that it was a dare or that someone else told me to do it. Often, I would not own up to my mistakes because I thought I would get yelled at or punished. I thought that if I admitted to doing something dumb in school I would be mocked not only in high school but perhaps farther into the future

When I first made this commitment, I thought it would be easy. But I quickly realized this would be a challenge around those who like to make fun of me. But I stuck to it and when I told the truth, it didn’t affect me as much as I thought it would. One time, someone brought up when I fell and cried in the second grade and I just said, “Yeah I do.” The other kids started laughing but I just walked away. I told myself that reacting to them was not the priority. After school, each day, I walked out feeling like I had improved.. I felt less stressed than I normally would. And best of all, I felt God was congratulating me in my heart.

But nobody is perfect and inevitably, I have told some lies. But I am proud that I have lied less than I normally would.

This experience has opened my eyes by showing me how much change there would be in my life by simply telling the truth more often. I learned how weak we are and how great God is by comparing my struggle to give up lying and God’s willingness to give up His own Son for us.

I hope that everyone in the youth group, especially the middle school students, can learn something from my experience. When I was in middle school in the Youth Group, I usually was afraid to own up to something that I did wrong because I did not want to be punished. But as I have gotten older, I see that lying to avoid trouble is a bad choice because it affects how others see you.

My hope for the rest of Lent is to keep being truthful to the people that I interact with even in the situations in which I feel pressured to. And I feel this is definitely something that is worth doing even after Lent is over. Now, this does not mean that I will tell the truth 100 percent of the time, but as Paul Yoo told us this past Sunday, it is about progress, not perfection.