What makes a lie a lie?

It’s amazing how people constitute a lie.


The dictionary describes a lie as, a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood. An inaccurate or false statement.
So if someone tries to deceive you right to your face… That’s a lie.

If someone tells you incorrect information… That’s a lie.

But what if someone tells you some information, and yet leaves pertinent information out of their “true” statement in order to still deceive you? They never told you anything that was incorrect, so is that telling the truth? Is that telling a lie? Perhaps it’s what most of us like to call, not telling the whole truth.

Everyone has been guilty of not telling the whole truth, at some point. It is still deception, and yet we as humans still believe we are not doing anything wrong, because we didn’t lie to the person who was asking the question. We rely on someone to ask very specific questions, and if they don’t ask about the specific information you are willingly leaving out, we’re fine right? It’s not lying! It’s like when you were a kid and your parents would ask where you were going for the night. You might tell them you were going to a friend’s house. But they didn’t ask what you were going to do, so you leave out the part that there is a party going on at that friend’s house and you’re probably going to drink and try pot. Everyone is guilty of these same “lies” but some just never grow out of them.

I think deception can be both truthful and dishonest. Sometimes people have good intentions and don’t want someone else to worry or get hurt, and so they know that if they leave out a tiny bit of information, everything will be ok.

Does this make us bad people? Of course not, we just need to be made aware of what we are doing, and realize that a lie shouldn’t just be saying something untrue, a lie is any bit of information that deceives someone else, or causes them to trust you when that trust is truly not earned.