Showing posts with label Lying. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lying. Show all posts

Saturday, May 16, 2020

The Moral Unitarian Universalist - Lying

The devil is the father of lies

The point keeps getting lost in this debate nationally about the Federal management of the Covid- 19 pandemic.

It is important to recognize and acknowledge that facts are facts. Opinions are opinions, Behavior is behavior.

I don't care what people do. That's their decision. I do care whether they get the facts straight or not.

Disinformation is pure evil. Satan, remember, is the father of lies.  Donald Trump and his administration and many of our State’s governors and Senators and congresspeople are Satan's favorite children because they do his will and work.

As Naomi Klein said and I am paraphrasing, "There are a lot of ideas lying around. Some are good and some are bad. Be careful which you choose to think about, disseminate, and act on."

Making a mistake is one thing. It is not immoral to be ignorant, but it is immoral to lie and promulgate deceit to achieve one’s goals.

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote seven principles. Unfortunately, besides the principle to affirm and promote justice, equity, and compassion in human relations they have no affirmation about truth telling. 

I have been lied to on many occasions by UUs sometimes with significant congregational consequences. With lies and deceit any trust in covenantal relationships is broken.

The basis of maintaining and benefiting from covenantal relationships is trust and trust is based on honesty.

It would seem then that to maintain healthy covenantal relationships, lying should be prohibited, censured, and called out. Once called out, lying needs to be acknowledged, apologized for, and the lie corrected so that healthy rapport can be restored.

We are living in a time when lying and deceit has become accepted as the way of getting things done and “winning.”

It is time for Unitarian Universalists, more than other Americans, to stand up for truth telling and censure lying and deceit. We can start in our own families, our places of work, in our congregations, in our communities, in our States and in our Nation.

The social disruption of the Covid-19 brings lying and deceit in the pursuit of ulterior motives from the background to the foreground. UUs could lead the way if they could get their own house in order. The disinformation being perpetrated is being used to divide people for political advantage to achieve selfish goals.

One of the most important things you can do during this Covid-19 is simply to recognize, acknowledge, disseminate, and act on the truth so that trust can be restored across our communities, States, Nation and the world.





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