"You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”
Exodus 20:16

Here are three ways we sometimes manipulate the truth, but do not think of it as lying.

Exaggerating the story. Exaggerating can be done in two ways; one is okay, and one is not.

The way that is okay is called hyperbole. Hyperbole is obvious exaggeration to make a point. To truly be hyperbole, the exaggeration must be so obvious that no one is deceived into thinking what we have said should be taken literally. An example of this is when Jesus said if our eye causes us to sin, gouge it out (Matthew 5:29). Obviously, Jesus did not intend those words to be taken literally. They were hyperbole, intended to underscore how seriously we are to wage war against our sin.
Exaggeration is lying when we are weighting the facts to mislead or deceive—often for shock value. Some are so given to this, that those who know them are used to routinely disbelieving them, while others are being deceived, making the exaggeration a lie.

Withholding some of the story. Sometimes people leave out parts of a story to mislead their hearers. They assure themselves that they haven’t actually “lied,” but if the parts of the story that were left out mislead the hearers, silence is lying. By way of balance, this does not mean we have to tell everyone everything we know all the time. Leaving out what is not important is not bad. Those who insist on telling every minute detail often make the story tedious and even boring!

Spinning the story. We all have a tendency to relay stories in a way that puts us, and those we love, in the best possible light. But when we embellish our stories, by either adding to or leaving out the actual facts to spin the story, we are lying.

Let us beware of these kinds of lies that we seldom think of as lies.

Next time: Ethics of lying for good purposes?