Teen4truth asks:
“I’ll try to make this short. Basically, my friend wants to “uninvite” someone from their party and invite someone else instead, because two people wouldn’t get along. They want to lie to the person so they won’t come, but I told them they shouldn’t lie. There’s too great of a chance of someone finding out,and besides, you shouldn’t lie anyway. They then proceeded to ask me what I would do, and not hurt feelings. I said they should just say to that person would not get along with another friend coming, and just start denigrating the party so they wouldn’t want to come. But I’m not satisfied with my answer, and I don’t think my friend was either. Now I don’t know what to do.”
Here’s the bottom line of the situation: is lying a reasonable way to avoid conflict? The answer of course is “no.” But why? The problem with lying to make conflict go away is that, rather than erasing conflict, you are creating more conflict. Now there’s not only conflict between two people, there is conflict between what people think is true, and what is actually true. The result is that the situation becomes more strained, not less. What happens when the other person finds out you lied? (Read that sentence again: not if but when).
The Bible is clear that straight up, honest truth is the best way, even if it is not the easiest. Ephesians says to “speak the truth in love” (4:15), and “having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor” (5:25). You don’t have to be a jerk with the truth, speak it lovingly with the hope of reconciliation.
The gospel plays into this situation big time. Did Jesus restore the conflict between us and God by covering it up with lies: “God loves you, don’t worry about judgment! God doesn’t care how you live, as long as you don’t hurt anyone else!” No, no, no. Rather than covering it up, he spoke the truth about our conflict with God, and then he paid for it by dying on the cross and rising from the dead.
Forgiveness is the way to solve conflict between two people, just like it was the only way to solve the conflict between us and God. That is what teen4truth should hope for between these two people, forgiveness between them and between them and God. That is what this situation needs.
