Honesty is crucial to Christianity. When Christians lie – no matter how tiny the lie might be in the world’s eye – it undermines how people view Christianity and ultimately God. More importantly, the Bible makes it abundantly clear God HATES lies.
In a world where lying is accepted more and more each day, it’s important for your kids to understand some of the reasons why God hates lies so very much. There’s a fun activity you can do as a family to help your kids begin to understand why honest is so important.
Start by telling your children one of the many stories in the Bible where lying caused problems. You may even want to start with the first lie told by Satan to Eve in the Garden of Eden. Ask your children if they can think of more people in the Bible who lied and what happened because of the lie.
Tell them your family is going on a lie treasure hunt for the next week. You are all going to keep track of as many lies you hear as possible. You may want to review that lies can also be with holding truth, confusing people to hide the truth, cheating on tests and papers, etc. Encourage your kids to keep a list of the lies they hear during the course of the day so they won’t forget them. Each night have everyone share the lies they noticed during the day. What problems did they cause? What additional problems could they cause in the future?
To make it a little more fun, you might have “awards” for the person that shared the most lies, noticed a lie most people would have missed, shared the silliest lie heard (for example lying about something when the evidence to prove them wrong is in plain sight), etc. Or set a goal number of lies heard or read and see how quickly your family can find that number of lies. (Don’t forget that if your kids aren’t hearing many lies, most media that contains a mystery or other similar type plot generally contain a lot of lies.)
If your kids are older, you can have great deeper conversations on topics like “Is there such a thing as a good lie and why would God still want us to tell the truth” “How to tell the truth with love and kindness” “Truth versus opinion (It isn’t necessary to share your opinion with everyone or act like your opinion is an absolute truth.)” “What is absolute truth?”, etc.
Have fun with it, but make sure your children understand why lying is not an option as far as God is concerned.