When Mr 5 got home from the fair he was keen to tell about what he'd seen.
"There was a man selling soap ..." he was struggling to recall, " ... and a man with no shoes selling the stuff that he put on my bee sting ..."
I think, at this point, he realised that even though there was a lot to see, he hadn't remembered much at all.
So - to make the story more interesting he "invented". He lied.
" ... and there was a big fat man with poppy eyes selling dog hair!"
His older brother had a strong visual image of this, so he kindly drew it for us. He reckons that city-folks might buy the dog hair to scatter around their inner-city apartment rugs to give their home a "country-fied" air (he was remembering the story someone told us about people in the city buying spray-on mud to decorate their 4-wheel drive vehicles ...)
So we had a discussion about saying things that weren't true.
Some people call them "embellishments".
Actually they are lies (like pretending your 4-wheel drive has been off-road, and that you own a dog when in fact you don't.)
Black and white. Truth and lies.
Mr 5 now knows that if he wants to say something that isn't true because he thinks it would be funny he needs to say "And I think it would be funny if there was a big fat man with poppy eyes selling dog hair ..." or whatever his funny thought would be.
Truth is important. God said so.
Blessings
The Mummalady
1 comment:
i teach my children that lying is just like stealing. you are stealing the truth from someone when you lie to them.
this they understand.
i do my best not to talk in 'degrees' of sin, and this is one way of equalising i think.
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