The English language has 112 words for deception, according to one count, each with a different shade of meaning: collusion, fakery, malingering, self-deception, confabulation, prevarication, exaggeration, denial. Robin Marantz Henig
Meditation: We live in the era of deception. A six year old on the street was asked what he thought about president Trump after his first year in office. The boy answered: “He changed the world. He took away harmony.” It seems to me that American children grow up today exposed to all 112 nuances of daily broadcasted political deception. However, it is intriguing to learn that the Native American community of the Apaches, who have a particularly negative view of lying, in their language only have two words for lying or deceiving. They did not need more words, as it happened so rarely in their culture. Our current American culture needs more than hundred words to describe and talk about deception, as it happens every day in many ways. The view of lying and deceiving is being normalized by our current political climate. The lack of harmony the boy describes is grounded in us becoming what our behavior and our mind engage in. We as culture are shaped by the language we use.
Prayer: God of history and God of the present day, as the Native American culture was eliminated and their values of harmony with nature became eradicated, the newly imported language and culture brought with it the frequent use and many nuances for the phenomenon of lying and deceiving. Behavior (and thus culture) creates language! God we pray that we, including our children, will remain critical and awake. We pray that we adults will teach the next generation in words and in practice the opposites of those 112 words. Amen
They will do no wrong; they will tell no lies. A deceitful tongue will not be found in their mouths. They will eat and lie down and no one will make them afraid. Zephania 3:13
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