Why do we lie?

The church teaches the following in the Gospel Principles manual. Gospel Principles: chapter 31: Honesty

"There are many other forms of lying. When we speak untruths, we are guilty of lying. We can also intentionally deceive others by a gesture or a look, by silence, or by telling only part of the truth"

Why do people lie? why do you lie? why do any of us lie? In every example I can think of, when a lie is told there is something to be gained by the liar. There is something that gets avoided, perhaps a punishment is avoided, there is a consequence that is avoided. The result of a lie is something positive for the one that told the lie. 

As my shelf broke and I read the CES Letter and investigated its sources and dug in and learned disturbing fact after disturbing fact I started to ask myself. "The church says teaches that anti-mormon material is made up of lies and that ex-mormons are bitter angry people, so if these people are lying, what are they getting from the lie? what reason do they have to lie?" It seems to me that the only party that gains something here is the church. if they are able to make their members believe that all anti-mormon material is just lies or that ex-mormons are angry bitter people they keep their members from finding the truth. 

The typcial ex-mormon experience is this. 1. you find out some disturbing truth about the church. 2. you go and corroborate from church resources that it is in actuality true. 3. you share it with your family and friends. 4. you get told that you are a liar or that you're being deceived by Satan and that you need to forget the fact and just believe the church is true. 5. You are either persuaded for a time to "stay in the boat" or you have the courage to stand up and say "enough is enough".

There are people who have left the church or don't believe and have lied to get stuff out of the church, a name that comes to mind is Mark Hoffman, I'm not saying that there aren't bad people out there. what i am saying is that Jeremy Runnells doesn't seem like he is lying, he does allow his emotions and frustration leak into the CES Letter but you can corroborate everything that he points out.  

I ask myself, why did I have to go outside the church to learn the churches history? The church teaches a whitewashed version of its history. The only reason I can think of as to why they would teach a whitewashed version is because the church fears something in their history. Something that they want to hide because they know that if members learned about it they would leave. Which is exactly what is happening. people are leaving the church in droves and its pretty consistently because they grew up believing one thing and then discovered that its actually not the truth. For me I grew up believing the church was a certain way and then I woke up from the stupor that they had lulled me into and I walked away.

For me, it was a particular struggle, to discover that the leaders of the church had lied, probably because I felt like the church had turned me into a liar, because I defended their lies on my mission or in conversations with people. 

Here is just one example: Holland lied in a BBC interview about the penalties that used to be part of the temple covenants. Jeffrey R Holland Lying On Camera I have saved the timestamp in the link so you don't have to watch the whole thing. He very clearly tries to get away with "telling only part of the truth".

Why would he lie? because he knows that the church is weird and he's trying to protect some public image of the church. one of the biggest tells of a cult is that it has secret teachings that you don't learn about until you're already in the cult. the temples serve that purpose. its a "sacred" place that you're told you have to go if you want to gain salvation and you can't go there unless you get your "worthiness" permit. You can't learn about it in detail before going because what you learn there you promise never to talk about with anyone. all hallmarks of a cult.

 

To sum up, the church stands to gain a lot by painting anything negative or not faith promoting as a lie or as untrustworthy.