“Understand now what lying is. Any species of designed deception. If the deception be not designed, it is not lying. But if you design to make an impression contrary to the naked truth, you lie. Put down all those cases you can recollect. Do not call them by any soft name. God calls them LIES, and charges you with LYING, and you had better charge yourself correctly. How innumerable are the falsehoods perpetrated every day in business, and in social intercourse, by words, and looks, and actions, designed to make an impression on others, for selfish reasons that is contrary to the truth!”—Finney in Lectures on Revival, lecture 3
<idle musing>
Pretty stringent definition, isn't it? Finney doesn't leave a whole lot of wiggle room when he starts naming sins. All of lecture 3 is about what is sin. He lists over 15 different categories, of which this is but one. Too bad the book isn't in print anymore; of course, that might be why. It is too convicting for our middle-class comfortable christianity.
</idle musing>
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