Little White Lies, Bold-Faced Lies, and Everything in Between

Unplugged:

I grew up in the 80s and 90s.  There was no such thing as “screen time” when I was a kid because by the time our dial-up internet connected and we were welcomed by AOL, we had forgotten why we were even staring at the screen! The longest we ever spent on the computer was to attempt to travel the Oregon Trail without dying of Dysentery!  

BP (Before Prison), I don’t think I would have even entertained the idea of being unplugged or disconnected.  So much of our lives are dependent on or driven by being plugged in and connected. Seriously, think about how many times you google something in a day!  What was life even like before we had unlimited information at our fingertips? What did we do when we actually had to talk to each other face to face, when we had to rely on passing notes in middle school, and when we didn’t have social media to convey a picture perfect life?

Prison was like returning to life in the 80s and 90s in so many ways.  There were no cell phones, no Google, no social media. And, it was actually a little refreshing to be unplugged in some ways.  We actually read real, paper newspapers and books! If we wanted to communicate with each other, we actually had to do it face to face!  Our impressions of one another were based solely on our own experiences and interactions with one another as opposed to some pictures and posts created for social media!  In a way, it was refreshing. But, in other ways, it was infuriating!

Inmate.com

When I first got to prison, I heard everyone talking about inmate.com.  Don’t look it up. It’s not real. Well, I’m sure it is actually a real website, but it does not exist in the way everyone in prison references it.  See, inmate.com is simply the network of information (read: gossip) that circulates throughout the prison. 99.9% of the time, the information you receive from inmate.com is incorrect because it bares an incredibly strong resemblance to the old game of Telephone we played as kids.  Typically, whatever information was being relayed would begin with some small element of truth, but by the time it traveled to you, maybe .01% of it was accurate. And, still, everyone seemed to believe everything they heard from inmate.com! Seriously!  

After I had been in Admissions for about 30 days, I started to see the extent to which inmate.com twisted, manipulated, and fabricated information.  Honestly, it got to a point where it was actually humorous to just sit back, watch, and listen to how people would twist information. Let me preface this story by saying that I know this isn’t very Jesus-like...but it was funny! My friend, Sam, and I were laughing about inmate.com one day, and we devised this plan.  We decided we were going to sit at breakfast the next morning and talk about how we heard the prison was too full, and they were going to leave everyone in Admissions for at least 60 days before letting them “pop out” (go to General Population). There were around 200 ladies in Admissions with us, and we predicted that by the time we got to dinner that night, inmate.com would do its job, and the information would get back to us.  So, that’s exactly what we did. Sam is a brilliant storyteller, so she had no problem spinning this elaborate story that she proceeded to tell me during breakfast. And, sure enough, by dinner, the ladies at our table were telling us our own story! Within five minutes, Sam and I burst into hysterical laughter and explained to our table what we had done.  

Our prank was harmless, but much of the information spread through inmate.com was terrible.  Typically, there was some small nugget of truth buried so deeply in the narrative it was almost impossible to even find it.  I heard stories about how ladies had murdered their boyfriends, chopped off their heads, and drove around with them for days and weeks at a time.  I heard stories about how mothers had sown their babies mouths shut, or murdered their babies and served them to their husbands. And worse. And sometimes, there actually was some truth buried somewhere in those stories, but, more often than not, they were just that: stories.

Why do we do this to each other?  Why do we listen to these stories?  Believe these stories? Spread these stories?  

Inmate.com, Churchlady.com, Businesswoman.com, Etc.

I’d like to think this only happens in prison, that it’s some kind of prison phenomena created from the institution.  But, you and I both know it’s not. While inmate.com might be specific to prison, the reality is these networks of gossip are everywhere.  We could just as easily label them frenemy.com, churchlady.com, businesswoman.com, teacher.com, nurse.com. Do I need to go on?  

I don’t have a degree in psychology or counseling, so I can’t claim to be any type of expert on this, but I think that we default to this for a few different reasons.

It makes us feel better about ourselves.  I know this is a tough one to own, but there are definitely people who feel better about their own lives when they see the misery of others.  And, if we’re being really honest, I think we can all admit that we have been that person at one point or another in our lives. And, the thing is, it’s not socially acceptable to sit back and say, “wow, your life sucks.  I’m glad mine isn’t that bad.” So, what happens instead? We talk to other people about the mess, even though it’s not our story to tell, and we embellish just enough to make it interesting. And, when the next person tells the story, they embellish a little more.  Eventually, the story that’s told has only a thread of the truth buried deep within it.  

We like to be “in the know.”  If I asked you to stop right now and think of the person in your church, your family, or your workplace that knows everything, I can almost guarantee you wouldn’t even have to think about it.  You know who they are. And, while it is nice to be the one in the know, there is also a whole lot of responsibility that comes with that because people talk to you and they trust you. If you are the person who knows it all, you have control over what happens with that information. Unfortunately, many of the people who know everything are also the people who spread everything.  And, again, once a story starts to get spread, it starts to get edited, and, eventually, little of the truth remains.

We don’t know what else to talk about.  I’ve learned so much about vulnerability and authentic friendships over the last 20 months.  One of the most important lessons I have learned is that in authentic friendships where vulnerability exists, the conversation looks vastly different than it does in others.  When you have strong, real friendships, you are not afraid to talk about yourself, your problems, your struggles--the BIG stuff. However, when you are in shallow friendships that lack vulnerability, it is too hard and too risky to share the BIG stuff.  Instead, it is a whole lot easier and safer to talk about everyone else and their issues. So, we sit on our decks and around our fires and we talk about everyone else.  

And, honestly, I don’t think, for the majority of us, we even do any of this intentionally, but we have to be cognizant of it if we ever want to stop it.

Making a Choice

It took me a few months in prison to get to the point where I stopped listening to and contributing to inmate.com.  Okay, that’s a lie. I still listened to it, but I quit contributing to it! When I heard information I knew to be false, I refuted it.  It’s actually really interesting to see peoples’ faces when they’re in the middle of some really elaborate story and you stop them and say, “yeah, that’s not true.  I was sitting in the dayroom when that happened, and that’s not how it went at all.” Because, really, what can they say to that? And, I tried to make sure I only offered information I knew to be true, that I had witnessed firsthand, or that I had heard from a staff member.  And, when it came to talking about other peoples’ charges, it was hard! It is so easy to get sucked into the stories and contribute to the exaggerations, but I knew I didn’t want people exaggerating my charges, so I tried to respect that about other people. And, honestly, I didn’t always take the high road I should have, but I am definitely a work in progress!

I wish that inmate.com was specific to prison because then I could have come home to a gossip-free and lie-free environment, but too many people like a good story told at someone else’s expense.  I wish that I could say my return to society has been painless, but the reality is that I literally find myself providing legal documentation and hard evidence to refute lies on a daily basis--forwarding emails from my probation officer and my lawyers, touching base with my daughter’s counselor to clarify lies and misrepresentations, communicating with the school to relay accurate information.  And the list goes on. If it wasn’t my life, it would almost be humorous because the lies that have been told and spread are that ridiculous.  

As cliche as this sounds, I was sitting in church this morning thinking about the latest ridiculous scenario I am dealing with, and I literally wondered if this is what God feels like with us and the lies Satan tells us and the lies Satan uses us to tell.  I wonder if God doesn’t think, “here we go again” when we start to tell a lie or exaggerate a story about someone else. I wonder if God doesn’t listen to the lies Satan fills our heads with and think, “that’s another one I’m going to have to disprove,” or if he has moments where he sits back and wonders how we can even believe the lies we are telling or other people are telling us.  I wonder if he gets tired of spending our lives refuting the lies we find ourselves both believing and spreading. Because I know I’m tired, and God’s been at it a whole lot longer than I have!

So, friends, I pray that you will take to heart the messages we have from scripture about gossip, slander, and lies.  I pray that we will remember that “those who consider themselves religious yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless”  (James 1:26). And I pray that we remember that we are not supposed to “let any unwholesome talk come out of [our] mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, so that is beneficial to those who listen” (Ephesians 4:29).  These are some heavy words and some strong commands, commands that don’t come with fine print! There aren’t any “but” clauses attached to these that give us a pass if we’re mad at someone, if we have a good story to tell, or if we just want to feel a little better about ourselves.  No, they are pretty all-encompassing and pretty clear. So, friends, I pray this week that you will join me in making a conscious effort to walk away from inmate.com, churchlady.com, businesswoman.com, frenemy.com, and every other gossip network that might be part of our worlds. I pray that you will see those people who are being lied about, slandered, and gossiped about and that you will build them up and shut down their abusers.  

Good luck Grace Gurus...