Lies We Inherit, Lies We Tell

“Real eyes realize real lies.” It’s a phrase that’s circulated across social media, bumper stickers, and spoken word sets—but it hits harder the longer you sit with it. At its core is a quiet war between perception and reality, between comfort and confrontation. It challenges the very foundation of belief. Even the word believe hides a paradox: right in the middle is the word “lie.” (beLIEve) Is it just a coincidence—or a subtle reminder that not everything we accept as truth is what it seems?

Belief, after all, is often just a response to a narrative. Something we’re told. Something we accept. But knowledge—real, grounded knowledge—demands more. It asks for evidence. For proof. For truth. And the truth, as we’ve been told, is supposed to “set you free.” But is that really true?

In theory, yes. In practice, not always. Consider a child who confesses to breaking a lamp. They're told honesty is the best policy, but their reward is punishment. They quickly learn that lying can be a protective shield. A way out. Especially when they see their parents doing it—every December, selling them on Santa Claus with twinkling eyes and wrapped presents.

Lies don’t always arrive with bad intentions. Sometimes they’re wrapped in comfort, disguised as tradition, and passed down like family recipes. One generation tells a story, the next repeats it, and over time, fiction starts to feel like fact.

But for those who claim to walk in truth, that should give pause. Jesus didn’t hold back when speaking about the root of deception: “You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father's desires... When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

Not all inherited things are true—some are just repeated.

We are born into a world where lies are not just told—they're normalized. They're celebrated if they're "nice." Think about that word for a moment. “Nice” comes from the Latin nescius, meaning ignorant. Yet today, we’re constantly told to “be nice.” Nice often disguises discomfort, masks confrontation, and allows lies to thrive unchallenged. The car salesperson is nice. The coworker who gossips behind your back is nice to your face. Nice keeps things polite. Truth, on the other hand, is rarely polite. It’s raw, cutting, inconvenient. And often—deeply necessary.

So what happens when truth enters a world that doesn’t want it?

They say, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” A similar question haunts our time: If truth is spoken in a world addicted to comfort and illusion, does anyone even notice?

This anti-intellectual climate doesn’t reward hard questions. It prefers comfortable answers. It praises tradition over investigation. It’s why “Santa Claus” lives longer than logic. And it’s no small irony that “Santa” and “Satan” are anagrams. Santa judges by naughty and nice, but never by truth and lies. When religion takes Santa’s place, God can end up being believed in blindly—rather than understood deeply.

Here’s the paradox: when you call out lies, you become the "accuser." In biblical tradition, Satan means "the accuser"—the one who points out wrongs. So, when you speak the truth, you risk being labeled as the very thing you seek to expose. Truth-telling, then, becomes risky business. It’s easier to stay quiet, to smile, to be “nice.”

In a world ruled by cognitive dissonance, this becomes the norm. We say we want change, but refuse to change ourselves. We know what hurts us—alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine, destructive relationships—but we stay. We cope. We rationalize.

Like the old joke:
A man tells his doctor, “Every time I bend my arm like this, it hurts!” The doctor replies, “Then don’t bend your arm like that.”

Simple advice. Yet the simplest truths are often the hardest to live by. Because they require action, accountability, and—perhaps most terrifying of all—discomfort.

So yes, “Real eyes realize real lies.” But seeing them is only the first step. The real challenge is having the courage to live in truth, even when it’s not nice, even when it hurts, even when the world would rather you didn’t.

Because in the end, the only thing more dangerous than a lie—is a world that no longer wants the truth.