My friend the queen of England always tells me it does. Of course I never tell her she's fat and pale, so it's a complicated issue.
I used to avoid being the one that had to be honest...now i embrace it even if I know full well it is the opposite of what a person wants to hear...this community at hf was my main inspiration...thanks fuckers
That's exactly how I see it, which is the dilemma I was trying to get at yesterday. I personally feel that it's very disrespectful to lie to someone, and I feel that it is disrespectful to myself to lie so as to avoid hurting a person's feelings. However, there are times when discretion is necessary, and that is where the grey area and the dilemma lays. The blatant truth can be somewhat disrespectful to a person's feelings. When my grandma tells me that I got a job because she prayed for it to happen and that god got me the job, I'm not going laugh and say, "No, god didn't get me the job grandma, my work experience got me the damn job." Just one example.
You are confusing truth with verbal diarrhea... You could have simply just smiled and continued on with your life. If she had directly asked you if YOU beleived god did it, then yes, you should have told her the truth. That is not disrepectful to her opinions. Lying about it and agreeing with her if she asked though, would be disrespectful to her. There is never a situation that either the truth or silence wouldn't be better then a lie. Well... not in normal life... being held in guantanamo bay for example being tortured for information.. neither the truth nor silence would help you there... I don't think lying would either though...
^^^ Good point Tom, something to think about. Here's a Nietzsche quote that seemed fitting; "A truth's initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed."
Yep, I do sometimes, when it comes to certain matters. I sometimes have a hard time holding my tongue when it comes to certain things that offend me, such as christian rhetoric. Although the grandma thing was just an example, things like that have happened between family members and I. If someone brings up how something is "the devil's work", I have a hard time just smiling through it and saying nothing.