An essay-reasoning on the topic: “Do you always need to tell the truth?”

Selecting a Point of View

First you need to weigh all the arguments for and against. Personally experienced events, situations that happened to other people, as well as plots of famous works will help you think.

Arguments for the truth

Parents begin early to teach their children how bad it is to lie. And there can be quite a lot of arguments confirming these words, for example:

• a person who has maintained the reputation that he never lies, even if the truth comes at a high price, enjoys the trust and respect of others;
• Once you start lying, it’s difficult to stop, you have to come up with details to back up your words and it’s more and more difficult to put an end to the lie;
• those around you deserve to know the true state of things, and not be in error;
• deceit is characteristic of people who have many fears;
• the ability to tell the truth helps a person become bolder;
• to speak the truth is to be free;
• there is always a danger that a person will be caught in a lie;
• Honesty has always been valued as a good quality.

You can take arguments from well-known works. Among them is “Childhood” by L. N. Tolstoy, in which the main character suffers greatly from remorse for his deception and cannot sleep because of it. Or the children's story by V. Dragunsky, which is eloquently called “The Secret Becomes Revealed” and tells about a boy who lied to his mother, because of which they both suffered, and even an innocent passerby.

Another non-obvious example is the suffering of Rodion Raskolnikov from F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment.” His conscience tormented him terribly and he could not calmly live with what he had done. Only the truth brought him relief, even though it entailed severe punishment.

It would seem that there are so many arguments about why it is necessary to tell the truth that the situation can be interpreted quite unambiguously. However, this is not quite true. Of course, a malicious lie is always bad, but sometimes it is told with good intentions.

Arguments for white lies

We must not forget about the arguments that confirm that sometimes it is better to tell a white lie or keep silent about some fact. Examples of such situations could be the following:

• a person was entrusted with someone else's secret;
• doctors and relatives do not tell the patient that he is terminally ill, because he is not ready to accept it;
• a person prepares a pleasant surprise for a loved one and is forced to hide it for some time;
• parents support their children’s belief in miracles, for example, they talk about the existence of Santa Claus;
• adults don't tell their elderly parents about small problems so as not to upset them.

Examples of white lies are also presented in the literature. M. Sholokhov portrayed this problem especially vividly in “The Fate of Man.” The main character of the story, Andrei Sokolov, returned from the front and met the boy Vanya, who was left an orphan due to the war, but did not yet know about it. The man could not tell the child the truth and introduced himself as his father. And who can condemn him for this lie? After all, he actually saved the boy.

So it turns out that the choice of one point of view or another strongly depends on the circumstances. But sometimes a person wants to help his neighbor by hiding the truth, but in reality this still causes harm. A striking example of this is M. Gorky’s play “At the Lower Depths”. It pits two characters against each other, and takes place in a dirty flophouse. The wanderer Luke encourages people in conditions of hopelessness, his lies have a comforting power, and they begin to believe that not all is lost. The second hero, Satin, on the contrary, does not approve of lies and believes that only the truth can really help a person.

The ending of the work is sad. One day the righteous elder leaves, and the people, who were encouraged, drown even deeper in their suffering. Neither Luka nor Satin helped them, so perhaps the right choice is somewhere in the middle.

Pros and cons

Why any lie, even a good one, is dangerous:

1. It does not solve the problem, but only masks fears, complexes, anxieties, etc.
2. It distorts the perception of reality and puts rose-colored glasses on a person. Imagine that one person is hiding his illness from other people. As a result, they do not know which relationship regime is wiser to adhere to, or, if we are talking about a fatal disease, they do not have time to come to terms with the diagnosis.
3. Lies are dangerous. If a person, with good intentions, hides his real location or real company, then in the event of problems or an accident, relatives and friends will not have any real clues. This point is especially relevant for young girls who hide from their parents who and where they are dating. Or for lovers.
4. Lies in the form of making up problems and childish excuses like “my stomach hurts, so I can’t go with you” can cause concern among relatives or an offer to visit the hospital. What's next? Real examination and treatment or admission that you just didn’t want to go. In general, a lie can back the author into a corner and cause even more negative consequences than the original truth.

When a lie is justified:

• You can remain silent about some fact from the past if it does not clearly affect the present and future.
• If you are confident that you can cope with difficulties and they really will not affect the other person.
• When communicating with young children in certain circumstances and due to their age, for example, you should not inform a 2-year-old child about the death of a beloved pet. However, it is better to get as close to the truth as possible and convey it gently.
• In a situation where the truth can destroy a reputation or relationship, but hiding it will not cause harm. We are talking about some shameful experience of the past, from which you learned a lesson and will definitely not repeat it.
• During interrogation to expose the criminal.
• In a situation where this is required by the job description to prevent panic. Relevant for medical practice.

Lying should not be a spontaneous action, a habit. It is justified only when it has become a meaningful and deliberate decision. Moreover, it is important to understand the full responsibility of this choice, to see its consequences and to be confident in one’s own ability to cope with them.

It must be a healing, thoughtful plan, not just a lie. And if you decide to lie, then never reveal the deception yourself. This is the difficulty. Is it possible to live with a secret or a train of secrets, to remember every little detail so as not to screw up?

Writing an essay

After the student decides for himself what is better: truth or lie, the essay will be easy to write. It is better to do this according to the following plan:

• Propose a thesis. It will also be good to decipher the concepts of truth and lies in your own words.
• Give arguments.
• To make a conclusion.

Each part of the text needs to be given special attention.

Proposing a thesis

The paragraph should not be very voluminous, 1-3 paragraphs are enough, but they need to include an introduction and a statement of the relevance of the problem presented. Sometimes this part becomes the most difficult for students because the first lines of the text have a serious responsibility to attract the reader's attention. They are the ones who sometimes influence the overall impression of the work.

The introduction should be concise and clear, without semantic or stylistic errors. Simple sentences, not overloaded with punctuation marks and figures of speech, are best suited for this.

The thesis should be put forward clearly, but at the same time evoke a desire to read what will happen next. You can speak about the relevance quite briefly, simply explaining your opinion about how useful the topic raised by the author seems.

Bringing evidence

There shouldn’t be any difficulties with this point, because the arguments were thought out at the stage of adopting a specific point of view. Nevertheless, they need to be correctly presented so that they become obvious not only to the author of the work, but also to its readers.

A good essay requires at least two pieces of evidence. You can get to them through a logical transition from the thesis. For example, if the plot of a book is given, you can write in general about the authors who raised the topic in question in their works. After presenting specific arguments, you can move on to the final part.

Formulating a conclusion

Before moving to conclusions, you need to re-read what has been written and make sure that the point of view is fully proven. Then you can summarize your thoughts , while trying not to duplicate what has already been written and not to go off topic.

At the end, you can make a call to the reader, for example: “Let’s learn together to respect honest people and try to be like them,” or express the hope that the arguments presented in the text will help someone understand the author’s point of view. You can also end your essay beautifully with a meaningful quote.

Features of choice

It is unacceptable to speak the truth in a fit of anger or during a conflict. It must be deliberate, because it could hurt someone

In any situation, a person must weigh the pros and cons when faced with the choice “to lie or not?” Think about it, the truth can be useful and useless. It can break a person’s destiny, or it can even save someone’s life. You need to be able to find the lesser evil.

1. Ask yourself whether the truth will be valuable in this particular case. To do this, you should look at what is happening from the outside. It is possible that truthful speeches will not change anything or will even worsen the situation. Then what's the point of telling the truth?
2. Put yourself in the shoes of the person you want to tell something to. Would you be pleased to hear this or not? Is it worth hurting someone mentally or not?
3. Remember not only to be honest, but also to remain tactful. If you still decide to tell the truth, then choose the right place, time and the right words.
4. Do not spill the truth when you are emotionally unstable, during a conflict, or in the heat of the moment. Remember that words spoken in anger, even truthful ones, can cause serious psychological trauma.
5. You need to understand that telling the truth is pleasant and easy when it allows you to change your life for the better and make a person happy.
6. The truth in the relationship between a man and a woman is a very valuable thing. People who love each other should not hide anything. However, sometimes it is better to lie in order to strengthen the relationship, support the partner, and give him a boost for motivation.
7. It must be borne in mind that lying requires additional strength. To hide certain information requires considerable energy expenditure.

Everyone has their own truth. You need to understand that lies come from the mind, but truth from the heart. Each person must decide how to live, according to the dictates of his heart or guided by his mind. It is necessary to understand that not all people can always tell the truth. Many people are afraid of the possible consequences.

Now you know the answer to the question “should you always tell the truth?” As you can see, there are certain situations in which it is better not to tell everything as it really is, but to remain silent, embellish or openly lie. However, it is unacceptable to resort to lying on an ongoing basis. So there will be no trust in you, you will lose friends and relatives.

Monologue statement

At school, the student’s speech skills may also be needed if the task involves making a report in class. You can prepare for it and successfully complete it according to the following scheme:

• formulate the main idea (what is better: always tell the truth or sometimes resort to silence);
• make sure that the topic in the text is fully covered;
• confirm your statements;
• provide relevant quotations;
• maintain a logical sequence in the presentation of thoughts;
• remember literacy.

Listeners can ask questions and express disagreement with the speaker's arguments. And when defending your opinion, you need to remember that everyone has the right to choose for themselves whether to bring only the truth to the world or sometimes dilute it with concealment and even distortion of facts. However, we need to stop judging those who have different points of view and learn to respect them.

The main thing is to remember that when choosing the truth, you need to be able not to confuse it with tactlessness. After all, sometimes those around you do not need to know someone else’s opinion, and it can be not only unpleasant, but also inappropriate.

Consequences of lying

Interesting?
Save it on your wall! Is there a white lie? Maybe. A couple of times I had to hold back or lie with the best intentions. I think you did that too. But what can be considered a white lie, and how justified is its use? Let's try to figure it out.

Naturally, the most popular reason is the desire to deceive for one’s own benefit or for the sake of preserving a relationship. But there is a second form of lying - the so-called white lie. When to use it:

• to encourage a person to fight;
• to keep calm, not to make someone nervous;
• so as not to offend a friend;
• to avoid scandal;
• so as not to traumatize the psyche of the interlocutor;
• so as not to upset or disappoint someone;
• for the sake of safety;
• to set the mood.

White lies border very closely on the personal or personal. Often this boundary is blurred. Perhaps the most harmless and justified lies are fictitious encouraging stories like “you won’t believe it, this happened to me too.” It’s difficult to judge everything else unambiguously.

Interesting fact: many experiments in psychology began with deception of participants. They were told that they would study one thing, but in fact the psychologists were studying a different phenomenon. Otherwise, the participants would not be able to be natural or would refuse to participate, which would derail the experiment and slow down the progress of science.

Afterword

In my opinion, the truth should be told in most cases. But if there is an opportunity to encourage or keep a person calm without building castles in the air and without harming adequate perception, then you can lie.

After all, it is better if a friend learns from a loved one that the jacket doesn’t suit him very well or that the product of his creativity leaves much to be desired, than for a stranger to say this in shame later. Any lie, and especially a white lie, must be carefully thought out.

There is no point in lying to a person that his drawing is a work of art if it is not. Constructive criticism and assistance in development in this context is a much better deed than a white lie. True, in this case we have to remember the previous point: does a person know how to accept constructive criticism?

In general, you should always consider all alternatives and check whether a white lie is actually a white lie. It often leads to yet another choice of the lesser evil. In the previous example, one might have to choose between offending a friend and failing publicly. What will be more useful for him in this case? For him, not for you.

Each person decides for himself whether he should always tell the truth.

The main ills of our time are lies and duplicity. From a psychological point of view, lying is a bad habit, a consequence of a bad character and poor upbringing. What is the spiritual view on this problem?

I think the main reason people lie is fear and lack of self-confidence. A person wants to appear better than he is, he is afraid to fail. If we add to this personal complexes, ambitions, envy, then lies and pretense become both a tool for achieving goals and a way of life for such a person.

Of course, upbringing, the level of culture, and manners instilled by parents play an important role in this problem. It is from the family that we learn fundamental concepts about life and the “matrix” of behavior. Unfortunately, recently, parents from a young age have been trying to teach their children to achieve their goals in any way. This is the so-called psychology of leadership - if you are kind, honest and sentimental, then you will simply be “eaten up” by stronger ones. Life is regarded as competition, struggle, and virtuous character traits as weakness. We are already reaping the bitter fruits of such an approach to life - the lumpenization of society, the inability to hear and understand others, disunity and embitterment. As the Holy Scripture says: “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, but the teeth of the children are set on edge” (Ezek. 18:2). It’s not surprising, because false priorities lead to false goals. Initially, the deception in this case is that a real leader is not one who knows how to manipulate people and benefit from everything, but one who is able to sacrifice himself for the sake of others.

I am talking about this to make it clear that lying is not only a personal problem for an individual person, but it is something that can globally influence the life of the entire society and even all of humanity. And with all the diverse types of human lies, the circumstances of their occurrence, it is obvious that its main reason lies exclusively in the spiritual realm. It is no coincidence that the second name of the devil is Liar, Slanderer. This is the original reason for the dark energy with which the slightest untruth, any distortion of the truth is associated.

Lying is not just a sin. This is the main “component” of sin, it is the basis of any sinful action or thought. Probably, a person would never sin if he were not deceived by the messages of sin. As St. Basil the Great says, “Hell cannot be made attractive, so the devil makes the road there attractive.” Sin always deceives a person, and in each of his falls, the sinner becomes a hostage to lies.

According to the teachings of the Venerable Abba Dorotheos, lies are manifested in three ways: in thought, in word, and in life itself. If a lie by thought consists in the unintentional replacement of the true self with a certain “role” in which a person would like to see himself, then a lie by word is already a conscious distortion of reality. By the concept of “lie by life,” Abba Dorotheos refers to the deep sinful depravity of a person who is accustomed to vice, is not afraid of it, and is not embarrassed. But since public opinion still condemns vice, but still values ​​virtue, a person considers it advantageous to hide under a virtuous mask. This lie lies in the cynical duality of life itself.

Abba Dorotheos names three reasons that prompt people to lie, which are also the basis of all sin. This is, firstly, voluptuousness, that is, the desire to fulfill every desire; secondly, love of money - the desire to acquire material values; and thirdly, love of fame, which in the case of the monks was expressed in a reluctance to humble themselves.

— A lie on the outside begets a lie to oneself: a person stops exposing himself, admitting to himself honestly what he has done. This leads to false confession and, as a result, to depression. How to start telling the truth to yourself? And what are the consequences of self-deception?

Saint Theophan the Recluse teaches that “one must be able to divide oneself into oneself and the enemy hidden within me.” The main trick of the devil is that he convinces a person that his thoughts and feelings are himself. When we begin to separate ourselves from our own emotions, feelings and thoughts, they can no longer control us.

Self-deception is always associated with self-justification, the belief that anyone can be to blame for a particular problem, but not myself. Avoiding problems in this way deprives a person of the opportunity to solve them. Therefore, the Monk Paisius the Svyatogorets said: “By justifying yourself, it is as if you are building a wall separating you from God, and thus breaking off all connection with him.” We need to learn to be responsible before God and people for our lives, actions and thoughts. Don’t bury your head in the sand, but open your heart to God, who, seeing a person’s sincere aspiration, will always help and guide you on the true path.

The starting point of everyone’s spiritual life is an honest look turned inward. That is why the holy fathers said that the first sign of recovery of the soul is the vision of one’s sins, as countless as the sand of the sea. Until a person realizes the depth of his fall, sees his weakness and tries to build his life on his own, only disappointment and endless wandering await him. Passions blind us and manipulate our consciousness. Therefore, in order to see the real picture of your situation, you need to shift your own ego from the center of life and look at yourself from a different perspective. It is important, in addition to your shortcomings and spiritual illnesses, to also see the One who can cure them. It is only in the power of the Lord to save us from ourselves, our own passions and sinful habits. Without God, an honest look at yourself can end in despondency and despair. Spiritual illnesses are cured by the grace that a person receives in the Sacraments of the Church, prayer and repentance.

The Gospel gives us not only the truth about ourselves, but also hope for correction. I came across an interesting analogy from one spiritual writer. He compared the sinful fall of a person to exercise on a trampoline: the lower the point of fall, the higher the person “rises” in repentance. Therefore, knowing the truth about yourself, honestly exposing your shortcomings, seeing them is not self-flagellation or humiliation, but the only way out of the personality crisis.

Interviewed by Natalya Goroshkova

Hello dear readers. In this article you will find out whether you need to tell the truth. Is it worth doing this in all cases, or are there situations when it is better to lie? When do we ever resort to lying? And what should you consider before lying or telling the truth?

Video: How to write essays?

Here we have selected for you popular problems regarding lying from texts for preparing for the Unified State Exam in the Russian language. The arguments revealing them are selected from Russian literature. You can download all this in table format at the end of the article or read them directly on this page with convenient navigation on problematic issues.

1. One of the central themes in Gorky’s play “At the Depths”
   is the problem of “white lies.” Thus, Luke and Satin represent two opposing points of view: to tell the truth, despite mental torment, or to lie, but with intent, implying compassion for “your neighbor.” The preacher consoled the inhabitants of the shelter and gave them hope, even if it was not supported by real reasons. But the sharper spoke out against such false healing; he told the truth head-on, without thinking about how his interlocutor would accept it. In his opinion, a real person must live with open eyes, without illusions. Since Luke capitulated with his philosophy and left those who believed him to their fate, we conclude that the author is on the side of Satin, that is, a lie cannot be justified by good.
2. Sometimes in life there are situations that require lying to save yourself or a loved one. A.S.
   Pushkin in the novel “The Captain's Daughter” contrasts ordinary deception with the “white lie” that helped Masha Grineva escape from Emelyan Pugachev. If not for the cunning move of Pyotr Grinev, the innocent girl could have been executed. Each of us must distinguish between cases when to bend our hearts means saving a person from terrible misfortune. Then we can go against the truth. But in other situations, when personal gain is involved, this trick is immoral and borders on a moral crime.
3. Comedy A.S.
   Griboyedov's "Woe from Wit" also contains the theme of pretense and deception. The main character assumes the presence of lies, but only in cases where it is necessary to save true love. So, for example, Sophia deceives Famusov in order to secretly meet with his secretary. Her intentions are pure, but with this crookedness the girl approaches the hypocritical way of life of that society, whose morals are far from ideal. Her feeling turns out to be an exposed illusion, her knight turns out to be an ordinary swindler, and her lie turns out to be the first step into the secular world of falsehood and deception. So even a “white lie” does not lead to good, because a person cannot always figure out what is good.