What does beguiling mean?
Enticing, charming, mesmeric, fascinating, captivating, enthralling, appealing, attractive, mesmerizing
What does this giant look like?
Powerful and Cruel Giant
He can strike in an instant
Devastation to ourselves and others around us
He doesn’t carry weapons of wood or iron.
“Our WORDS have untold power to BLESS, but they can do equally untold harm when we don’t speak truthfully.”
Lives…..DESTROYED (Deceptive words)
Reputations…..Ruined (Well placed lies)
Dreams…..Dashed (misled)
Psalm 38:11-12
New King James Version (NKJV)
11 My loved ones and my friends stand aloof from my plague,
And my relatives stand afar off.
12 Those also who seek my life lay snares for me;
Those who seek my hurt speak of destruction,
And plan deception all the day long.
Matthew 24:10-12
New King James Version (NKJV)
10 And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. 11 Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. 12 And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.
Matthew 24:23-25
New King James Version (NKJV)
23 “Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it. 24 For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. 25 See, I have told you beforehand.
Life and death is in the tongue
Proverbs 18:19-21
New King James Version (NKJV)
19 A brother offended is harder to win than a strong city,
And contentions are like the bars of a castle.
20 A man’s stomach shall be satisfied from the fruit of his mouth;
From the produce of his lips he shall be filled.
21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue,
And those who love it will eat its fruit.
Commandment #9
Exodus 23:1-3
New King James Version (NKJV)
Justice for All
23 “You shall not circulate a false report. Do not put your hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. 2 You shall not follow a crowd to do evil; nor shall you testify in a dispute so as to turn aside after many to pervert justice. 3 You shall not show partiality to a poor man in his dispute.
“Neither my words nor my actions contained even a hint of deception”
Matthew 24:4-5
New King James Version (NKJV)
4 And Jesus answered and said to them: “Take heed that no one deceives you. 5 For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many.
4 types of Deception
Outright lies
Twisted Truth
Malicious Gossip
Flattery (inaccurate picture of the truth)
Many times it involves CHEATING OTHERS.
Proverbs 26:18-19
New King James Version (NKJV)
18 Like a madman who throws firebrands, arrows, and death,
19 Is the man who deceives his neighbor,
And says, “I was only joking!”
Jeremiah 9:3-6
New King James Version (NKJV)
3 “And like their bow they have bent their tongues for lies.
They are not valiant for the truth on the earth.
For they proceed from evil to evil,
And they do not know Me,” says the Lord.
4 “Everyone take heed to his neighbor,
And do not trust any brother;
For every brother will utterly supplant,
And every neighbor will walk with slanderers.
5 Everyone will deceive his neighbor,
And will not speak the truth;
They have taught their tongue to speak lies;
They weary themselves to commit iniquity.
6 Your dwelling place is in the midst of deceit;
Through deceit they refuse to know Me,” says the Lord.
Scramble to remember our latest FABRICATION so as to “KEEP OUR STORY STRAIGHT”
Adam & Eve
Serpent Deceived Eve by blurring the distinction between DIVINE ORDER and A FRIENDLY PIECE OF ADVISE.
Moses and the 10 suggestions
Eve misled husband
The two attempted to deceive their maker
Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent, and the serpent didn’t have a leg to stand on!
Genesis 3:12-14
New King James Version (NKJV)
12 Then the man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.”
13 And the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14 So the Lord God said to the serpent:
“Because you have done this,
You are cursed more than all cattle,
And more than every beast of the field;
On your belly you shall go,
And you shall eat dust
All the days of your life.
YOU CANNOT DECEIVE GOD
LIE TO ME (television show)
Inspired by a real-life behavioral scientist, this FOX drama tells the tale of a deception expert who helps uncover the truth for the FBI, local police, law firms, corporations, and individuals. Dr. Cal Lightman and his team are effectively human polygraph machines, and no truth can be concealed from them.
Our faces reveal multitudes about what we are thinking, feeling, intending.
A slack jaw hints that we’ve been surprised,
flared nostrils suggest hostility.
Drooping eyelids indicate sadness or perhaps just … exhaustion.
This is to say nothing of the powerful messages communicated by the face in the embarrassed downward glance,
the flirtatious “look away,” or the piercing stare.
10,000 expressions – 43 muscles in the face
7 basic emotions: fear, happiness, sadness, anger, contempt, disgust and surprise
TEN SIGNS OF DECEPTION
1. Lack of self-reference
Truthful people make frequent use of the pronoun "I" to describe their actions: "I arrived home at 6:30. The phone was ringing as I unlocked the front door, so I walked straight to the kitchen to answer it. I talked to my mother for 10 minutes before noticing that my TV and computer were missing from the living room." This brief statement contains the pronoun "I" four times in three sentences.
Deceptive people often use language that minimizes references to themselves. One way to reduce self-references is to describe events in the passive voice.
"The safe was left unlocked" rather than "I left the safe unlocked."
"The shipment was authorized" rather than "I authorized the shipment."
Another way to reduce self-references is to substitute the pronoun "you" for "I."
Question: "Can you tell me about reconciling the bank statement?"
Answer: "You know, you try to identify all the outstanding checks and deposits in transit, but sometimes when you're really busy you just post the differences to the suspense account."
In oral statements and informal written statements, deceptive witnesses sometimes simply omit self-referencing pronouns. Consider this statement by a husband who claims his wife was killed accidently: "I picked up the gun to clean it. Moved it to the left hand to get the cleaning rod. Something bumped the trigger. The gun went off, hitting my wife." The husband acknowledges in the first sentence that he picked up the gun. But the second sentence is grammatically incomplete; "I" has been omitted from the beginning of the sentence. In the third sentence, "something" rather than "I" bumped the trigger. The statement also contains few personal possessive pronouns. The witness refers to "the" gun and "the" left hand where we might expect "my" to be used.
2. Verb tense.
Truthful people usually describe historical events in the past tense. Deceptive people sometimes refer to past events as if the events were occurring in the present. Describing past events using the present tense suggests that people are rehearsing the events in their mind. Investigators should pay particular attention to points in a narrative at which the speaker shifts to inappropriate present tense usage. Consider the following statement made by an employee claiming that a pouch containing $6,000 in cash was stolen before she could deposit it at the bank (I have emphasized certain words.):
"After closing the store, I put the cash pouch in my car and drove to the Olympia Bank building on Elm Street. It was raining hard so I had to drive slowly. I entered the parking lot and drove around back to the night depository slot. When I stopped the car and rolled down my window, a guy jumps out of the bushes and yells at me. I can see he has a gun. He grabs the cash pouch and runs away. The last I saw him he was headed south on Elm Street. After he was gone, I called the police on my cell phone and reported the theft."
The first three sentences describe the employee's drive to the bank in the past tense. But the next three sentences describe the alleged theft in the present tense. An alert investigator might suspect that the employee stole the day's cash receipts, then drove to the bank and called the police from the bank parking lot to report a phony theft. (See another example in "Antics with Semantics" at bottom.)
3. Answering questions with questions
Even liars prefer not to lie. Outright lies carry the risk of detection. Before answering a question with a lie, a deceptive person will usually try to avoid answering the question at all. One common method of dodging questions is to respond with a question of one's own. Investigators should be alert to responses such as:
"Why would I steal from my own brother?"
"Do I seem like the kind of person who would do something like that?"
"Don't you think somebody would have to be pretty stupid to remove cash from their own register drawer?"
4. Equivocation
The subject avoids an interviewer's questions by filling his or her statements with expressions of uncertainty, weak modifiers and vague expressions. Investigators should watch for words such as: think, guess, sort of, maybe, might, perhaps, approximately, about, could. Vague statements and expressions of uncertainty allow a deceptive person leeway to modify his or her assertions at a later date without directly contradicting the original statement.
Noncommittal verbs are: think, believe, guess, suppose, figure, assume. Equivocating adjectives and adverbs are: sort of, almost, mainly, perhaps, maybe, about. Vague qualifiers are: you might say, more or less.
5. Oaths
Although deceptive subjects attempt to give interviewers as little useful information as possible, they try very hard to convince interviewers that what they say is true. Deceptive subjects often use mild oaths to try to make their statements sound more convincing. Deceptive people are more likely than truthful people to sprinkle their statements with expressions such as: "I swear," "on my honor," "as God is my witness," "cross my heart." Truthful witnesses are more confident that the facts will prove the veracity of their statements and feel less need to back their statements with oaths.
6. Euphemisms
Many languages offer alternative terms for almost any action or situation. Statements made by guilty parties often include mild or vague words rather than their harsher, more explicit synonyms. Euphemisms portray the subject's behavior in a more favorable light and minimize any harm the subject's actions might have caused. Investigators should look for euphemistic terms such as: "missing" instead of "stolen," "borrowed" instead of "took," "bumped" instead of "hit," and "warned" instead of "threatened."
7. Alluding to actions
People sometimes allude to actions without saying they actually performed them. Consider the following statement from an employee who was questioned about the loss of some valuable data: "I try to back up my computer and put away my papers every night before going home. Last Tuesday, I decided to copy my files onto the network drive and started putting my papers in my desk drawer. I also needed to lock the customer list in the office safe." Did the employee back up her computer? Did she copy her files onto the network drive? Did she put her papers in the desk drawer? Did she lock the customer list in the office safe? The employee alluded to all these actions without saying definitively that she completed any of them. An attentive investigator should not assume that subjects perform every action they allude to.
8. Lack of Detail
Truthful statements usually contain specific details, some of which may not even be relevant to the question asked. This happens because truthful subjects are retrieving events from long-term memory, and our memories store dozens of facts about each experience — the new shoes we were wearing, the song that was playing in the background, the woman at the next table who reminded us of our third-grade teacher, the conversation that was interrupted when the fire alarm rang. At least some of these details will show up in a truthful subject's statement.
Those who fabricate a story, however, tend to keep their statements simple and brief. Few liars have sufficient imagination to make up detailed descriptions of fictitious events. Plus, a deceptive person wants to minimize the risk that an investigator will discover evidence contradicting any aspect of his or her statement; the fewer facts that might be proved false, the better. Wendell Rudacille, the author of "Identifying Lies in Disguise" (Kendall/Hunt, 1994), refers to seemingly inconsequential details as "tangential verbal data" and considers their presence to be prime indicators that subjects are telling the truth.
9. Narrative balance
A narrative consists of three parts: prologue, critical event and aftermath. The prologue contains background information and describes events that took place before the critical event. The critical event is the most important occurrence in the narrative. The aftermath describes what happened after the critical event. In a complete and truthful narrative, the balance will be approximately 20 percent to 25 percent prologue, 40 percent to 60 percent critical event and 25 percent to 35 percent aftermath. If one part of the narrative is significantly shorter than expected, important information may have been omitted. If one part of the narrative is significantly longer than expected, it may be padded with false information. The following statement, filed with an insurance claim, is suspiciously out of balance:
"I was driving east on Elm Street at about 4:00 on Tuesday. I was on my way home from the A&P supermarket. The traffic light at the intersection of Elm and Patterson was red, so I came to a complete stop. After the light turned green, I moved slowly into the intersection. All of a sudden, a car ran into me. The other driver didn't stop, so I drove home and called my insurance agent."
The subject's statement contains four sentences of prologue, only one sentence describing the critical event, and only one sentence of aftermath. The prologue contains a credible amount of detail: the day and time of the accident, the driver's destination, and the location of the accident. But the description of the critical event (i.e., the alleged accident) is suspiciously brief. The claimant did not describe the other vehicle, which direction it came from, how fast it was going, whether the driver braked to try to avoid the accident or how the two vehicles made contact.
The aftermath is also shorter than one would expect from a complete and truthful account of a two-car accident. The claimant does not say which direction the other vehicle went after leaving the scene of the accident. He does not mention getting out of his vehicle to inspect the damage nor does he say whether he spoke to any people in the area who may have witnessed the accident. A claims adjuster receiving such a statement would be wise to investigate whether the policyholder concocted a phony hit-and-run story to collect for damages caused by the driver's negligence.
10. Mean Length of Utterance
The average number of words per sentence is called the "mean length of utterance" (MLU). The MLU equals the total number of words in a statement divided by the number of sentences:
Total number of words / Total number of sentences = MLU
Most people tend to speak in sentences of between 10 and 15 words (ACFE Self-Study CPE Course, "Analyzing Written Statements for Deception and Fraud," 2009). When people feel anxious about an issue, they tend to speak in sentences that are either significantly longer or significantly shorter than the norm. Investigators should pay particular attention to sentences whose length differs significantly from the subject's MLU.
Why does telling the truth seem so difficult when stretching the truth comes so easily?
What motivates us to speak deceitfully?
Why do we find it necessary to lie or twist the truth?
Why do we tend to present the facts in a way that is unfairly or deceitfully beneficial to us?
CAUSES: Caving into the Giant
OUR OWN FEAR
We fear the outcome of telling the truth
We lack the courage to face the consequences.
What are the consequences?
Romans 6:23
New King James Version (NKJV)
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
2 Thessalonians 2:2-4
New King James Version (NKJV)
2 not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ[a] had come. 3 Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin[b] is revealed, the son of perdition, 4 who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God[c] in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.
SIMPLE GREED FOR MATERIAL OR MONETARY GAIN
Giant DISCONTENT
Deceitfully gotten material. Wealth will never satisfy you, but will only make your lust for more stronger and stronger to the point that that is will consume you.
Your possessions will posses you.
2 Timothy 3:12-14
New King James Version (NKJV)
12 Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. 13 But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. 14 But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them,
OWN YOUR ANGER
“Get even” – False truths about others
Speaking deceptive words is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die: It may hurt your enemy, but eventually it will destroy you.
Deuteronomy 11:15-17
New King James Version (NKJV)
15 And I will send grass in your fields for your livestock, that you may eat and be filled.’ 16 “Take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them, 17 lest the Lord’s anger be aroused against you, and He shut up the heavens so that there be no rain, and the land yield no produce, and you perish quickly from the good land which the Lord is giving you.
Ephesians 5:6-7
New King James Version (NKJV)
6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. 7 Therefore do not be partakers with them.
SELFISH PRIDE
Pride motivates us to use deception because we feel the need to build ourselves up in the eyes of the world around us
Pride kills
Galatians 6:2-4
New King James Version (NKJV)
2 Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. 3 For if anyone thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. 4 But let each one examine his own work, and then he will have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another.
ASK YOURSELF!
We must DISARM the Giant!
Proverbs 26:20-22
New King James Version (NKJV)
20 Where there is no wood, the fire goes out;
And where there is no talebearer, strife ceases.
21 As charcoal is to burning coals, and wood to fire,
So is a contentious man to kindle strife.
22 The words of a talebearer are like tasty trifles,
And they go down into the inmost body.
Poisonous Communication
GOSSIP (Relaying Information)
What is your motivation for relaying those facts. Constructive Information or Destructive Gossip
Example: Merchant
Verbal Vandalism Destroying his or her own property.
Have you listened? “Accessory to SIN”
Why?
Gain Advantage
Meanness
Get even
Example: Guards
TWISTING
Van Alen Story
FLATTERY
Opposite of Encouragement
Speak from Pure hearts.
Colossians 2:4
New King James Version (NKJV)
4 Now this I say lest anyone should deceive you with persuasive words.
OUR WEAPONS
Deception is Deception
“White Lies or Half Truths” – HALF Truth is always a WHOLE Lie
Negative
Stop and think! Who is this going to benefit?
Flattery
Consider your Motives
Count the Cost of your Words
Weight Watcher!
What can you loose?
Advantages of Truth
Proverbs 19:1
New King James Version (NKJV)
Better is the poor who walks in his integrity
Than one who is perverse in his lips, and is a fool.
The only one Lying is the Giant: Deception
