When a Story is Too Good to be True

It seems we can't go a day without hearing a story of someone prominent lying.  Lance Armstrong lied.  So did Manti Te'o.  And the other day I heard on the radio of an(other) American Idol contestant who lied about his life story.

All these stories were simply too good to be true.

There's many reasons why we lie.  This isn't a post about those reasons.

This is a post about one of those reasons- making ourselves look better than we are.

Unfortunately, this reason isn't limited to sports or entertainment.  You see it in churches and church leaders as well.

We (and when I say "we", I don't mean "we"- got it?!) pump up our Sunday attendance.  We over-estimate the number of kids in our children's ministries or our youth groups.  And it's not just attendance.  Any area where there's a measurable statistic- giving, baptisms, new members, volunteers, number of first time guests who return to church, etc- there is the inherent tendency to inflate the number- especially if we need an inflated number to fit in with our peers or make ourselves feel better about ourselves.

The sad thing is that lying or 'estimating' on a number does no good in the long term.  There's a short term benefit- there most always is when we tell a lie- but in the end, if we are using a statistic to measure success (and some will argue against doing that, which is fair), then we are not the number we tell other people- we are the number that is the actual number.  No better.  No worse.