We don’t have a problem with lying in my house. At least, not anymore. My children confess fairly quickly if they do something wrong and are asked directly about it, and they rarely try to hide something. They know the punishment for lying will always be worse than the punishment for the original infraction.
I attribute this to forcing my wife to take her words seriously, which in turn made our children take her words more seriously.
Our daughter used to have a problem with lying. She would lie about the dumbest stuff, like candy she had eaten and then accumulated the wrappers under her bed. One night, when our daughter was 11, my wife said, “If you are caught lying one more time, you will not be going to camp.”
All of our kids go to a Christian summer camp for a week, and it was about a month away. This was the first year our youngest would also be going, which meant a full week to ourselves.
This would be the third year for our daughter, and she loved it. She still loves it. It’s one of her favorite weeks of the year. She would be devastated if she missed it.
One week later, she is caught in an obvious lie. She had used the iPad after hours. After she lied, we showed her the proof, and she broke down crying.
“Alright, so you’re not going to camp this year,” I said. My wife looked at me with uncertainty.
Later that night, after everyone else was in bed, my wife brought the subject up again. “She can’t miss camp!”
“But she will,” I said.
“That’s a bigger punishment for us than it is for her.” I understood what she meant. We had been looking forward to the week and had already made plans.
“Maybe. But that’s the punishment you told her, and so that’s what’s going to happen.”
It was a lesson not only for our daughter, but also for her younger brothers. They knew why their sister was not able to go. They knew why she wasn’t dropped off. After camp, they got another reminder every time they told a story to their sister. They listened, watched, and learned. So far, we’ve had only one more incident of lying in the many years since, between all three of them.
If I had let my wife talk me out of keeping our promise, the boys (and certainly their older sister) would have learned a far different lesson. One that would have undermined our entire household. While it was a bit painful to follow through, it resulted in longer-term peace and an easier future. The investment paid off. In one swoop, the lesson was taught in a way that was hard to forget.
It would have been so easy to cave. To give our daughter another chance and another empty threat, and she would have lied again and again until we finally did something equally drastic. Worse, all of my children would have taken my wife’s words far less seriously.
But notice how I said our promise above. It was my wife who made the threat. At the time, in the back of my mind, I thought about countermanding her order, because I knew it was off-the-cuff and given in anger. I thought better of it.
And from that moment on, it became my promise, too. My silence was an endorsement. As the head of the household, keeping that promise now became my responsibility. If we failed to carry it out, it would be more my failure than my wife’s.
This responsibility is biblical.
Numbers 30:2 is straightforward.
If a man vows a vow to the Lord, or swears an oath to bind himself by a pledge, he shall not break his word. He shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.
But when a woman makes an oath, it first goes through a filter before becoming binding. If she is unmarried, her father has a chance to nullify the vow.
If a woman vows a vow to the Lord and binds herself by a pledge, while within her father's house in her youth, and her father hears of her vow and of her pledge by which she has bound herself and says nothing to her, then all her vows shall stand, and every pledge by which she has bound herself shall stand. But if her father opposes her on the day that he hears of it, no vow of hers, no pledge by which she has bound herself shall stand. And the Lord will forgive her, because her father opposed her.
Numbers 30:3-5
If the woman is married, this responsibility falls to her husband.
If she marries a husband, while under her vows or any thoughtless utterance of her lips by which she has bound herself, and her husband hears of it and says nothing to her on the day that he hears, then her vows shall stand, and her pledges by which she has bound herself shall stand. But if, on the day that her husband comes to hear of it, he opposes her, then he makes void her vow that was on her, and the thoughtless utterance of her lips by which she bound herself. And the Lord will forgive her.
Numbers 30:6-8
If the husband is silent, he establishes her word.
But if her husband says nothing to her from day to day, then he establishes all her vows or all her pledges that are upon her. He has established them, because he said nothing to her on the day that he heard of them. But if he makes them null and void after he has heard of them, then he shall bear her iniquity.
Numbers 30:14-15
What goes on in the house, what is spoken, is the responsibility of the husband. He does not get to make the excuse, “But my wife was the one who said that!” He established her word by remaining silent, by not confronting her. A husband does not get to seethe quietly and then hope everything goes away.
He confronts his wife, or he insists she follow through on her word. Either way may lead to conflict, and he should be prepared.
He does not get to say, later, like Adam, “But this woman that you gave me…”
This protection is a valuable gift a husband can provide for his wife. Either he can protect her from a foolish word, or he can prevent her from doing an equally foolish thing: not keeping her word. Confrontation now, or possible confrontation later? Hold the boundary now, or be prepared to hold it later?
Not getting this right has consequences for your entire household and for years to come. Apathy should never be an option.
Far worse consequences than missing a single year of camp. Of course, we still had a great week. We didn’t make our daughter sit in the corner and think about what she did. She already knew. The point was made. The punishment was accepted with grace. We did several fun things that week to communicate that she wasn’t a burden to us. Her soul was so important, in fact, that we were willing to change all of our plans to help protect it.
And she still hasn’t forgotten the lesson.
A further interesting lesson is that it also makes you more careful with your threats, which is something I'm trying to deal with in my household.