What is a lie?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what we actually mean when we say someone is lying. What does it take to be a liar?

Say I tell a stranger: “You shouldn’t climb that tree — you could fall and hurt yourself.”

It might be true. They could fall. If I tried it, I certainly would.

But who am I to judge what that person is capable of, knowing nothing about them? Who am I to tell them what they can and can’t do?

Maybe they will fall — and maybe they won’t care, because they’ll get straight back up and go again. Maybe they’ve climbed a hundred trees and I’m only projecting my own fear onto them. Maybe they like falling out of trees.

So while it might be true that they could fall, it isn’t certain. And whatever else it was, it was offered as care, not as a trap.

Which tells me a lie has to be something more than advice that happens to be wrong.

It has to be intentional. What if instead I said — to someone I knew couldn’t climb — “go on, get right to the top, fetch the best apple, you’ll be fine”?

That’s the difference. Not whether the words turn out true, but whether I meant to send you somewhere I knew you shouldn’t go.

A lie isn’t a wrong map. It’s handing someone a map you know is wrong.