Thou Shalt Not Lie

I discovered this story prominently displayed on Yahoo! today, a story which mostly ridicules a church pastor for pretending to have been a Navy SEAL. It points specifically to the fantastic story, saying "the prevaricator in question seems to have lifted at least some details of his account from the 1992 Steven Seagal SEAL-themed blockbuster, Under Siege." Despite his apparently ridiculous story, though, Pastor Jim Moats made everyone believe it for five years and was only recently outed as a fraud by Navy SEALs themselves.

I laughed at the reference to Steven Seagal, but this story also made me think about the association of lying with religion and religious figures. Lying is neither against one of the Bible's Ten Commandments nor is it one of the seven deadly sins, and Christianity has a long history of manipulating the truth for its own ends. Is truth something we should expect from our religious leaders, and if not, what do we expect from them? Pastor Moats probably got some good sermons out of his Navy SEAL stories, so should we equate them with the Bible's parables, made up to teach a lesson? Is it okay to lie if you're imparting a good moral lesson? Is that what Pastor Moats was doing?