To Tell The Truth

Some of you will, I hope, recognize that the title of this offering recalls the popular TV show of years past. This will not be a review of that TV show. Instead, I'd like to tell you of a fascinating scene that I saw while watching an episode of "Smallville" with my daughters.

For those of you don't know, "Smallville", now in its ninth season, tells the story of Clark Kent before he embraces his identity as Superman. The writing is remarkably cleaver and witty. Superman fans, such as myself, delight in phrases characters speak and situations which relate back to comics and previous Superman shows and movies. For example, Clark Kent on his first day of work at the Daily Planet changed clothes in a phone booth, recalling the old black and white TV show and early comic books.

In the fifth episode of season eight, Clark and Lois Lane investigate a series of murders of newly engaged couples. It seems that a psychotic jeweler, whose wife had left him for another man, has been kidnapping couples. He would then take them to a basement underneath his store. He would then place the man and the woman in a pair of homemade electric chairs facing one another. Not only that, but each person was connected to a lie detector.

Our psycho jeweler would then ask the man if he had ever cheated on his future wife. If the fellow lied, and the lie detector revealed the lie, the wife-to-be would receive a huge electric shock.

The ghoulish jeweler would inform the horrified husband-to-be that it was his lies that would cause the woman who loved and trusted him to suffer.

Clark and Lois get hooked up to the machine. Clark's superpowers are countered because the jeweler is wearing a bracelet studded with kypronite. The mad jeweler asks Lois if she loves Clark. Because Clark is hooked to the electric chair his powers have left him; if Lois doesn't tell the truth he could receive a shock that would kill him.

Clark pleads with Lois to simply tell the truth.

"Well", says the ghoul, "Do you love him?"

Lois whispers out, "Yes".

The machine does not show a lie. Clark receives no shock and is able to escape from the chair and safe Lois and himself from further harm.

Later Lois claims that she was able to slip a sensor off of her finger before she was asked the question, thereby denying that she really loves Clark. No matter, the storyline of "Smallville" has been advanced. What neither Lois and Clark realize, but what all fans of current day Superman comics know, is that they will indeed marry in the future.

I think that this episode of "Smallville" is one of the best of the show's eight year run. This episode could be shown in Bible Study classes, Sunday School Classes and confirmatioin classes because it speaks to a general truth. Our lies really hurt the ones we love more than they hurt us.

Imagine the man who has an affair. In order to sucessfully cheat on his wife he must tell lie after horrible lie. Perhaps, he misses a child's school program to be with his mistress. Undoubtedly he tells his child a lie. He had to work. Traffic kept him from getting to the program. When his lies are found out think of the incredible suffering and pain that will come to his children.

During the Monica Lewinsky affair a good friend of mine said that he couldn't believe the pain that Bill Clinton's adultry and lying had caused to the President's daughter. "How could he do that to her?", my friend wondered.

Our lies most harm the ones we love. The ghoulish jeweler was teaching a frightening lesson in turth telling. I wonder how we would conduct ourselves if our children, spouses and friends were jolted with electricity every time we told a lie and misbehaved ourselves. If we saw suffering in front of us how would we live?