Trust Issues

Yesterday I was reading a newspaper article about a guy that was recently arrested in Canada and extradited back here to Utah. The story goes like this. A young woman from the Salt Lake Area was serving an LDS mission in California. She met this boy in her travels. This boy was homeless and had no family and no education. This missionary's family had a history of helping people. They were always helping someone in their home. So the missionary told the boy to go to Utah and her parents would take care of him. The boy was fifteen at the time. The homeless boy moved in with the missionary's family and started high school where he did very well. Better than anyone expected an uneducated homeless boy would do. He even dated some of the high school girls and got baptized into the LDS church. He graduated from high school and got a job at a computer store. Things began to fall apart for the boy when his employer found out that he was using customer credit cards to purchase computers and then sell them. That little scam was to the tune of $100,000. Boy disappeared before the authorities could nab him. All this happened some time ago. Things like that probably happen every day. No body is perfect. The twist on this story is that the boy wasn't a boy at all. When he met the missionary in California he was already a return missionary and no where near fifteen years old. The whole thing was a lie. He lived with this family for four and a half years as a kid when in reality he was an adult. The thing that amazed me about the story was the level of deception. When I tell a little lie my stress level goes through the roof. I can't even comprehend living a life that is nothing but lies. What drives someone to this level of deception? The story reminded me a little bit of Mark Hacking. I feel like deceiving people is becoming more common. It seems to me that the truth isn't so valuable anymore. It scares me because how can I know who to trust? I could assume that everyone is lying to me until they prove otherwise. The problem with that is this guy carried on his charade for four and a half years. Is it better to withhold trust until it is earned or to give it freely until it is violated?

Article
Salt Lake Tribune
Deseret News