GEN288 Don’t lie even on behalf of a good cause, not only because lying is wrong, but also because people will come to doubt the truthful things you say.  Thus, God instructed Adam not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Life in the Garden Eden.  But Adam, fearing that Eve would violate the edict, apparently told her that not only had God forbidden them to eat from the tree, but that He had also forbidden them to touch it.  Genesis 3:3 A Midrash, picking up on the discrepancy between God’s original words and Adam’s, and Eve’s claim to the snake that God had forbidden them to even touch the tree, teaches that the serpent pushed Eve into the tree.  When she saw that no injury ensued, she assumed that Adam had likewise lied when he told her that God had forbidden them to eat of the tree.  So, Eve proceeded to eat the fruit, with disastrous results.  From this we learn that even when our cause is just, we must be completely truthful.  Thus, Jewish laws forbids a person who is soliciting for a charitable cause to say that he gave a larger gift to the charity than he did, in order to influence the person whom he is asking to give a larger gift.  TELVOL 1:407