Fire is produced from stone and steel; lying comes from loquacity and gossip. And the lie destroys love. No one who has any sense would say that telling lies is not an important sin. The Holy Spirit has severely condemned it. "You destroy those that speak lies," says David to God. The mother of lying is hypocrisy, mother and also, often, its substance as well. Hypocrisy in fact works out the lie beforehand and then puts it into practice.(John Climacus)

To seek God is to pursue ultimate reality. Whatever obscures reality complicates our relationship with God.

John almost certainly used some form of the Greek ψεῦδος or pseudos for lying.

The simple Old Norse and Old English from which we derive lie always means a deceptive untruth.

The more subtle Greek can, depending on context, mean a fiction or a story that seeks to elucidate rather than deceive.

Chesterton perceives tension between rationality and imagination. We need both he insists.

Human rationality, alone, leads to self-absorbed detachment from reality. Imagination can draw us out of ourselves and toward greater truths.

Is it a matter of intent? Does a lie seek to harm another, while an imaginative fiction seeks to serve the other?