Is it a sin to lie to your own little gullible children, who trust you, and convince them that a magic fat man in a read suit flies around the world on a sleigh pulled by reindeer, goes down all the chimneys in the world and delivers all the children gifts over night?
Is it wrong to teach your children to write prayers as letters, materialistic prayers asking for toys, to a deceased, but heavily venerated saint?
If you tell your children lies about a magic fat man flying around the world, then tell them that God raised Jesus from the dead, how will that impact their faith when they find out you were lying about the magic fat man?
more importantly would you consider it's a sin to withhold the truth from your children. I can think of many situations I have.
But Remember Samuel was told to say he was going to make a sacrifice at Jesse's place, but the more important reason Samuel was going to anoint king David
God actually told him what to say. It was truthful but not everything was told.
Samuel Anoints David
16 The Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you mourn for Saul, since I have rejected him as king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil and be on your way; I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem. I have chosen one of his sons to be king.”
2 But Samuel said, “How can I go? If Saul hears about it, he will kill me.”
The Lord said, “Take a heifer with you and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.
The important part of a child growing up is, there mind and imagination is still developing, it's important for a child to develop an imagination, it helps there mind to develop where they learn to distinguish between fantasy and reality,
If we told our children everything is a lie they would become unimaginative and probably spoil so many other children's dreams, plus they would probably become legalistic.
In a time when there developing an imagination this would not be Good.
And beside this I've always told my kids when they asked me will Santa bring me gifts this year, I say well you never know he could do,
Or you could say hey you might get a visit of santa if your Good of course that Santa would be me 😜