The Trouble With Lying

One problem with dishonesty is that just keeping a record of our lies and pretenses is a full-time job! Abraham Lincoln used to say that if a man is going to be a liar, he had better have a good memory! When a person uses up all his energy in pretending, he has nothing left for living; and life becomes shallow and tasteless. A person who pretends not only robs himself of reality, but he keeps himself from growing: his true self is smothered under the false self.

Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Real [commentary on 1 John], pg.35

Some Good Stuff

What is the Shekinah glory of God?

Jehovah’s Witnesses and their false teaching about Enoch.

Digging in my files to clean out obsolete stuff, I came across a great article from the January 2006 issue of Christianity Today Astray. Titled “Raising Ebenezer,” it explains the lyrics from “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” and why the word should not be changed. (I couldn’t get the link to do the single page mode, but it could get the next page.)

The Progressive Disease of Spiritual Deception in Our Time

John’s Gospel was last one, but it was not written late.

Reclaiming Patrick for Protestants.  He was also a defender of human rights.

Some help for addressing supposed contradictions in the Bible.

Where was Jesus between His death and resurrection?  Another thought about it.

Deception By Investment

The blinding of a person’s will happens when he or she has fully invested themselves into something which turns out to be a terrible mistake. Not willing to accept that they have fully invested themselves in an egregious error blinds them from the reality of it. They simply will the error to be true. We see this all the time in cult interaction. You can prove to a person that he has been deceived, that he is believing and living a lie, and you may even see the distress this information is causing him, yet he sets his face, his will, and simply refuses to “understand” what you are saying.

Don and Joy Veinot, “Invested”

Lying Is Prominent In a Life of Sin

I would say . . . that lying is the most prominent and the most common characteristic of the life of sin.  Consider the sequence of events.  You commit a sin; you do not want to be found out, and you do not want anybody to know it, so you tell a lie.  Because you have told that lie  you have to tell another one to cover it; and on and on it goes, by a horrible process of geometric progression.  It multiplies and multiplies until the whole life becomes a lie and a sham.  Is there anything which is more characteristic of the non-Christian, sinful life than this element of lying?  Deceit and lying, sham and pretense, are more obvious in the life of the world than anything else.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “Darkness and Light: An Exposition of Ephesians 4:17-5:17,” pg. 218

Strong Lies

By mixing a little truth with it, they made their lie far stronger.

C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle: The Chronicles of Narnia.  Cited by Chelsen Vicari, “Distortion: How the New Christian Left is Twisting the Gospel & Damaging the Faith, p.75

Is Deception Always Sinful?

I’m going to stick my head out with this opinion piece!

Many people have problems with the fact that the Hebrew midwives lied to the Egyptian officials about why the Hebrew babies weren’t killed.  They also have a problem with Rahab lying to protect the Israelite spies.  People insist that these people sinned; that the Bible praises their actions but never says it was okay for them to sin.

Throughout Scripture, lying is condemned because it brings harm to people in some way or another.  There is a commandment against bearing “false witness.”  But does this mean all lying is sinful?  

I think when saving innocent lives it could better be called deception.  As a combat engineer I learned how to deceive the enemy by camouflage so as to save the lives of those hidden; was that sinful lying?  A famous event to deceive enemies was when, in World War II, the British used a body fixed up as an officer with “secret” documents to simulate a victim of a downed aircraft (an excellent movie based on the story is, “The Man Who Never Was”); the documents misled the Germans as to where an invasion would take place, thereby saving many lives — was that sinful lying?   Also during WWII, many Christians lied to the Nazis so as to hide and protect Jews; was that sinful?  Deception is a well-known tactic in warfare for saving lives by tricking the enemy, but is it sinful?

I could go on with many incidents where deception — lying to the enemy — has saved countless lives.  Such events are not rebelling against God, rather they are honoring God by protecting man - who is made in God’s image.

I believe God is a just and merciful God.  When it comes to “deception,” there is the “spirit of the law” which makes ordinary lying that causes harm definitely sinful, while deception to protect innocent lives is NOT sinful.

Therefore, I do not think God would charge the Hebrew midwives or Rahab with the sin of lying.