Chapter 9
The Lord’s People must not lie to one another.
There are many different ways of lying, some of them through cowardice, some through ill-intent and some almost unconscious. It would be good to tease out the anatomy of a lie, but first of all it would be good to see how some other thinkers have defined the essence and practice of a lie:
The lie is the death of man, his temporal and his eternal death. The lie kills nations. Through their lies, the most powerful empires of the world were laid waste. History knows of no more unsettling spectacle than the judgment which comes to pass when the men of an advanced culture have rejected the truth, and are now swallowed up in a sea of lies. As was the case with fading pagan antiquity, where this happened, religion and law, poetry and philosophy life in marriage and family, in the state and society, in short, one sphere of life after another, fell sacrifice to the power and curse of the lie. Where man can no longer bear the truth, he cannot live without the lie. Where man, even when dying, lies to himself and others, the terrible dissolution of his culture is held up as a glorious ascent, and decline is viewed as an advance, the like of which has never been experienced - Hermann Sasse's Christ and His Church.
Let’s tease out the principles that are stated in some of these quotes:
“If you believe a lie you come under its power” - John White.
How does a lie have power? Because it comes from a powerful source – Satan, the Father of lies. These are the very words that Jesus used to describe the Devil. We might think that there is no harm in telling the odd lie. However lying is not telling the truth and those who worship [literally, live for God] must worship him in ‘spirit and in truth.’ Jesus described himself as the ‘way, the life and the truth.’ To lie is to act in an opposite way from Jesus, and that cannot be right.
What is a lie?
- It is first of all the telling of a lie to avoid the consequences of telling the truth. It is seen as expediency in order to avoid a painful, difficult or potentially conflicting situation.
- It is the telling of a lie to cause trouble for another person. It is an act of deliberate malice designed to cause trouble.
- It is telling a lie to exaggerate our own ego – it is literally giving the impression of ourselves that is false – ie we are more intelligent, influential wealthy etc than we really are.
- It is telling a lie in a relationship. It is telling someone that we love them and treating them in an opposite way. The lie is designed [self-consciously or otherwise] to pacify the other person with a deceptive statement and make them believe something that in experience is not true.
- It is living a lie. It is pretending to be something that God clearly sees that we are not. It is the habitual creation of a false image of ourselves to the world around, where people believe that we are more virtuous, loving, forgiving, spiritually engaged, than we really are. It is what Jesus called hypocrisy. Many a wife and child has watched as a man has lived one life to other people yet was a drunk or an addict or an abuser behind closed doors. Many Christians have given the appearance of being spiritually alive when in fact they have been dead in their relationship with God – they have said the right things and lived the opposite.
If we live the lie long enough we will eventually yield to its power. We need to humble ourselves before the Lord, admit our duplicity, try and put right - from the obvious to the hidden - what is wrong and turn away from any form of lying, Only the truth can really set us free.
Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others – Dostoevsky
Lie not, neither to thyself, nor man, nor God. It is for cowards to lie - George Herbert
We can lie to ourselves.
How do we do that?
Paul tells us that this is at the heart of our sinful humanity. In chapter 1 of Romans he tells us that the truth about who God is known to us instinctively because he has put that knowledge of himself in our hearts. Instead of worshipping God people have created alternatives in order to control their own lives rather than submit themselves to the Lord.
“Instead of believing what they knew was the truth about God, they deliberately chose to believe lies.” Romans 1:25
To lie to ourselves is to make a deliberate decision, in the face of the truth, to go down another road. The Pharisees eventually fell into the trap of believing that mere outward conformity to the traditions and the laws of Israel were sufficient to save them. However Jesus exposed the shallowness of their lives by showing that it is what is in our hearts that determines who we are. The Pharisees knew the truth, but chose to opt for an easier alternative, and eventually lived and believed a lie.
We have a situation in the house at the moment. Money has gone missing and we found it in one of children’s bedrooms. When confronted with the clear evidence of the stolen money our child chose to fabricate an intricate and unbelievable story to justify why the money was there. What are we looking for? Simply an admission of guilt and a reason why the money was taken. There will be discipline. But instead of admitting guilt, our child is lying to us and to himself and the result is undermining himself and his relationship with ourselves. The relationship can now go nowhere until he stops lying to us and to himself. Christians are like anyone else. We can be guilty of lying to ourselves by not facing up to something that is clearly wrong in our lives – the consequence of this is spiritual impairment and a degrading of our relationship with God. Adam hid from God when he heard the words, “Where are you?” And he was only lying to himself if believed that he could hide the consequences of his actions and sin from God. But God was not out to get even with Adam, but make him face the truth of what he had done and begin to help restore him. How do we change this lying to ourselves? By being brutally honest with ourselves in the presence of God, and perhaps even with another person. We do so in order to bring into the light what is wrong, take the consequences but also know that God in his grace is seeking to restore us and forgive us so that we can move on and grow in grace.
Goebbels said that "If the lie is big enough and told often enough, it will be believed.”
Fancy quoting an arch Nazi in a piece of Christian literature, but who would know better the power of a lie than someone who lived a lie and convinced other people that it was the truth.
We live in a time when everything seems to be relative and Christians are being encouraged in the name of ‘relevance’ to change the way that they view the world and our own standards of belief and behaviour:
“All religions are basically the same, and lead ultimately to God.” We are being encouraged at the moment in the Church of Scotland to “recognise” other faiths and participate with them in dialogue. If recognise means that we agree that they are legitimate ways of finding and being right with God, I have to stand with Jesus that He is “the way, the truth and the life” and that no-one comes to the Father except through Him. I am not prepared to disagree with the Master in order to be politically correct towards other religions. There is only one way to be right with God and forgiven and sure of eternal life, and that is through commitment to and faith in, Jesus Christ – not Mohammed, Buddha or any other religious leader or teacher – only through the Son of God. I cannot call true what is false. I will certainly enter into dialogue but always from the position that I will respect the opinion of another person belonging to another religious faith. However being respectful and agreeing as to the legitimacy and veracity of that religious faith are not the same thing. Dialogue will always begin and end with the fact that Jesus is the only way to be right with God. To believe anything, or say anything else, because I do not have the moral courage of my convictions, is to lie.
“We have to change our moral viewpoint to fit into the thinking of our world and be relevant.” I have no problem with shedding useless and “past- their-sell -by-date” traditions – it can be difficult to do this because there is a blurring between what is truth and what is merely tradition [what we have always believed and done, often without thought or on-going assessment]. However, we must take seriously J. B. Philipps translation of Romans 12:1-2: “Do not let the world squeeze you into its mould, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”. If we live long enough with the standards and morals of our world then we will begin to accept the lie as the truth:
- It’s ok to accept a homosexual lifestyle and practice as normal – it is normal to God and not a sin.
- It’s ok to have a loose commitment and not to honour marriage as the basic covenant of society.
- It is ok to be pro-choice and for a woman to do with her own body what she wants and for social abortions, which make up the vast majority of abortions to be perfectly acceptable.
- It’s ok to spend your life chasing after status. Accomplishment, material wealth and money. These are what motivate the world and they are what should equally motivate the church. I remember a lady in one of my former congregations telling me that now her daughter was at university, she would be not coming back to church because she had to commit her time to her studies. Priorities were being set by the girl but what astonished me was how in agreement her mother was with her daughter.
The list could go on, but Goebbels was right. If we lay down the lie and tell it to ourselves often enough we will believe it and to our minds it will become the truth. How dangerous for God’s people to be drawn into a whole way of thinking and living that is essentially a lie. To tell a lie is one thing, to perpetually live it is even more dangerous.
People often lie most readily in marriage, exactly because they fear losing the intimacy they have achieved to that point. They know that nothing can kill the fires of passion quicker than truth – Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon
Couples are often guilty of lying to one another in marriage. Marriage should be the place where people are secure enough to be at one with one another and able to be truthful about what they do and feel.
The first great lie in marriage and indeed in any relationship is that it is possible to find and cultivate a near perfect relationship. We come into a marriage with bag and baggage of our past and most formative relationships. This means that we come from imperfect homes, are imperfect people and will be an imperfect husband or wife. Simple maths should tell us that we add together two imperfects, we will not get a perfect.
What are some of the lies that we can be guilty of bringing into a marriage?
The belief that somehow we are going to have a happy- ever- after relationship. We can come looking for a strong emotional feeling or happiness that will last forever. When that feeling or emotion goes people will often say that they “no longer feel that they are in love.” All very Hollywood! To marry someone is to grow to love them. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 13, “Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of wrongs….” It goes on, but you get the picture. Perfect love is all of these things and more, but it might be better to say “love seeks to become patient and kind….” Perhaps that what essentially two individuals are seeking to do in a relationship. To embrace a strong emotional attachment and move beyond it to developing what love truly is. We believe and live a lie if we do not see love as something that we have to do and become rather than merely something we feel.
We have to try and be open about what we really feel in a marriage and for there to be no fear of being honest. The pressure is on for couples simply to conform unquestioningly to what the rest of society is doing. Men in particular have got to avoid the trap of simple conformity to something they are not happy with, simply for the sake of peace. We cannot sacrifice principle for the sake of peace, because that peace never comes. We have to be honest about how we feel about the following things:
Money. Does it worry us that we are being too materialistic in our marriage? Be honest with your partner and face potential conflict until a matter of practice and principle is established. Do you want to scale down what you spend on housing, cars, clothes, food, and use money more creatively for the sake of the Kingdom and in the world. One of the most worrying features of who supports the church financially is that it is the older people who have a more principled and controlled use of money than the debt-ridden younger members. Be honest and don’t live the lie together.
Be honest about sex. Sexual fulfilment is seen as the most significant Part of marriage by so many people today. The main reason for sex, is not the pleasure it brings, but as the means through which the human race can continue its existence. I am not being a killjoy by saying this because I normally find sex very fulfilling and enjoyable – it does add to the intimacy of a relationship. However we cannot buy into the modern lie that sexual fulfilment and experience is the ultimate experience – that is simply not true. Sex has little or no meaning unless there is genuine love and commitment between a couple. It should also be the case that a couple coming together should have the aspiration of bringing children into their home. I realise that for many reasons this is not possible for some couples, and the inability to have a family does cause a great deal of pain to many couples – I realise this more than ever by being part of the adoptive community. However, there are couples who are so much into self-fulfilment and the preservation of a life-style that they have deliberately chosen not to have a family – I believe this is both selfish and irresponsible. A family brings joy, deep love, responsibility, challenges selfishness, alters lifestyle and can be very painful, but to deliberately avoid having a family when there is no good reason not to have children is selfish and irresponsible. It is buying into the lie that we are all that matters.
Be honest about your feelings. Too many marriages are in degenerative condition because partners are afraid of conflict and will not express their true feelings. Sadly this has caused so many people to switch off their emotions and deny their marriages of a wonderful and vital part of their relationship.
Finally we see the power that a lie has not only to deceive others but ourselves. God is against lies in any manifestation because to live in the light is to live in the truth – to live truly. This is not easy, but the words of Harlan Coben from his novel “The Darkest Fear” make sense. Coben is not a theologian and probably not a Christian, but what he says makes eminent sense:
“In the end he knew that there was one universal truth: Lies fester. You try to put them away. You jam them in a box and bury them in the ground. But eventually they eat their way out of coffins. They dig their way out of graves. They may sleep for years. But they always wake up. When they do, they’re rested, stronger, more insidious. Lies Kill.”
Why are we not to lie? Paul uses the metaphor of clothing. We have “stripped off” the old self with its evil practices. In other words, to live the life of a lie is wholly inconsistent with who we now are in Christ. Imagine for a moment stripping a wall before repapering it. There is considerable, back-breaking, hard work involved. There is no way that stripping a wall is pleasant work and we might like to avoid doing it if we could. It certainly will not happen easily, and we could do with all of the help we can get. Once the wall is stripped, the expert plasterer needs to come in and start to fill in the holes and scrapes, and only then are we ready for redecoration. There are important spiritual principles in this image:
It is my responsibility to organize the stripping of the walls. In that sense, it is my responsibility to change my life and bring it into conformity with the will of God. It is my responsibility to organize the job of change, but also to call upon all of the help needed. I need to ask other people to help me change. I must make myself accountable to the Church, but also seek all of the resources of the church to help me change. I need to ask the Holy Spirit to come into my life daily and help me with this difficult and unpleasant job of stripping away at sin and get it identified and out of my life – I will never outgrow my daily need of His help in this respect. It is part of the job of the Holy Spirit to help make me Holy.
If I have stripped away – or begun the process of stripping away the old self – I need redecorate or re-clothe my life. This means that I have to ask again for the help in this re-clothing exercise. I have been very unlucky in my life. My father would never go “into town” shopping with my mother, and so as a young boy it fell to me to be dragged round the shops of Glasgow as mother tried on endless hats and clothes that she had no intention of buying [or at least that is how it seemed to me]. Women are experts at knowing how to clothe a man!! They see what they need in the first shop and then, in order to verify their choice take the man round every other shop in town before going back to the original shop. The Holy Spirit is more gracious than that, but He knows what we need to change into and he is at hand to give us advice, encouragement and power to change.
Paul tells us that this change does not take place at once, but goes on all of the time. Our new self is the choice we make when we come to Jesus in faith. We do not come simply to be “saved” but to be changed. We do not come to Christ to get a ticket that tells us we have eternal life, but to begin living that new, eternal life now. The Holy Spirit puts new desires in our minds so that we have an awakened conscience. This new life that we have is:
“ever in the process of being renewed”. We have a new self but it is a renewing self – there is a perpetual process of renewal going on. We are never the perfect article. We are constantly being prompted by the Holy Spirit. We are constantly being challenged as we look at Jesus. The Bible is constantly speaking to us and taking us out of our comfort zone.
There are times when we feel down because we have been on the Christian road for such a long time and we feel the progress is not what it should be. There is no room for complacency and we must not make excuses for lack-lustre discipleship. However, we do have to recognize that the Lord is working “long-term” in our lives. We must never allow ourselves to become down and defeated about the lack of progress. We need to see this as a sign that the Lord is calling us to rest awhile, and then be up and about our Father’s business.
We must never believe Satan’s lie, that because we have not progressed as we feel we ought to have, or should have, that there has not been progress, nor good things achieved. The Holy Spirit wants to encourage us by showing us how far we have come and how much we still need to change. He is saying to us, “Look how far you have come on the journey of faith and positive change in your life. You may not feel it is good enough, but don’t be so hard on yourself. We knew what we were doing when we took you on. We knew all about the future failings and triumphs. We have laid out a perfect plan for you and you are still on course. Yes, you still have a way to go, but see how far you have come, and just think where you would have been if you had not started.”
If we are being renewed by the Spirit of God, we are also being remoulded by the Spirit. To be renewed is for the Spirit to breathe his life into us and give us new desires, new hopes and aspirations. He is the agent of renewal in that he is constantly active in our, sometimes stubborn, lives to change us into the image of Jesus. He is also the person who remakes us – he is the patient potter and we are the clay. What does the Spirit do with us? He takes the basis person we are and then takes us into his workshop, where we remain for the rest of our lives and begins and continues the process of remoulding our lives. This does not mean that he completely alters everything about us, but that he has an image before him of what he is aiming for, and he takes the basic essence of who we are and starts in his perfect and masterful way, the process of reconstruction. When I was younger, growing up in post-war Glasgow, the old, turn of the century, tenement houses were deemed no longer to be fit buildings to live in. One outstanding example of what happened was the whole-scale demolition of the Gorbals tenements. They were replaced with modern high rise flats and flat roofed housing completely unfit for the Scottish climate. The result? All of that housing was demolished in 30 years. Other parts of the city that had begun demolishing its tenements stopped their programmes and started instead to renovate what was already there. The grey- and red-stone tenements were internally and externally refurbished still look good and are habitable. The Holy Spirit does not demolish who we are – he begins a process of renovation – beginning on the inside, which has its effect on the outside.
To remould means, “to change or refashion the appearance, structure, or character of something/someone…..eg a tyre that has been given a new tread can be said to be a remould.”
To go back to the example of the tenement flats, the appearance of the buildings whilst they were being refurbished was not pleasant. There was dust everywhere and constant work being carried out. The Christian is like a building site – work in progress. It is only at the end when all the work has been finished that we can look at the finished article, with all of the scaffolding down, the internal work complete, and recognise what a good job has been done.
The Holy Spirit is therefore restructuring our lives. He is creating in us new desires, new aspirations, new goals and feelings. He is getting down into a life that has been structured and defined by sin and he is creating a whole new way of behaving and thinking and feeling. As I am writing this, my four year old daughter Eilidh is beside me. I have set her the task of trying to copy out the letters A, B and C. She is getting frustrated at the moment because she cannot write the letters as well as me [if you could see the way I write when I am in a hurry, you would realise that what she is wanting to aspire to is hardly worthy]. I look at her efforts and I am proud of the progress she is making and I know from experience with our other children that practice will indeed make perfect. The Lord begins this whole new work within us, and is pleased to see the work in progress. Our problem is often that we constantly see what the finished article is like when we see Jesus, and get frustrated that we are not perfectly good like him. The aspiration is good and right but we must put ourselves in the expert hand of the Spirit and always, patiently seek his help to restructure our lives.
The example given in the dictionary of the tyre is excellent. Imagine a worn out tyre. It is not safe and cannot perform the functions it needs for the car to run properly or efficiently. For that tyre to be given a new tread means that it is now more efficient and has a good grip on the road in all weather conditions. When the Holy Spirit remoulds our lives he enables us to face life with a new outlook and confidence – with faith and hope and love – things that hitherto were not in our lives.