TRUST. Day 34 of Lent. Believing in Truth.
Tell the truth now, You are a liar.
Dr. Gregory House claims, “Everybody lies,” on the show House, but few understand what lying is, what it does, and how to stop it.
Lying is saying something with the intent of creating a false belief or impression. It’s an attempt to get someone to believe something that is not true. We deceive other people because we think it serves our purposes in some way.
We often lie when we are afraid of facing what would happen if we told the truth. We lie to cover-up. Or we lie to inflate who we are because we lack self-confidence and feel overlooked or want attention or status. We deceive other people because we think it serves our purposes in some way or it keeps us from hurting them because as Jack Nicholson’s said, “You can’t handle the truth.” We’re all habitual ‘white liars’ because we are too lazy to find creative ways to speak the truth in love and we can’t fathom how rude we would be if we all told the truth all the time like Jim Carrey in the 1997 comedy Liar Liar.
The most common ways we lie are to save face, shift the blame, avoid confrontation, to get our way, to be nice or to make ourselves look better. But every lie has a cost. Dr. Feldman says in his book The Liar in Your Life, “Even if we are telling what seems to be a totally harmless lie, we know we’re telling that lie, and it causes a kind of smudge on the relationship.” When we find out we’ve been lied to a certain trust has been broken, our faith is shattered and we find it harder to trust.
Trust. The firm belief in the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing that gives us confidence or reliance in them. Trust makes something worth believing.
In a world where everybody lies how assuring is it that God himself “does not lie” (Titus 1:2). In his holiness, he is incapable of lying.
“God is light; in him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5).
“God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” Numbers 23:19
God cannot lie. If it were ever righteous to lie, then that would mean there is something that God can not do. It is clearly not God’s plan for people to say something with the intent of creating a false belief or impression to get someone to believe something that is not true because we it serves our purposes in some way. As His children we are called to love our neighbor as ourselves and not bear false witness.
Some might make an argument for lying when it is the lesser of two evils like in the case of Corrie ten Boom, who saved a number of lives by hiding Jewish people from the Gestapo. Sarah Sumner says that, “Ten Boom’s situation—like many other situations—was so tangled up in sin that it seems like her best option was to lie. What ten Boom’s case shows is not that lying is honoring to God, but rather that human circumstances can degenerate into something so depraved that lies get mixed in with acts of faith.”
In a sinful world truth dilemmas are the exception not the rule. Corrie ten Boom was an honorable hero but when she lied, she wasn’t imitating God.
We can trust God because God never lies. God always tells the truth. Truth is that which corresponds to reality. God always speaks truth. If He says fire is hot, it is hot. His truth corresponds to reality.
Jesus said, “I am the way the truth and the life.” (John14:6) “In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” (John 18:37)
Lying is sin because untruth violates Truth. Since Jesus is the Truth, it is antichrist or against Christ to lie. Without truth there would be only chaos. No community.
God is relational and He knows that lying breaks the trust in a relationship. It is a sin against our fellow-man, ourselves and our God. God wants us to be truthful as a way of cultivating our relationship not only with Him but also with other people.
Jesus is truth and cannot lie therefore God can be trusted.
But there is a father of lies named Satan. He is always saying things with the intent of creating a false belief or impression, attempting to get someone to believe something that is not true because it serves his purpose to deceive the world.Satan tries to tell us truth is relative and is based on ‘How you see reality.” Maybe fire isn’t hot it is only warm, you should touch it and see.
Truth is not relative, it is absolute. Everybody knows what truth is because everybody knows how to lie and tell what truth is not.
The issue with TRUST, isn’t an issue with having a God we can trust, it is more an issue with our own ability to trust because everyone else we know lies.
Today just meditate on the truth- My God can not lie.
For the king trusts in the LORD, And through the lovingkindness of the Most High he will not be shaken. Psalms 21:7
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