“I don’t trust the media. I don’t trust our political leaders. I don’t trust foreign governments. I don’t trust my own government. I don’t trust the mob. I trust almost no one at this point and that’s not because I want to be this way. It’s just because I’ve been paying attention.”[1] This is the lament of Matt Walsh regarding our current cultural environment. Who can blame him? It is quite difficult not to be cynical when government officials along with their allies in much of the media are using the language playbook of 1984. Reversals on positions (at least with words) happen so fast that your brain is disoriented with a type of cognitive whiplash. The conspiracy theorists that we once believed were insane have become the prophets of culture. The difference between many conspiracy theories and the news of the day is about six months. We live by lies at the highest levels of our society, and it is destroying us.
Solomon told us it would. God hates a “lying tongue” and a “false witness who breathes out lies” (Pr 6.17, 19). With the smorgasbord of sins to put in his seven-fold list, Solomon includes two forms of lying. God must really hate lying.
The construction of Solomon’s list and where these two fall in the list is telling. As I mentioned in the article concerning pride, the seven-fold structure is the inverse of creation; it is a de-creation. In the original creation, the Father speaks, and the Word is carried by the Spirit to create, form, and fill. The lying tongue is a false word that is carried by the spirit-breath to de-create. Liars are false images of God, an unholy trinity. That is why they will have their part in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone (Rev 21.8).
Lying is a distortion of the gift of creative speech that God has given us to complete our mission. Our words create. They cannot create as God creates, namely, out of nothing, but they create nonetheless. We can create everything from an atmosphere in the room with harsh or pleasant words to entire societies with constitutional documents.
We can only create with the substance we’ve been given. God’s Word is that which created and sustains all things (cf. John 1.1-3; Heb 1.3). In the Word, all things hold together (Col 1.17). God’s Word is reality. In order for us to be productive in this world, our words must always be in conformity with his words.
Lying is an attempt to destroy reality, which is a battle against the Word himself.
Why do we do it? Are we crazy? Why, yes, we are. Sin is insanity, something that Paul lays out quite clearly in Romans 1.
The sin of lying grows in various soils. One of the principal soils is fear. When we see that reality is not favorable to us, we’re scared. Instead of adjusting our lives to the truth, we try to change reality to favor ourselves. This may be the atheist who denies what he knows is true, the child who just got caught in disobedience, or the man or woman who wants to create and maintain a false image. Reality is unpleasant, so we lie to ourselves and others in an attempt to reshape it.
This fear is closely associated with hatred of reality. We hate the way God made us and the responsibilities that come with that, so we lie. This is everyone from the transexual to the suburban husband or wife who despises what God declares about them. They try to empty God’s words of meaning by defying them.
Hatred of reality will cause you to envy, which will turn you into a false witness. The Jews envied Jesus and bore false witness about him, leading to his death (cf. Mt 27.18; Mk 15.10). Envy believes that by tearing down someone else, you will be exalted. This is what happens in class warfare which is manifested in our country through claims of “white supremacy/privilege,” systemic racism, and other critical theories. This is what makes you exaggerate the weaknesses or sins of others to make yourself look better.
All of this lying is rooted in pride. You really believe that you can dethrone God. You believe that while others may have to live within reality, you don’t. You’re above it.
God hates lies because they use his good gift of creative speech for destruction. Liars, by definition, don’t have a good relationship with reality and, therefore, cannot live in good relationships. A man who loves and practices lies in engineering, denying the basics of reality such as 2 + 2 = 4, cannot be trusted to build anything worth having. A man who loves and practices lies in interpersonal relationships can’t be trusted either. You can’t entrust yourself to someone to have a healthy relationship when he is a liar. Lies destroy what God calls us to build: peace. God hates lying.
The answer to lying is somewhat obvious: love and tell the truth. Stop denying and defying reality. Humbly accept the truth with all of its sharp edges. You can’t change the truth. The truth must change you. The truth will change you. Ultimately, we cannot live by lies. The sooner we willfully conform our lives to the truth, the better off we will be.
[1] Matt Walsh, February 28, 2022, 7:00 PM, https://www.facebook.com/MattWalshBlog/posts/540961080719611 accessed March 1, 2022
