Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

Thoughts From a Bible Reader

So which sin do you think God has a special hate for? Do you think that it’s murder? Homosexuality? Abortion? Something else? Did lying come to your mind as something that God especially hates? Well, I think that it is. Why would I think that? Well, if we go almost to the very end of the Bible, all the way to Rev. 21 when the new heaven and the new earth are revealed, where we are told that God “will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will not exist any more—or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the former things have ceased to exist” (Rev. 21:4), we are then told that, “But as for the cowards, unbelievers, detestable persons, murderers, the sexually immoral, and those who practice magic spells, idol worshipers, and all those who lie, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur. That is the second death” (v. 8). Do you notice how strange that is? We aren’t told that ALL cowards will be there. There is no mention of ALL murderers suffering this fate. The sexually immoral don’t get an ALL attached to them. No, the only ones who God made certain to emphasize that ALL of them would be punished are liars.

In John 8:28-44 we can read about an interesting exchange with some people of Judea who start out believing Jesus when He tells them that He always does the things that please God. But then, when He tells them that it is only if they follow His teaching that they will become free, they become insulted at the idea that they are not free people. Jesus’ response is that no sinner is free, for any sinner is a slave to their sin. He then tells them that they are not acting as Abraham, who they claim as their father, would have done, but rather that they are acting as Satan, their spiritual father, acts. And what did He say that their father is? A murderer and a liar. But not just a liar, Jesus says, Satan is the father of lies. And even today, when we lie that cements a special bond between ourselves and Satan, the father of all liars. But we like to think in degrees of how bad of a lie we told. We might think that this one is just a little white lie, it’s just a 1, but that one is a whopper, a 9 or a 10. I really don’t think that that is how God sees it. A little white lie, if not repented of, is still a 10, and will merit the exact same punishment as the whopper. An eternity in the lake of fire, where ALL liars go. Liar, liar, pants on fire!

Listen, this is an honest-to-goodness wake up call to Christians today, a time when lies are becoming extremely normalized in the church. Are you a Christian who is happy to see the efforts that Donald Trump is leading to rewrite our history, under the guise of “restoring truth and sanity”? Many Christians seem to be supporting his and others’ efforts to rewrite our history books, to be sure that our children never feel guilt or shame over any part of American history. We don’t want “woke” stories that make it sound like white people have ever treated others badly. We do want stories where our forefathers have always been heroic, honorable, and evangelical Christians. We want stories where everything is very black and white, and we were always the good guys. But Jesus doesn’t like falsehoods, He won’t accept lies. He’s never going to sugarcoat anything, just to make it go down easier. In Matt. 12:36-37 Jesus told us that we will be judged “for every worthless word” that we speak, and that we will be justified by or condemned for those words. In Luke 12:2-3 He told us that even every word that we thought that we had said in private will come out. Paul, in Ephesians 4:25, told us to put away lying and only speak the truth. In Colossians 3:9 he told us that lying should have been buried with the old man and his practices. And so supporting efforts to rewrite our history in a way that reduces or eliminates our shame is, in the end, supporting the telling of lies. And from the verses that we just talked about, do you think that God is okay with that?

Not to in any way justify any slavery that has happened in the past or that is currently happening in the world today (and it is happening even today), reality, the truth, is simply that slavery has long been and will continue to be a condition that people on the earth find themselves in, that other people impose upon them. And the reality, the truth, of slavery in America was that, as often as not, these men, women and children were separated from their families and were beaten, abused, and often worked to death or simply killed. And while you and I may try to downplay these events, God is fully aware of each and every one of them. He could recount for us in great detail every lash delivered, every life taken, every family broken up. And so if you or I deny that this happened, or if we want to adopt the story that slavery was great for the Africans brought here to be slaves, God is not fooled. We are only fooling ourselves. And I seriously doubt that many slave owners in America faithfully followed Paul’s directives to slave owners in Ephesians 6:9 (Masters, treat your slaves the same way, giving up the use of threats, because you know that both you and they have the same master in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.), or in Colossians 4:1 (Masters, treat your slaves with justice and fairness, because you know that you also have a master in heaven.). Slavery in America was, for the most part, a very brutal and abusive affair. That was simply the reality, the truth, of it.

After the Civil War, when slavery was ended here, blacks had a few years under Reconstruction where they enjoyed the same rights as white people in the United States. And then the Jim Crow era started, and those rights were taken away. But not only were blacks discriminated against in the South, they also were discriminated against in the North, with laws and regulations keeping them from living in white neighborhoods, or with “red-lining,” where black neighborhoods were outlined on maps with red lines, and banks refused to grant mortgages for any properties inside those red lines (and the result of redlining was that, because they could not get mortgages, blacks, unlike whites, had an extremely hard time investing in property, in buying a house, in order to have an estate to hand down to their children). There were lynchings and terror poured out on blacks in the South by the KKK and others, and violence against them all across the country, such as in 1919, the “Red Summer,” with some of the worst of the violence being in Chicago and Arkansas. My wife, who is older than me, remembers watching newscasts as a child showing law enforcement in the South turning dogs loose on Civil Rights protesters. And that abuse and terror was not limited to abusing and terrorizing only adults, but it was meted out on children as well, such as when young black girls were killed when the 16^th Street Baptist Church was blown up in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. The reality of our history, the truth of the matter, is that blacks in the United States have been not only discriminated against, but they have also been terrorized, abused and killed. And our government, which as we said before God put in place to minister to its people for good, and to punish those who do wrong (Romans 13:1-7) failed to do that which God put it here to do. And God is fully aware of each and every one of these events of violence and wrong against our blacks (and other minorities) that our government failed to stop. He could recount for us in great detail every lynching, every act of violence, every effort to wreak terror on blacks and others in this country simply because of the color of their skin. Any effort to downplay this violence and the government’s complicity in it is simply a lie.

And, at this point, we can learn a lesson from Daniel. This is Daniel who, in Ezekiel 14:14-20, God Himself lists, along with Noah and Job, as an example of a righteous man. If we read Daniel 9:3-19, we can see there an amazing prayer of this righteous man Daniel as he confesses, as he admits, the sins of his people Israel before God. “...we have sinned! We have done what is wrong and wicked; we have rebelled by turning away from your commandments and standards” he says (v. 5), and then later asks of God, “please turn your raging anger away from your city Jerusalem, your holy mountain. For due to our sins and the iniquities of our ancestors, Jerusalem and your people are mocked by all our neighbors” (v. 16). Do you really, truly love America? Do you want God to bless this country that you live in? Then instead of wanting to rewrite our history so that it doesn’t make us look bad, instead of lying and denying the reality of our past, be like Daniel and embrace both “our sins and the iniquities of our ancestors” as being true, own it as an American, and then confess it to God. Yes, God, these men, women and children who were brought here to be slaves were treated horribly, and we as a people are guilty. Forgive us, please! And, as you are made aware of more of our true American past, continue to embrace the truth, own it as our true history, and confess it to God. Events like the Tulsa massacre of 1921, and every lynching perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan and others. Yes, God, these men and women were treated unjustly and often killed, simply because of the color of their skin. Forgive us, please! Or the white men and women who left church in Alabama on Mother’s Day, 1961, to attack the black Freedom Riders whose buses were coming through town. Yes, God, these people who claimed to follow You acted in ways that dishonor Your name, in ways that were the complete opposite of how You have asked us to act as Your ambassadors. Forgive us, please! Or the way that Native Americans were treated in their boarding schools. Forgive us, please! Or the ways that the Irish, Chinese and others were treated for simply coming here to find a new life. Forgive us, please!

Our history simply is not that of a wonderful and glorious nation, working always to serve and honor God. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is lying. We are, and have always been, a nation that is a part of the world that is God’s enemy (James 4:4), and a nation loaded with sinners, people who were willing to do things like using machine guns to massacre the families of striking coal miners in Ludlow, Colorado in 1914, where 11 children were killed. And this is simply one small part of a world full of sinners, doing horrible things to one another. And, even today, we are creating new lies, new false narratives, written to justify what we want to believe and not necessarily what is true. Stories like that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating peoples’ pets. When that story was spread, city schools ended up having to close because of bomb threats and events were canceled due to security concerns. That story affected peoples’ lives in real ways. But even when that story was completely debunked, people like J.D. Vance and others kept repeating it. When confronted with the fact that he was continuing to spread the story, even though it was untrue, Vance (who claims to be a Christian) did not admit to the truth, he didn’t apologize for lying, he didn’t say that he was sorry for the hurt caused by the spreading of the story. Instead, he said “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” Vance is not alone in creating stories to make people believe what he wants them to believe, he has lots and lots of company. But creating stories and passing them off as being true is, quite simply, lying. One day Vance will have to answer to God for his lies, and God won’t be taken in if Vance never repents and seeks forgiveness for his lies and then tries to tell God that he wasn’t really lying, he was only creating stories. If you want to stick to lies instead of reality, if you don’t really want to admit to the truth and then repent and seek forgiveness for the lies that you have already told, then I really feel sorry for you, because your end will, without a doubt, be the lake of fire, where ALL unforgiven liars will go. Your church attendance record won’t save you. Facebook posts proclaiming your love of Jesus won’t save you. Listening to only Christian radio stations won’t save you. Only true repentance and seeking God’s forgiveness will save you.

Reality is that we treat each other horribly, often based on skin color or religious beliefs or political views or on how wealthy a person is. We lie and we steal and we cheat and we kill and we abuse each other. It’s why we have always so desperately NEEDED a Savior to change our hearts and actions, and why we STILL need Him today. And so I ask you, would you rather that real truths about ourselves and our past never be told to your children, that they grow up feeling like they live in a great and wonderful place, only to have them later discover that the picture of life here that you have painted for them is simply not true? Do you want them to wake up one day and realize that you have been lying to them all along, that you were not willing to be honest with them about this world that we live in? Or would you rather, once they reached an appropriate age, to start to include them in your prayers, teaching them to pray even as Daniel did, interceding for America, for the complete reality of both our past and our present? Interceding for friends, neighbors, and enemies? Praying for our leaders, whether you voted for them and support their views or not? Raising your children in the imaginary world that you have created for them will not prepare them for the realities of life, and someday they may resent you for that. Modeling a Daniel-like response for them, though, can prepare them for life’s realities. And, if you can look at our history and mourn for the injustices that have been done here, Jesus has told us that there are special blessings for those who mourn (Matt. 5:4). I’m not aware of any such promises for those who lie, only certain condemnation. What were we thinking? Repent!

Speaking of our children, I recently heard someone who studies spirituality in America talk about recent studies showing how deeply our children are looking for a real spiritual side to their lives. If your children look at you and think that spiritual, to you, is all about politics and anger and making the stories around you say what you want them to, then they will probably look elsewhere for answers. On the other hand, if they look at you and see someone who humbly follows what Jesus has told us to do, you might just be the answer to spirituality that they’re looking for.

Do you have questions or comments that you would like to share with me? Feel free to drop me an email (stevesuterfaithandfruit@gmail.com).

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