Heath Lambert: Lying is a big problem in our world. In fact, it’s a problem that nearly everyone struggles with and absolutely everyone has been guilty of telling a lie at some point or another in their life. Some people tell lies just to tell lies. One person who lied, for this reason, was me. In fact, I’m aware that when I first came to Christ, one of the first problems that the Lord began to deal with me on was my proclivity to tell lies, to be dishonest. I would tell lies just to tell them. I would tell my friends that I was rich, and we were not rich. I would tell my friends lies that were not at all believable. I would tell my friends that my father was Bill Cosby, and my mother was Anne Murray. Now, I don’t know how in the world that’s believable. I don’t know why I said it. Those lies that I told are crazy and unbelievable and I actually don’t know how many of my friends in elementary school believed me when I said it, but I did say those things and I did it just to do it. I did it because I liked lying. I liked deception. And I’m thankful that the Lord changed my heart in that way to make me a truth-teller, but I would just lie to do it.
Plenty of people do that. More regularly, dishonesty and lying are brought into the service of some other sin. It’s the cover-up. We do something we don’t want others to know, or we don’t want others to know how bad it is, and so, we engage in deception to cover our sin.
Lying is a big problem, and interestingly enough, National Geographic knows about that. The reason I mention National Geographic is because they have a cover story in their latest edition, and it’s called “Why We Lie: The Science Behind Our Complicated Relationship with the Truth” and National Geographic observes what they cannot deny which is that lying is a problem and they observe that problem in striking detail. Of course, their treatment isn’t perfect but it’s often insightful. For example, they get very close to the truth about the reality of lying when they say that being deceitful is woven into our very fabric so much so that it would be truthful to say that to lie is human. They are admitting that lying is a part of life. Ultimately, though, as insightful and as interesting as the article can often be, it actually fails the test of what they said they were going to do. The cover of the article is why we lie, and the article never actually explains why we lie. Of course, Christians know that the reason we lie is grounded in the fall of humanity and the fact that now every human being is a rebel against his or her Creator.
Another area where the article fails is in providing any help or any solution to the problem of lying. It’s able to detail the phenomenon that people lie. It’s not able to explain how people who struggle with lying and want to stop could actually stop. In fact, the closest they come is in the very last paragraph of the article where the author says, “What then might be the best way to impede the fleet-footed advance of untruths into our collective lives? The answer isn’t clear. Technology has opened up a new frontier for deceit adding a 21st-century twist to the age-old conflict between our lying and trusting selves.” National Geographic can’t answer the problem of how to stop lying because they’re looking at the wrong resource. By their own language here, they’re looking to technology and modern research, and the answers for how to stop lying are found in Scripture. The answer for why we lie is found in Scripture. And in fact, why we lie and how to stop lying are closely related and we can only discover the answers to those issues from the biblical revelation.
One text where Christians can look to see this is in Ephesians 4:21-25 and there the Word of God says, “If indeed you’ve heard of Him”, that’s Jesus, “and have been taught in Him, just as the truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which is in the likeness of God, and has been created in righteousness, and holiness of the truth. Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.” This text tells us several things that Christians can do to stop lying and start being a truth-teller. The first thing that we have to acknowledge that the Bible admits here is that help with lying begins with Jesus Christ. We are told here that we have heard of Jesus and been taught in Jesus as the truth is in Jesus. If we want to come to the truth, we have to come to Jesus Christ. This is getting at what I said a moment ago when I said the reason why we lie is connected to how we stop lying. The reason why people lie is because they have rebelled against God, and people will stop lying when they are reconciled to God by Jesus Christ. This was certainly brought to life in my own story when as a lying child, a lying elementary student, and a lying middle school student, I became a truth-teller after I believed the message of Jesus, and in fact, it was just a matter of days after coming to know the Lord that I was cut to the quick about my own dishonesty and needed to appeal to the Lord for mercy. We have to be honest that in a culture that cherishes deceit, in the midst of relationships where deceit is possible, it takes Jesus Christ to turn from that kind of problem.
The second thing that we see from this text is that if we’re going to stop lying, we have to name our dishonesty. This is one of the things that the text here says. It says, “Therefore, laying aside falsehood…” It names the problem, it names falsehood, and it tells us what to do with it. It tells us to lay it aside. This is, just even in that one verse, it’s something more gripping and more compelling than anything in National Geographic. There is a moral command here given in the midst of a moral problem and that is to name it, it’s falsehood, and to lay it aside. If you or someone you love struggles with lying, after you come to Christ, you have to name this as a problem and ask Jesus for His forgiveness and ask for His grace to lay it aside. And so, if you’re a liar, you need Jesus Christ. If you are a liar, you need to name that sin and you need to pray for God’s grace to lay it aside.
But a third thing you need to do is to become a truth-teller. A liar doesn’t stop being a liar when they stop telling falsehoods. A liar stops being a liar when they begin to tell the truth. The text says, “Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor…” It’s not enough to stop doing bad things in the Christian life, you have to start doing good things and to love it, and this is another area which is why we need Jesus. We need Jesus to name the sin and to lay it aside and we need Jesus to give us grace to do the good thing to be a truth-teller. For so many of you, this is going to mean a lot of work. If you are a person who’s been characterized by dishonesty, it’s not enough to merely confess and to name your falsehood and to ask for grace to lay it aside, you need to go to the people with whom you’ve been dishonest, and you need to tell them the truth where before you had told them lies. This can be very painful, but this is what the text says that you must do and it’s the only way to really change. It’s the only way to really be different and because being a truth-teller takes Jesus, we can be confident that Jesus will help us when we do this hard work.
The last thing, and it’s so important, is the text gives us the logic of telling the truth. The text of Scripture helps us to move from dishonesty to truth-telling, not just by telling us what to do and telling us who we need, namely Jesus, but by giving the logic of telling the truth. The text says, “…laying aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.” The reason for telling the truth in the body of believers is because the body is a unity. We are a union together made so by Jesus Christ and the peace that He brought. And the logic is when I lie to you, I’m lying to myself, and I ought not lie to myself, it doesn’t make any sense to lie to myself, I can’t even lie to myself. This is a very powerful argument to stop lying and start being a truth-teller because of the union of the body of believers. We have all been saved by Jesus Christ when we come to Him through repentant faith, and we are all one and it makes absolutely no sense for Christians to try to destroy that unity by lying to one another as though such a thing were even possible when we’re members one of another. And so, because of our unity in Christ, we tell the truth. So, at the end of the day, National Geographic has a very interesting article. But for the kinds of problems that you and I struggle with when it comes to being truth-tellers, when it comes to being people who need to pursue honesty in the midst of a deceptive culture, it’s not a very helpful article. At the end of the day, National Geographic, as interesting as it is, they don’t have the resources to actually answer their own question why we lie, and they certainly don’t have the resources to give the help that all of us need, which is how to stop lying.
