Lies and Double Lies

Politicians lie. So do entertainers, salesmen, lobbyists, mirrors and scales (Okay, the last two may be just wishful thinking. )


First, let me make clear what a lie is.

A lie is a deliberate denial, distortion, or evasion of the truth. It is giving of false information intentionally for the purpose of deception. The key word to understand lies is the world deliberate. A liar intends to be a liar. He is not mistaken or misinformed. He actually intends to deceive. It is not an accident.

But the not all lies are the same. An ordinary lie is perpetrated by a person or persons who know what they are doing it deceptive. It is easy for us to condemn such lies, because the culpability for them fall upon a small group--a liar or liars. But there are lies for which encompass a much greater field of culpability. These are lies which are supported by a society at large by silence or false assent. These lies become not only a shame on a few, but shame to the many. These are double lies. They are much harder to deal with, and have much wider consequences than ordinary lies.

A double lie is not believed by larger society, but it is supported as if it is believed. We all know that it is a lie, but no one wants to admit it. We go along with the lie because we are afraid not to, or because we receive from benefit for ourselves, or because we don't want to rock the boat. No one wants to call it what it is, so it continues to exist forever, or at least until it ceases to be useful.

An example of a double lie is the story of the emperor's new clothes. Two lying tailors convince a king that they can make a magic suit that only a fool can not see. The king, being stupid, believes it. It would seem that such a rank deception would not hold up long when exposed to the wider world, but incredibly it does. The king parades around the town, while people praise his beautiful new clothes. The whole town participates in the lie. Because each one is afraid to tell what they see with their own eyes. Cowardice and selfishness keeps the whole country from speaking their mind. nly one little boy, who has nothing to gain from the deception, speaks up and exposes the lie.

The Nazis told Germany that Jews were subhuman. Of course the Germans did not think that the Jews were subhuman, but they were too afraid to say it. It just that the Nazis were more powerful. As a result millions of people died. Stalin said that Communism worked in Russia. All the average Russian had to do was to look around, and they could see that it didn't, but fear kept them from saying so. Their silence again contributed to the death of millions. Modern, nonjudgmental thinking says that all religions are equally valid and deserve equal tolerance. Yet even in the wake of 9-11, we still refuse to believe our own eyes.

The world is full of liars, and always has been. But whenever we keep silent about the lie, we lie again, and the lie becomes a double lie.

A modern example of a double lie is the medical use of marijuana. Those who promote it know that they are being deceptive. They admit it among themselves. They want to legalize the drug. The argument that it is somehow medicinal is a smoke screen, and they know it. Thousands of marijuana "clinics" have sprung up around California. One LA paper has a a marijuana critic who rates the quality of the various clinics. One clinic sells marijuana-flavored ice cream.

How can marijuana be good for our health, if in order to take it, be must inhale smoke? Is it rational to assume that, if there are legitimate medical uses for it, that it would not be better to take it in pill or tablet form under a doctors supervision than to allow it to be used in unmeasured doses whenever we want it? Would it not be better to isolate the substances in marijuana that are useful and treat people with them, just like we have done with most herbal medicines?

Even so , many will defend the lie of medical. They do so for a variety of reasons. Some defend it with the hope of growing it for profit. Others want to use it recreationally. Still others are just embarrassed to be thought of as intolerant prohibitionists. So they say nothing--a double lie.

Another example is illegal immigration. There are thirty million Americans who need jobs, and there are eleven million people working here illegally. Every one of those people is working because of stolen social security numbers, fake licenses, and counterfeit green cards. Those for whom they work are getting rich off paying subminimum wages. Many are treated like slave labor. Human smugglers rob them of their life savings to get here Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people are killed by criminals in order to get into this country illegally. Yet somehow we never speak of the horror and hardship it brings of so many people.

The answers to illegal immigration are simple Just require a social security number check whenever a person gets a job, enrolls children in school, applies for food stamps, or seeks out public welfare. When someone is arrested automatically check their papers and their status. So why don't we?

Because of the double lie. One group doesn't want to offend the Hispanic community, because it would cost them votes. Another group doesn't want to enforce the law and lose their cheap labor. Millions of other simply do not want to seem intolerant or racist--as if racism had anything to do with legal status. If we ever have an influx of illegal Swedes, they should be deported, too. Meanwhile, the deaths at the border and bone-grinding poverty for those who make it through goes on and on.

Or take abortion. Those who support a mother's right to chose do so by denying a child's right to live. There is no moral equivalence between the two. Should a man be allowed to beat a dog simply because it is his dog to beat, and can choose to do with it what he wishes? Should a erson kill a mentally incompetent child, or a wife in a coma, when it becomes inconvenient to keep them?

There are legitimate arguments to be made whether or not a fetus is a human, I suppose. But there is no legitimate argument to be made for choosing to terminate a pregnancy if the fetus is human. Then it is the taking of life, and not subject to choice, even to the mother who bears it.

That a child's life is more important than a woman's choice seems pretty obvous. Yet a large segment of the population finds unwanted children inconvenient. so the truth becomes inconvenient. Our lack of outrage over suggesting choice is more important than a determination of humanity is a lie. We ought to be outraged at it. But we choose not to be.

The cure for double lies is simple honesty. We have to be the child shouting from the crowd that the emperor has not clothes.

Unlike in the children's tale, just having one person say it is usually not enough. The power of the double lie is such that the obvious is often shouted down. It takes our willingness to speak up and keep speaking if we are ever going to turn double lies around. Until those who see the truth are willing to speak, the double lie will always prevail.

A Puritan Approach to Fishing

I have just finished a little booklet on evangelism, according to the Puritan method, by a modern author whose name I will not mention.  It is really an amazing book.  Somehow the author manages to write fifty pages on the subject of evangelism without even once suggesting that we talk with unbelievers except from the pulpit.  Instead, the book declares that the one and only method of evangelism is to preach from the pulpit the "whole counsel of God," using "plain sermons" done in the Puritan style, heavy on doctrine and archaic language. 

It is not a book on how to evangelize sinners,  it is a book on how to evangelize sinners three hundred years ago.  The majority of the book is occupied with what is wrong with modern evangelistic methods.  After having read this slim book, I am ready if  ever meet an Eighteenth Century sinner.

I respect the Puritans.  I respect their love of the Bible,  their prayer and piety. But their approach to evangelism was a product of their time when even unbelievers came to church, and the vast majority of people believed in God and respected the Bible. This is not the case today.  Today, the majority of people have no idea what the Gospel is, and have no inclination to find out.  The never set foot in a church or place of worship except on holidays and weddings.  If a preacher believes that the only way of evangelizing is through the pulpit then he should move his pulpit  outside in the front yard of the church, where at least he has a chance that a passersby might accidently hear and believe.

But enough about this book.  It did not do much to make me rethink my view of preaching or evangelism. It did, however, cause me to rethink my view of fishing. What if we applied the same approach to catching fish.  What a difference it would make!

The Bibles supports fishing, I am happy to say, as an activity which can be readily practiced by believers. After all, did not God Himself fish when He drew out Leviathan with a fishhook?  Did not the apostles fish on the sea of Galilee?  Did not our Lord, on more than one occasion, command  his disciples to fish?  And what about Jonah?  It is heartily reassuring to know that fishing is AOK with God. 

But what are we to think of the modern diversity of fishing methods, and the proclivity of many so called "fishermen"  of  our day to fish in strange places for strange fish?  The foolishness of their activity is shown by the number of times, once they have  a fish on the hook, they subsequently let it fall away. Their shallow, worldly approaches to fishing may attract many fish, but they often lose as many fish as they land.  With such large numbers of fish, they often do not have time to properly clean them.  And how many of those are the best quality?  They regularly land trash fish as well as good ones. 

It is not enough to fish--we must fish as God intended! That means the use of a net, preferably on the sea of Galilee. The Sea of Galilee is the only place where God specifically commands any to fish.  That one lake should be sufficient for us.   Though it might be difficult for the average fisherman to make it to Israel,  the rewards of knowing that we are righteous fishermen, attentive to His word ought to be enough to make the extra trouble worthwhile.  

In the Holy Scriptures, the fish caught, were those which God intended for us to catch--those preordained for our consumption.  Indeed, did not our Lord tell Peter which side of the boat to cast upon? Was not the number of the fish caught recorded in Scripture on one occasion(157) so we might know that the number of fish was specially ordained?  Without our Lord's command and specific direction, the disciples came back empty.  Without a clear sense of the Spirit's leading and God's specific command,  they should not have even tried.

The modern fishermen cares naught whether his fish are rightly  or wrongly caught. All he cares about is filling is cooler.  The modern fishermen uses unnatural means, such as artificial bait, fish finders, and outboard trolling motors. He focuses on quantity instead of quality, when he should be trusting in God to bring the fish to him, as Peter did of old.  Does he not hear his Lord's command,  saying "Throw over to the other side of the boat?"  Shocking!

As with everything else a pastor does, proper fishing begins with proper preaching.  Fish need to be intellectually challenged to jump into our nets.  It must be explained by clear and simple proclamation that it is their duty as lower creatures of the water to obey us, their masters.  They need to respect the authority given to us over nature in Genesis 1:28. 

A proper fisherman be a man of prayer.  He must get his heart right before God.  Then if he does not catch fish he will know that he is really at fault for not praying with sufficient intensity and passion for fish.  Once he has prayed with force and intensity, then he must  stand over the lake pleading with tears, saying "Come thou fish! Come and be captured for the Lord's sake!" He must read to the fish from the Scriptures, (King James preferred), admonishing them that it is their duty to become part of our diet.  He must comfort the fish, by revealing the glories that await when he is filleted, breaded, and dipped in tartar sauce! Surely it is his only the fish's willful disobedience in loving his meager life, coupled with our lack of zeal in our prayers and preaching, that has kept these creature from their appointed places in our frying pans.

But what if our cooler is still empty at the end of the day?  What if we catch nary a single fish? It matters not. We can still rejoice, because we know that we have fulfilled our Lord's command to fish.  We have done our duty,  whether or not any fish have actually come into our nets. We can go back the next week and the next, getting no results, because we are firm in our assurance that the fish whom God has foreordained will come, even if we have not seen any yet seen them, or any other.  And if the fish seem to be laughing at us under the surface, and think us to be a bunch of loonies, then indeed our empty stomachs are proof of our faithfulness and obedience, as we have not stooped to worldly methods of fishing.

But what if we never catch any fish at all?  Rejoice anyway, brethren.  We have the advantage of having more time to spend in his study the Word, finding more and more things to disapprove of in ourselves,  and more of what God has forbidden in fishing.  We can study all night,  since we are not burdened with the necessity of actually cleaning any fish. 

Amen and amen!

A handful of Grain

When the LORD brought back the captives to Zion,

We were like men who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter,

Our tongues with songs of joy.

Then it was said among the nations, “The LORD has done great things for them.”

The LORD has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.

Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like streams in the Negev.

Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy.

He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow,

Will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him. Ps 126

The farmer looked at his storehouse with satisfaction. The grain was golden—literally and figuratively. This grain would feed his family for several seasons. With this grain, his family had a future. Without it, they would starve.
It was good that he had the foresight to store the grain, instead of eating or bartering with it. A war was coming. The Babylonians were threatening invasion.
But with this grain, the farmer needn’t worry. His family could withstand a siege. They could retreat within the fortified walls of the city and last for months. Even if (God forbid!) something happened to him, there was enough here to feed his family for the rest of the season.
Then war came. The enemy laid siege to his town. Day after day they looked for help, which never came. Each day he opened his storehouse and took out their daily rations. Each day there was less. The farmer grew worried as he watched his precious sacks of grain grow thinner.
He conserved as much as he could. He cut the rations by half, then half again. Now there wasn’t enough to feed them all. For many days, he went without eating, so the children would have enough. Only one small pile remained—about a day’s ration. Tomorrow, even that would be gone.
The farmer took a small sack and carefully, precisely put every last remaining grain into it. He tied it up, took it to his house, and put it in a safe place. He and his family had nothing that night. His wife complained, “If we still have grain, we should eat it.” He shook his head. The grain would be needed later for other purposes.
The next day, his town surrendered. The Babylonians took everything they could find of value. But they missed the last of the farmer’s grain, because he had hidden it carefully. He lost everything else, but he still had the grain.
The Babylonians marched them away into exile. They were to be resettled on the banks of the Euphrates. They would never see their city again.
But they were not completely destitute. They still had something of their old lives—that handful of grain.
The farmer scratched a ditch in the mud. He opened his little sack and took out his handful of grain. Kernel; by kernel, he laid it carefully along the furrow, and covered it up with earth. Then he waited…
First the shoot appeared—then the stalk, then the tassel. New grain grew from the old. In the fall, they harvested the new grain. For the first season, they ate sparingly, putting most of the grain in storage for the next season. In the spring they planted again. Year by year, little by little, the garden grew into a farm. The single handful of preserved grain spread over many acres.
Seasons rolled by. The farmer grew old and died, but his son took over and managed it the way his father had taught him. When his son grew old, his children carried on. Seventy years—a whole generation—passed in the land of Babylon.
The family was successful in exile, but never happy. They wanted more than anything to plant in their own soil and to raise children in their own country. Every year, they said the same thing “Next year in Jerusalem.”
Then the word came down from the government that they could return to their homes. They lost no time in deciding to go. They celebrated just as this singer tells us—their mouths were full of singing and their houses with laughter.
Before they left, they harvested the grain. They put some into a small sack for seed. Then they left for Israel, bringing their sheaves with them.
The return journey took months. Finally, though, the family stood on the ground their grandparents left.
The first thing they did was to carefully plant the grain—the offspring of the very grain they carried into exile.
The grain had returned home.

The story that frames this psalm is the return of the exiles—how they reentered the land, sowed the seed, and harvested their crops. It is the story of how the people of Israel preserved their most precious traditions—their faith, their family, their God. They returned with their identity and principles intact. No wonder they sang it again every time they traveled from their homes to Jerusalem.
We enjoy the benefits of faith, but are we continuing to pass it on to the future? Faith must be planted in new soil every season. If we do not plant anew, our faith will disappear.
The world is changing. The old ways are dying. New generations are fleeing the parochial community of the past and becoming citizens of a much more complex global world. In this interaction with different cultures and traditions, Christians are in danger of losing their distinctiveness. Christians find themselves in a world they do not recognize, cut off from their roots by time and change. The world we knew will never return again. Instead, we are entering a world of diversity, where Christianity is one of many voices in a cacophony of competing cultures.
We should not worry about this. Christianity is ready for it. We were born for such a time. Old Testament Judaism was in constant competition with the religions of surrounding nations. The early church thrived in such a culture. Christianity was born in Galilee—the “circle of the Gentiles”—a melting pot of Jewish, Eastern, and Greco-Roman culture. Our journey is not that different from the one our ancestors made.
by the time we reach the middle years, we no longer look to our elders as leaders. We discover that we are the leaders. So it is important that we know what to abandon and what to preserve.
Much of what we think of as “traditional” Christianity is not traditional at all. Our music, our church sanctuaries, our liturgy, even robes and pulpits are not as ancient as we think they are. “Traditional” Christian churches maintain the outer trappings of a tradition, but may neglect the essence. Organs and choirs, and pulpit robes are not necessary expressions of our faith. We can abandon all the trappings of the past, so long as we preserve devotion to His Word and devotion to His Spirit. This is our handful of grain. As long as we stay true to Him, we need not fear assimilation into the world.
To preserve this grain, we need to plant it. Our generation has to plant that old faith in new soil. We may believe in a two thousand year old faith, but our ancient faith means nothing if it is not planted in contemporary soil.
The world is changing. We may enjoy prosperous times now, but lean times will come. When they come, our children—spiritual and physical—will continue our faith into the future. God will preserve them as He has preserved us. But there is one condition. We have to preserve the purity of our faith; so that one day we can return and rejoice, bringing our sheaves with us.

Sad News

Yesterday, a situation that I have known about for more than a week became public knowledge. A close friend was found to have been taking money from the church. I won't mention his name, nor the name of the church. Those who know it know it, and those who don't, don't need to. I mention it, not to further embarrass them, but because I want to share what I've learned from it.
First, I learned not to trust anyone. This is not because we don't love them, but because temptation is universal. The fear of being caught is one of the most powerful guards we have against dishonesty.
Second, I learned that anyone can stumble. I would not have thought it possible for this person to take money any more than I would have thought it possible of myself. But if he can fall, so can we. I know this because in some ways, I already have. We have all done things we shouldn't. And if we fail in small things, we can do it in big things, too, under the right set of circumstances.
My third thought on this is that when we sin, we literally split in two.
Some people divide the world into two groups--good guys and bad guys. The truth of it is much more complex. We can be good one day and bad the next. One day we can be a pious, church-going individual, thoughtful and generous to others, and really sincere about it. The next, we can do things that are unbelievably ugly and destructive. Then we put up a wall between our pious selves and our ugly selves, so that one does not ruin the other. On our pious days, our mind rejects what we do on our ugly days.
I know it sounds like Jekyll and Hyde, but it really isn't. We are the same person. We are not delusional. It's not that we forget, it's just that we choose not to remember. We believe that the good and pious person is the real person, while the other is just a shadow. But the side of us we do not wish to acknowledge is still ourselves, and can come to dominate us. Then one day, the two sides of ourselves collide. Suddenly, the part we hide comes into the light. Our divided self crash together like two asteroids, and we are wiped out in the collision.
My friends predicament has caused me to do some serious self-examination. No sin starts large. It starts as a little crack--a casual flirtation, an innocent deception, a corner cut here or there. But if we don't admit it, it grows. It gets bigger and bigger, and if we don't watch ourselves, it can break us in two.
As a Christian, I am not any better than anyone else. But I do recognize that there a cure for a sinsick heart.

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.


" If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives." I john 1:5-10 NIV

Light is the greatest disinfectant. Whether it's comfortable or not, we need to walk in honesty and openness.
I pray for my friend, his family and his wounded church.. My hope and prayer is that the pain they are enduring now will result in healing later. I have no doubt that it will.