When there’s no truth, there are no lies, either.

Save, O LORD, for the godly one is gone; for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man. Everyone utters lies to his neighbor; with flattering lips and a double heart they speak.
- Psalm 12:, 2

The new view of truth
By now most of us are aware of the radical shift that has occurred in the way people think about truth. If I may sum up: They don’t think about truth much at all.

That’s because, having become convinced that there are no abiding truths, no unchanging values or absolutes of any sorts (except, of course the absolute conviction that there is no truth), many people – perhaps even most – are happy to be relieved of the burden of having to think about what is right or true. Instead, they can just “go with the flow” and let the circumstances of the moment determine what decision or choice will work best for them. If there’s no truth, then the only question remains, in one form or another, What can I get away with?

It’s a little like when you finally became convinced as a child that there were no monsters under your bed. Once that was settled, everything changed. You no longer had to go through all those protective protocols (covers firmly tucked in, no part of your body exposed to the air, pillows ready to fling at a moment’s notice – whatever you went through), chant all those magical mantras designed to keep the foul beasts in their sub-cameral domain, or try to go to sleep with a light blaring in your tightly-closed eyes. If monsters don’t exist then, hey, anything goes. I can sleep without covers at all if I want! No monsters, nothing to worry about.

No truth, nothing to weigh: just do what feels right and that, hopefully, will be good enough.

No truth, no lies
In a world where there is no truth we are faced with the hard reality that there are no lies, either. If there’s no truth to deny, stretch, or avoid, there are no lies; whatever I decide to say in my self-interest at any moment is perfectly justifiable, as long, of course, as it doesn’t come back to bite me somehow.

But if there is no truth and there are no lies, then just what are we dealing with in the storm of communications that comes at us all day long? The Scripture indicates that people who will not deal in truth will take up lies, half-truths, deception, and flattery as their communications stock-in-trade. Not willingly or knowingly, of course – at least, not in most cases, or not all the time. But just because that’s the only option left when advancing self-interest becomes the end-all and be-all of existence. Truth – that old, discredited idea that only a few narrow-minded holdovers from the dark ages want to insist on – can be painful to one’s self-interest. Do away with truth and you have to put something in its place, and everything that isn’t truth is, well The Lie, in one form or another.

As it seemed to David in his day, so in ours, the world is awash in lies, flattery, and deception. It’s a kind of communications game of tag that we play with one another, the only object of which is to advance my personal agenda, come what may, and by whatever means.

Truth hurts, but lies…
But if truth hurts, lies will kill you. And when lies pervade the communications atmosphere, death is afoot throughout the land – spiritual, moral, and physical death.

Lies destroy values and convictions, which are the support beams of institutions like the family, the schools, and the courts.

Lies advance self-interest at the cost of anyone and anything, and lead to economic tragedies like the sub-prime crisis that occasioned our current recession.

Lies justify cheating in all its varied forms – plagiarism, adultery, perjury, tax evasion, performance-enhancing drugs, and pork barrel politics.

Lies make a joke of traditional standards, exalting entertainment over truth and making an absolute value of mere fun.

All lies, half-truths, deceptions, and flatteries spring like the daughters of Zeus from one great fountainhead: The Lie which maintains that God is a mere construct and man is the arbiter of truth.

No one is safe and nothing is sacred in a world where men pipe the tune of what matters most. The only defense against The Lie and all its attendant evils is the sure ground of the Word of God. The psalmist writes, “The words of the LORD are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times. You, O Lord, will keep them” (Ps. 12:6, 7). “Let God be true,” Paul resolutely declared, “though every one were a liar” (Rom. 3:4).

Antidote to The Lie
As Christians we need to face the harsh reality that, unless our worldview is steeped in, suffused with, and shaped by the teaching of Scripture (“Your Word is Truth”, Jn. 17:17), we have no defense against the lies that come at us every day. If we feel we have to apologize for taking our moral, social, and cultural stance on something so simple as “Thus saith the Lord,” then we won’t have a leg to stand on when we start pitting our reasons against those of anybody else. It’s all just opinion at that point, and in a world where there is neither truth nor lies, one person’s opinion is just as good as another’s.

Now more than ever pastors and church leaders need to make sure that all their teaching, as well as all their living, and how they conduct the ministries of their churches, are grounded in the Word of God. Only as we reflect the truth in all our lives and ministries will we be able to expose The Lie and lead people to escape its deadly thrall. Paul urged the Corinthians not to “go beyond what is written” in their lives together as the Body of Christ (1 Cor. 4:6). That’s good advice today. But we must not only not go beyond the Word of God in all we teach and do, we must be careful to live fully within it as far as we are able to do. Only then will the shelter of God’s Word protect us and the people we serve against the ravages of The Lie (Ps. 12:5-7).

For more insight to this topic, get the book, True Truth, by Art Lindsley, from our online store.

Or read the article, “Exchanging Lies for the Truth,” by Charles Colson.