Chris Wright discusses the ramifications of living in a society where lying is the norm
‘What is truth?’ asked Pontius Pilate. Jesus had just said: ‘Everyone who is on the side of truth listens to me’ (John 18:37-38).
So in his sneering rejection of The Truth who was standing in front of him, Pilate joins others in high political office, who, by undermining the truth in their words and actions, likewise take sides against Christ.
The father of all lies
The first theological discussion in human history began with an attack on the truth. ‘Theology’ means talking about God, which is what the serpent and Eve were doing in Genesis 3. But the serpent’s God-talk, after a deceptively innocent question, switched to a downright lie, a direct contradiction of God’s life and death truth. ‘You shall not certainly die!’ the serpent boasts, which Jesus said was tantamount to murder. ‘He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies’ (John 8:44).
Shrugging off lies
Today we seem to be living in the midst of a relentless war on truth, especially in Western culture and politics. The ease with which lies are told by those in power (or seeking it), and then simply shrugged off when they are exposed, with almost no accountability or consequences, is seriously disturbing.
In the white light of the Bible, this growing trend is deeply sinister, and by Jesus’ standards, satanic in origin and murderous in effects. It is increasing in scale, but it is not at all new.
In Psalm 12:1-5, David lamented the loss of integrity in public life in his own day:
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 neighbour; … with flattering lips and a double heart they speak. May the LORD cut off all flattering lips, the tongue that makes great boasts, those who say, “With our tongue we will prevail, our lips are with us; who is master over us?”
“Because the poor are plundered, because the needy groan, I will now arise,” says the LORD;
Significantly, David links the upsurge in public lying with increased suffering of the poor and needy – another very modern combination.
Amos (Amos 5:7,10) exposes how public injustice is strengthened by the force of public hatred against those who tell the truth.
O you who turn justice to wormwood and cast down righteousness to the earth!
They hate him who reproves in the gate, and they abhor him who speaks the truth.
The book of Isaiah (59:9,14-15) has a trenchant comment on the kind of nation Judah had become.
Therefore justice is far from us, and righteousness does not overtake us; we hope for light, and behold, darkness, and for brightness, but we walk in gloom …
Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands far away; for truth has stumbled in the public squares, and uprightness cannot enter. Truth is lacking, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey.
Judgement at work
Now when the kingdom of Judah had reached that advanced stage of religious, social and political depravity, when truth itself seemed like yet another stabbed victim in the street, they were standing at the cliff edge of God’s judgement. Indeed, God’s judgement was already at work, bringing a society that had for generations wallowed in idolatry and immorality, to a point of dissolution from within.
A society bent on trampling on righteousness, justice, honesty and truth cannot survive indefinitely. The darkness gathers. And one mark of Judah’s imminent collapse was the increasing folly and depravity of their political leaders. By their lying and self-interest, they simply accelerated the inevitable judgement on their whole society. God is not mocked. We reap what we sow.
John Calvin saw the hand of God’s judgement on biblical Israel in the wicked folly of their leaders and applied it: ‘They who rule unjustly and incompetently have been raised up by God to punish the wickedness of the people,’ he wrote. Or as a popular ‘translation’ of Calvin’s words goes: ‘When God puts a nation under judgement, He gives them wicked rulers.’ Are we seeing that in our own day, and not only in our own country?
What does it say about the signs of God’s judgement already at work, that two of the most advanced and powerful countries in the Western world are now ruled by men who have no apparent regard for truth, one of whom has twice been sacked for lying, while the other has allegedly accumulated more than 10,000 instances of untruth or false and exaggerated claims?
And who cares? Some may protest that much of this is relatively trivial – just politicians spouting words that nobody takes seriously. But, as Albert Einstein said (whether or not he knew how close he was to quoting Jesus): ‘Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.’ Yet we are asked to trust men, whose own wives could not trust them, with the future of the planet.
Undermining truth.
Brexit has divided our nation, and readers will inevitably hold divided views on the matter. But without taking sides, the most disturbing element in the whole saga to me has been the loss of trust in any kind of truth. Facts, or research, or hard realities, are dismissed as mere opinions or ‘pessimism’. Huge lies have been repeated long after they have been exposed as falsehood. The same undermining of truth is rampant in the quite deliberate and viciously political attack on science, for example as regards climate change, relying on the same tactics that, out of commercial greed, were used for decades by tobacco companies to discredit any medical link between smoking and lung cancer.
Meanwhile, social media accelerate what Charles Spurgeon saw in his day: ‘A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.’
There is, as I said, something deeply satanic in this vicious attack on any concept of truth. It certainly undermines our ability as Christians to say that the gospel is true, or the Bible is true. ‘What is truth?’ people are as likely to say today as Pontius Pilate did. And yet we cannot abandon those fundamental foundations of our faith. They are all the more important in a ‘post-truth’ culture. Truth really does matter, if we believe in the one who said: ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.’
Light in the darkness
Is there an answer? Well, those gloomy words of Isaiah 59 are followed by the glorious opening two verses of chapter 60!
Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the LORD will arise upon you, … and his glory will be seen upon you.
Into the darkness comes the light of God’s coming – as we celebrate at Advent.
Only God can confront human and satanic lies, with the truth of the biblical gospel. Only God can do what Isaiah 59:18-20 describes:
According to their deeds, so will he repay, wrath to his adversaries, repayment to his enemies; to the coastlands he will render repayment. So they shall fear the name of the LORD from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun; for he will come like a rushing stream, which the wind of the LORD drives. ‘And a Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who turn from transgression,’ declares the LORD.
These prophetic words have two Advent horizons of fulfilment. The first is the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ announcing the kingdom of God. Where God rules, in the lives of His people and their words and work in society, there can be salt and light that stem the corruption and dispel the darkness. We bear witness to the God of truth through lives of integrity and truth-telling.
The second horizon still lies ahead of us, when God will act in final judgement, destroy evil, put right all wrongs, expose the lies and let His truth shine to the worshipping ends of the earth, when Christ returns and inaugurates the new creation that Isaiah speaks of (Isa. 65:17-25).
Langham: truth with a mission
And meanwhile? Langham Preaching goes on training preachers to nourish the minds of God’s people with the truth of God’s word. Langham Literature goes on generating resources that proclaim and defend biblical truth in multiple contexts. And Langham Scholars live as men and women committed to God’s truth in the world of academic theology, teaching and training.
Satan may have had the first word in human theological discussion. But he will not have the last. God’s truth will prevail.
