AMBUSH AT CREDIBILITY GAP
Exodus 20:16
In David Letterman style, Rick Warren identifies Ten Great American Lies:
#10 Your table will be ready in a minute.
#9 One size fits all.
#8 This will hurt me more than it hurts you.
#7 I’m sorry I’m late. I got stuck in traffic.
#6 The check is in the mail.
#5 This offer is limited to the first 50 people who call in.
#4 It’s not the money. It’s the principle of the thing.
#3 I just need five minutes of your time.
#2 I’ll start my diet tomorrow.
#1 I’m from the IRS and I’m here to help you.
He suggests that we “Fight truth decay this week” [Rick Warren, The Fax of Life August 27, 1995].
Truth was an early casualty in the drama of humanity. Satan inferred an untruth about God with his question, “Did God really say?”. The question was neither true nor false, but it deliberately created a false impression about God. Eve’s response was also untruthful. She exaggerated what God had actually said. In these and so many other ways we lie. There is no real freedom when truth is trivialized. That is why one of God’s Statutes of Liberty says, “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.”
I. WHY GOD PROHIBITS LYING
The ninth commandment provided protection from false testimony in courts of law. In ancient days, a judgment of guilt usually meant the death penalty. Just as God bans the theft of personal resources in the eighth commandment, He bars the theft of personal reputation with the ninth commandment.
Human society has always hated deception. Even thieves have a code of honor that will not tolerate truthlessness. In primitive societies, those who thought nothing of massacre and mayhem, rape and robbery, regarded lying as an offense against the gods.
God is clear in His evaluation of deceit: There are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers (Proverbs 6:16-19). The LORD detests lying lips, but he delights in men who are truthful (Proverbs. 12:22). No one who practices deceit will dwell in my house; no one who speaks falsely will stand in my presence (Psalm 101:7). A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who pours out lies will perish (Proverbs 19:9). Along with the unbelieving, the vile, murderers, and the sexually immoral, God says that all liars shall have their place in the lake of fire (Revelation 21:8).
II. WHY WE LIE
Time magazine once identified lying as an epidemic plague in the national character of the U. S. The writer claimed, “everyone does it” and viewed lying as the norm rather than the exception. Lying has become a way of life. Some circles even encourage it. The impression is given that we can’t survive without it. Cheating is widespread in the classrooms of our finest universities. If degrees are gained by dishonesty, can we expect that graduates will suddenly become honest and ethical in the practice of their professions? I want my physician, my accountant, and my lawyer to learn their lessons in school, not at my expense.
We all have an in-born tendency to lie. Jesus described the Evil One as a “liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). This crafty liar was at work in the Garden of Eden:
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.” “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:1-5).
The contagion of lying has infected the human race ever since. Adam and Eve’s immediate response was to hide from God; to deceive Him by feigning absence when He came calling. Sir Walter Scott expressed it well:
“O what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive.”
Our central problem is alienation from God. The Bible says, “Even from birth the wicked go astray; from the womb they are wayward and speak lies” (Psalm 58:3).
Deception is not just an American phenomenon. Nikita Khrushchev, the former Soviet leader, once told that an epidemic of thievery in the USSR became so bad that guards were placed at all factory gates. At a plant in Leningrad, a man named Petrovich came out with a wheelbarrow carrying a huge, suspicious-looking sack.
“What have you got there, Petrovich?” asked the guard.
“Just sawdust and shavings,” Petrovich replied.
“Come on,” responded the guard, “I wasn’t born yesterday. Dump it out.” To his surprise there was only sawdust and shavings. Petrovich put it all back in the sack and went home.
The same scene was repeated every night for a week. Finally, overcome with curiosity, the frustrated guard said, “Petrovich, I know you. Tell me what you’re smuggling out of here, and I’ll let you go.”
Petrovich said, “Wheelbarrows!” [Told by Os Guinness, “The Christian and Society,” in Transforming our World: A Call to Action James Montgomery Boice, editor, (Portland, OR: Multnomah Press, 1988), 51-52].
If you are like me, you watch a movie and almost find yourself applauding the thief who beats the system. We cheer the cheats because “the heart is deceitful above all things” (Jeremiah 17:9).
III. WAYS WE LIE
We lie in many ways. Some are guilty of the destructive lie—often motivated by hatred and lacking basis in fact. Those who seek revenge spread rumors and do irreparable damage to reputations. Character assassination takes place because we fail to love.
Pierre Van Paassen tells an unforgettable story of a hunchback named Ugolin, in The Days of Our Years. Ugolin lived in a French village where Van Paassen once lived. He never knew his father; his mother was a drunken outcast; and the hunchback and his sister, Solange, had to fend for themselves. One day Solange, the only love of his life, is falsely accused of theft and sentenced to prison. When finally released she can find no work because of her criminal record. When Ugolin becomes ill, Solange, desperate to provide for him, sells her body to buy medicine and food.
Later, an unruly mob attacks Ugolin. Ruffians toss the poor cripple in the air while mocking, “The lovers of thy sister pay a franc apiece.” He is finally rescued by the village priest who takes him to his own home. The next day the cripple walks into the river and drowns himself, whereupon his sister kills herself with a gun. The old priest lamented, “Those children are not suicides. They have been murdered by a society without mercy.”
The day of the funeral arrives. The church fills with people, and the priest begins his sermon:
Christians, when the Lord of life and death shall ask me on the day of judgment, “Pastuer de la Roudaire, where are thy sheep?” I shall not answer him. When the Lord asks me a second time, “Pastuer de la Roudaire, where are thy sheep?” I will yet not answer him. But when the Lord shall ask me a third time, “Pastuer de la Roudaire, where are thy sheep?” I shall hang my head in shame and I will answer him, “They were not sheep, Lord, they were a pack of wolves!” [T. Cecil Myers, Thunder on the Mountain (Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1965), 134].
Our conversations reveal the moral grayness of our time. Lying and gossip are widespread. Slander and vicious criticism is heard everywhere.
Another form of dishonesty is the defensive lie. We seek to protect ourselves and talk our way out of compromising situations through defensive lying. When we do this, we merely increase our guilt, and we have very guilty consciences. Noel Coward, the playwright, once sent a note to twenty of the most prominent men in London. Each note said, “All is discovered. Escape while you can!” All twenty promptly left town!
Couples headed toward divorce are often guilty of defensive rationalizing. Usually they wait too long to seek marriage counseling. A counselor listening to both parties may decide that someone has to be lying. Both can’t be telling the truth. Usually they have not intentionally lied. He (or she) really believes the lies. Each has lied to themselves. They refuse to face reality.
A desert nomad once awoke in the middle of the night. Hungry, he lit a candle and began eating dates from a bowl beside his bed. He took a bite from one and saw a worm in it; so he threw it out of the tent. He bit into a second date, found another worm, and threw it away also. Then, reasoning that he would have nothing to eat if this continued, he blew out the candle and quickly ate the rest of the dates. Many prefer darkness and denial to the light of reality about themselves.
The most common form of lying is the defective lie. This is the lie of carelessness, silence, or half-truth. Few of us will never be called to witness in a court of law. The false witness we must guard against is the general untruthfulness that blackens character, misrepresents motives, and ruins reputations. We establish our reputation for wit by the ability to put down another person. We can do irreparable damage by our silence. A shrug of the shoulders, or a raised eyebrow will often do the trick.
Too much of our conversation is ugly gossip. One woman said, “I wouldn’t say anything about her but something good, and brother, is this good!” Another said, “There’s something I must tell you before I find out it isn’t true!” Too often a conversation begins, “Did you hear about…?”
God cannot be excluded from little compartments of our life. Truth is crucial in every situation. We try to put a pretty face on dishonesty by calling it a “white lie.” Lillian Carter, President Jimmy Carter’s mother, was once asked about the President’s truthfulness. The aggressive reporter said, “Your son, has been traveling the country, telling people not to vote for him if he ever lies to them. Can you, knowing a son as only a mother can, honestly say he’s never lied?”
“Well, perhaps a little white lie now and then,” the irascible elderly lady said.
“And what,” retorted the reporter, “is the difference between a white lie and any other? Define white lie for me.”
“I’m not sure I can define it,” Miss Lillian said sweetly, “but I can give you an example. Do you remember when you came in the door a few minutes ago and I told you how good you looked and how glad I was to see you?”
As much as I may like Miss Lillian’s retort, the white lie is dangerous. Lewis Smedes says:
The white lie as a way of life gradually creates cynicism in both liar and deceived. Gradually nobody trusts the other to tell the truth. When we have told ‘white lies’ often enough we assume that others do the same to us. The game of life, we assume, calls for both people in a conversation to be gentle liars. But does it stop there? Once you assume that I lie in polite circles, can you trust me in business or politics …? In the long run, truthfulness in social intercourse, occasionally painful as it may be, is better than the evils that heap up from our perpetual festival of the ‘white lie {Lewis B. Smedes, Mere Morality (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1983), 227].
Truth is easily corrupted and the consequences are enormous. William Shirer was a correspondent in Europe in the years surrounding World War II. He has written two of the definitive books on the history of that era. In The Nightmare Years he says, “Hitler justified his aggression against Poland in the eyes of his own people and the world—’I shall give a propaganda reason for starting the war. Never mind whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked afterward whether he told the truth or not. In starting and waging a war it is not right that matters, but victory’”[William Shirer, The Nightmare Years (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984), 427]. Hitler stated his philosophy in Mein Kampf: “The great masses of the people … will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one” [quoted by William Manchester, The Last Lion: William Spencer Churchill: Alone: 1932-1940, (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1988), 50].
That is exactly what has happened in our culture. We have bought relativism’s lie that all values are equal. So there is finally no difference between good taste and bad, or between right and wrong. It is simply a matter of preference. Intellectuals may believe that such thinking sets them free, but true freedom is found in God’s Statutes of Liberty, including the ninth commandment. Rabbi Harold Kushner says,
The moral relativist, the person who believes that something is right if you feel it is right, may feel free in his rejection of absolute standards of good and bad, but his freedom is the freedom of the sailor at sea without a compass. He is free to choose to travel in any direction he fancies, precisely because he has no way of knowing which direction the harbor lies in. Should we envy him that sort of freedom? [Harold Kushner, Who Needs God? (New York: Summit Books, 19890, 83].
Robert Caro, in his biography of Lyndon Johnson, tells how the President justified the troop deployment into the Dominican Republic in 1965. Johnson told that the American Ambassador had said that without the intervention:
“American blood will run in the streets.” (He hadn’t.) He said that the Ambassador had said that he “was talking to us from under a desk while bullets were going through his windows.” He hadn’t. Johnson said that fifteen hun-dred innocent people had been murdered, some by decapitation. They hadn’t. He said that the revolution had been taken over by a “band of Communist conspirators.” It hadn’t [Robert A. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), xxiv-xxv].
The President misled the American public, about foreign affairs, including the Vietnam war. Pretext, fabrications, and deceptions marked his discussions of the budget, politics, appointments and even his trip schedules. Theodore White said, “Distrust of the President was slow in growing.” As the lies continued and multiplied, however, people “paid attention to what he said and began to check his statements.” They discovered that the President lied about big matters and small. He lied when it made no sense to do so. He told that his great-grandfather “died at the Alamo,” though his great-grandparents did not arrive in Texas until years after the Alamo had fallen {Caro, xxv].
A new phrase—”Credibility Gap”—entered America’s vocabulary because of President Johnson. Soldiers wore the phrase on buttons pinned to their flak jackets. Military personnel sent to Vietnam on Lyndon Johnson’s orders, went into action wearing a button—”Ambushed at Credibility Gap”—that called their Commander-in-Chief a liar [Caro, xxv].
The ninth commandment insists that truthfulness should be sacred in every area of life. Jesus said that our talk should be honest, straightforward, and simple. He said, “Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one” (Matthew 5:37). The Apostle Peter wrote, “Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech” (I Peter 3:10). Jesus also said that all people “will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken” (Matthew 12:36). To despise the truth is to despise God whose very being and character are truth. Don’t allow your relationship with Him to be ambushed at Credibility Gap.
Tenth Message in a Series on the Ten Commandments
