Pants on Fire

I guess it’s time to post here something I posted on Facebook back in 2016:

I’ve seen a trend recently that bothers me. I see my FB friends posting things that aren’t true–that are demonstrably, objectively, documented as untrue. When that is pointed out, they respond, “I don’t know whether this is true or not; but I just wanted to get it out there.”

Outspoken believers. Christian teachers. Pastors. Missionaries. People with a long record of devoted, apparently selfless service.

Where to start.

God is truth, and Satan is the father of lies. Believers, who claim to follow God, ought to be really serious about the truth. They ought to care whether something is true or not. And they ought to take 30 seconds to find out whether something is true before they post it. If you don’t,

• how worthy is a cause that you need falsehood to support?
• is the truth not powerful enough to get the job done?
• how will you give account to God for your haphazard approach to things that are important to Him?
• what kind of an ambassador for God are you being?
• why should anyone believe anything you say?
• why would you want to give the enemies of God reason to blaspheme?

Maybe it’s time we take a deep breath, refocus, and reprioritize. In a billion years, this stuff is going to look really foolish.

That was two years ago, just days before the last presidential election. In the meantime, the situation has only gotten worse.

• No, California is not allowing non-citizens to vote.
• No, they’re not pit-mining lithium for electric-car batteries.
• No, wind turbines don’t require more energy to manufacture than they’ll ever produce.
• No, Joe Biden didn’t say, “No ordinary American cares about his constitutional rights.” He said something else, that meant something else. He may well have been wrong, but he didn’t say this.
• No, Maxine Waters did not say, “The next Supreme Court Justice should be an illegal immigrant.”

And on and on it goes.

Let that sink in.

And when the lie is pointed out, you get rejoinders that just make it worse:

• Well, it sounds like something she could have said.
• Well, snopes.com is just 3 weird people who like Soros. What does that have to do with whether the quotation is true or not? If you don’t like Snopes as a source, how about looking at the 14.9 million—OK, several hundred—other hits on the alleged quotation?
• Or sadly, there’s no response at all, and the post stays up. Got no evidence; just liked what it said.

And this from people who get really angry when somebody says there’s no such thing as absolute truth.

God is love, and he loves you, even when you say these things. But love for one thing engenders hate for what would destroy it, and God himself tells us that he hates some things (Prov 6.16-19).

And two of those things that he hates (out of just 7 listed here) are “a lying tongue” and “a false witness.” Two out of seven. You just managed to hit more than a quarter of what God hates. Pretty productive post, considering how little thought went into it.

And throughout our culture, as depraved and perverted as it is, most people are still sensitive enough to the image of God in them that they’re going to despise your dishonesty, and they’re not going to believe anything you say ever again.

Even if it’s John 3.16.

So you need to decide whether zinging an eccentric woman from California is more important than carrying out the Great Commission. And if it isn’t, sounds like you have some repenting to do—taking down some posts, and stating your repentance as publically as you posted the lies.

And then, by God’s grace, reveling in his forgiveness (1Jn 1.9), and living the Truth.

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash