Whenever I was caught in a childhood misdeed, my father would always head off my temptation to cover up by gently saying, “Never add a lie to a wrongdoing.” I wonder how the course of history might read if, both privately and publicly, we adhered to my dad’s maxim. It was Samuel Johnson who said, “Accustom your children constantly to this; if a thing happened at one window and they, when relating it, say that it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly check them; you do not know where deviation from truth will end.”

We are a world at a drastic distance from truth these days. The words of the prophet echo down the corridors of time. “In departing away from our God… truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.” (Isa. 59:13,14). It is a scarce commodity and in peril of being radically redefined in a system that is ruled by the prince of lies, the devil, in whom there is no truth (Jn. 8:44). We shouldn’t be surprised that as the times become more perilous and his reign runs out, finding and defining truth will become increasingly difficult and elusive.

He confuses us by twisting facts, turning truth on its head and calling into question the established benchmarks. Our heads reel, our brains contort like pretzels and confusion ousts confidence as we cower under the spin-meisters rhetoric; we wonder if truth is even accessible in an era of talking heads and pervasive partisanship. The line of least resistance beckons as the most comfortable course and we capitulate, concluding that truth doesn’t matter. “Whatever” is okay! James Morris in an essay in the autumn 1996 Wilson Quarterly captures this so wonderfully. “The word ‘whatever’ draws you in like a plump pillow and folds ’round your brain; the progress of its syllables is a movement forward… a universal shrug.”
We believers are called to claim the high ground, not cave in under the deluge of duplicity. When we consider the climb too strenuous, then it is time to remember that truth is a Person, not a principle. The psalmist observed a long time ago that God requires truth in our inmost parts (Ps. 51:6). God fulfilled this righteous requirement—his call to relationship--by making us one with the Son so that out of that Life we can choose to think, speak and act truthfully in accordance with the mind of Christ.

It is said that one can detect a lie quicker via the ‘phone than face to face. I had a friend with whom I never wanted to speak on the telephone when I chose to be less than candid. Without fail, she would pin me within the first few words of conversation. “Fergie, what’s wrong?” came the plea. To which I lied, “Nothing. I’m fine!” How often do we clamber out of our cars on a Sunday morning; big Bible tucked under one arm, yanking a child with the other and “glory grin” in place in order to fool the flock that everything is just great. All the while our hearts are breaking. Colossians 3:9 says, “Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds.”

We don’t tell the truth because we are unaware of who we are—included in the Trinity and partakers of their divine nature; we have not put off the old man and put on Christ. We continue to operate out of the legacy of fear that we inherited from our first parents in the Garden. As Christians, we may be less guilty of bald-faced lies, but we are adept at denial and blaming. We refuse to acknowledge our own responsibility and readily resort to that most ancient of defense mechanisms—blaming someone else! Such deception divorces us from the Truth, in other words our real selves, and we are in danger of being jailed in a prison of our own making.

Do we make time for the truth? I wonder if the simple expedient of taking time to listen and speak might eliminate the equivocation to which we become accustomed. Strolling down the sidewalk of our new neighborhood when I first arrived in this country, I met the gal from next door. “How are you?” she inquired. I began to tell her but she continued walking. In my naiveté I wondered why she would ask if she didn’t want to hear the answer. The harassed Mom with the passel of kids on Sunday morning may be correct in her assumption that no one has enough time to listen to her pain hence the hurried “I’m okay!”

When Johnson advocated dogged determination in teaching youngsters accuracy, it was a harsher era for children than in this permissive time. But, as we tenderly teach the most malleable of hearts, they quickly catch on to the imperative of truth. More important than drilling into them a set of rigid laws governing accuracy, telling them early of the indwelling Christ ensures dependence on him in knowing how to accurately assess the less than cut and dried circumstances of life.

Richard Wurmbrandt, a once imprisoned pastor from Romania, recounts an incident that illustrates such a situation. Some years ago in a country where one practiced religion under peril of death, a young lad was on his way to an underground Bible study. Hostile guards accosted him and demanded where he was going. With the wit and wisdom that could only come from within, he replied, “To read the last will and testament of my older brother!”

Because Truth is an inside job, when we take time to tune in we can distinguish truth from error in what we hear also. No doubt we can all remember hearing the inner voice warning us of danger or deception. In a religious world that offers a veritable smorgasbord of experiences, how do we avoid indigestion at best and poison at worst? For example, I so clearly recall sitting under a persuasive preacher proffering deceptive delights indistinguishable from the real thing except for the dissonance in my spirit. Had I heeded the Spirit that guides into all truth, I would have saved myself a hill of heartache.

As the landscape around us subsides into a mire of misstatements and seductive rhetoric, let us plant truth firmly back on the throne of our own lives. Living out of the Father’s love frees us from fear so there is no need to hide in a cloud of cover-up. In humility, not hubris, we can then offer the lifeline to those drowning in deception. For though it seems the wicked do prosper in their prevarication, ponder the famous words of James Russell Lowell as we look for Truth to triumph in the end.

Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne,
Yet that scaffold sways the future and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow keeping watch above his own.