There is something inherently attractive about a lie that draws us in like an insect to the light. Sometimes I wonder why that is. Maybe it’s because most of us are skeptics by nature and really don’t want to believe the truth that’s obviously in front of our faces. Maybe it’s because most of us are stupid and we can’t tell the difference between the truth and a lie. Or maybe it’s because we all have a very real enemy in Satan who loves to fool us into believing certain variances of the truth mixed with lies (like a Cinnabon cinnamon roll from the mall laced with cyanide).
I have a tendency to believe that it’s probably all of those and more. But maybe it doesn’t really matter why we are attracted to lies. Perhaps it’s more about the fact that lies are capable of destroying anything and everything around us, including the very condition of our souls.
From little white lies to faith-crushing big ones, deception is a powerful influence that has pulled the wool over humanity’s eyes and tricked us into believing all sorts of untruths. Lies such as: certain evils are no big deal, people can save themselves, or if God even exists, He either hates us or doesn’t really want to be personally involved in our lives. And as we wallow in our blindness, it can put a damper of intimidation over the efforts of truth to shine through darkness. But that’s exactly what the truth does—it shines brightly to destroy the darkness of lies.
In a fallen world, it doesn’t take much to plant a seed of darkness and watch it grow. The Enemy, our sinful nature, and the world all have an active role in this process, to the point that it feels impossible to spread the truth with any kind of significant influence. In the short run, darkness can easily choke out any hope for a glimmer of good to break forth and wash all of the gloom away.
The suicide note written and left by the jazz-age cartoonist Ralph Barton provides evidence to this:
I have had few difficulties, many friends, great successes; I have gone from wife to wife, and from house to house, visited countries of the world, but I am fed up with inventing devices to fill up 24 hours of the day.
The lies told by the Enemy would have you believe there is no hope. God is not present in your life and there’s really no reason for Him to be present because He hates you anyway. You might as well be as corrupt as possible because that is the only kind of medicine able to numb the pain of an existence on this wretched planet.
These lies are powerful and influential. They burrow under the skin of our conscience and fester like a disease. They distract us so our hearts become hypnotized with despair.
But in the battle between darkness and light, light always wins out. It is always able to cut through the anguish-soaked blackness that can engulf a person’s heart. Whenever darkness decides to step up and go toe-to-toe with the light, light always delivers the knockout punch that makes its enemy drop to the floor. The result: hope.
Why? Ultimately, because darkness is never a match for the light. The world would have you believe that evil is the dominant force in the universe, unable to be shackled or contained by the feeble attempts of God or His human followers, but the world (once again) is wrong. God has been and will forever remain the Victor in the battle, which will be proven once and for all when evil is destroyed for all time (see the book of Revelation…all of it).
Now, you might say, “This is all fine and good, but the end of the world is probably a long way off and I would kindly like to know how to deal with the lies of the world in a practical way today as I wrestle with life’s choices.”
Good point, and spoken like a true American. I’m a practical guy too, and I always prefer getting to the guts of what it all means rather than dealing with the uncertainty of the theoretical.
Well, like with many other things, the rubber actually meets the road in the daily walk of life. As American Christians, we are constantly looking to the end result of the journey for answers instead of what the journey itself means.
Life is lived in the present, not in what we want to happen in the future. If you think a formula can be plugged into your life now in order to produce a certain desirable end result, all of a sudden you have become a math problem to be solved, and God doesn’t work that way. He isn’t calculatingly sterile and He isn’t comfortably convenient. He values relationships and those happen in the context of moment-by-moment interactions on the journey of your life.
Every day will present you with opportunities to reject the lies of Satan/this world or to be charmed by them…and each day will be defined by that rejection or acceptance. If you swallow and ingest those lies on a continual basis, you will easily fall under the alluring spell of the world’s fiction and find yourself blinded like so many others around you. You’ll start to think your existence is only about pleasure. You’ll start to believe God doesn’t love you, that He’s cruel, or may not even exist at all.
Don’t swallow it. I know it’s a difficult journey, but God walks the path with us. If you don’t believe me, open up your bible and read the gospels. Jesus chose to step out of the ultimate comfort in the universe to walk beside filthy human beings and show them how much God wanted to be with them. He offered redemption to them and He offers it to you today. Evil is screaming at you to turn away from the truth and buy into what it has to offer, but as succulent as its fruit may look, it will quickly rot.
It is so important to identify the lies you are bent toward believing and replace them with the truth of what God has to offer. The consequences of your actions define the very identity of who you are now and who you will become in the future.
Someone very wise once told me, “First you make your choices, and then your choices make you.” My advice is to hold on to that proverbial slogan and run with it each day.
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