By Jack Wyman

The little boy stared nervously at his Sunday School teacher.

He was trying to remember the verse. He thought for sure he knew it.

“A lie is an abomination to the Lord.” He grinned with satisfaction. “And a very present help in time of trouble.”

We smile at a child’s mangled memory. We smile too because the boy’s rendition is often the case. Lying one’s way out of trouble is a time-honored and quite dishonorable resort for many who are caught doing something wrong.

Even people who don’t want or intend to lie do it anyway. It’s “a very present help.”

We know what perjury is. We’ve seen people commit it—after swearing to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” They lie about not lying.

Years ago, millions of Americans were entertained by a popular television program called To Tell the Truth. A “team of challengers” would be interviewed by four celebrity panelists seeking to identify which one of three contestants was telling the truth about his or her unusual profession or activity. The other two contestants were free to lie with abandon.

Today, it seems quaint. Lying has so thoroughly permeated American society as to breed cynical acceptance. We expect to be lied to by somebody. It’s such a routine daily occurrence in an age of instant global communication that we are shocked when somebody actually tells the truth. It’s regarded as either heroic or naïve.

There was a time when character and honesty mattered more. We embraced the legendary anecdote—though, ironically, with some skepticism as to its veracity—that George Washington confessed to his father, “I cannot tell a lie.” Abraham Lincoln earned the moniker Honest Abe. When an opponent once called him two-faced, the lanky prairie lawyer smiled and said: “I leave it to my audience. If I had another face, do you think I’d wear this one?”

We revere these American icons because, though clever and ambitious, they remained leaders of character. And school children, up until recently, have been taught that the courage, wisdom, and integrity of these men made them especially great.

The eloquent American statesman Adlai Stevenson, in accepting his party’s nomination for President, promised to “talk sense to the American people—let’s tell them the truth.” Today, millions of jaded voters would join in Pilate’s snide rejoinder, “what is truth?”

We seem unable to either define or find truth. And, more disturbing, it seems not to matter that we can’t.

What becomes commonplace over time comes to be anticipated, approved, and even admired. Cleverness supplants integrity. In the post-modern twenty-first century, duplicity, exaggeration, half-truths, obfuscation, unfounded allegations, and defamation are all the moving parts of falsehood.

George Orwell’s 1984 has been here for quite some time. Language doesn’t just inform and inspire; it conceals and confuses. Carefully crafted agendas advance under the cover of clever euphemisms. “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain,” cried the bumbling and duplicitous Wizard of Oz.

It may be rightly argued that this has always been true—in our society and certainly in our politics. To varying degrees. Christians, understanding the spiritual condition of the world, do not hold any utopian hope that we will somehow improve much by ourselves. Moral decline is seen more as an inevitable trajectory than a passing phase. History would suggest this trend.

We can sometimes, by the grace of a merciful and providential God, bend the arc upward. Through the centuries, man has nobly advanced justice, freedom, and opportunity. By God’s strength and wisdom, our achievements have often been impressive. But the weary and groaning world remains pining for some final resolution and deliverance from its oppression. Believers are trusting God for that, in his divinely-ordained time. 

The Christian’s belief that we are fallen creatures living in a fallen world does not make us pessimists. It makes us, in Robert Kennedy’s fine phrase, “idealists without illusions.” It guards against unfounded optimism and misplaced reliance.

The realities of humankind give us a clearer understanding of the importance of faith, hope, and love. It turns our perspective and trust heavenward, to the God who, for all our sins and failures, still loves us and cares about the world he made and will someday redeem and restore. 

For now, you and I live in a time and place of the prophet’s description: “Justice is driven back, and righteousness stands at a distance; truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter” (Isaiah 59:14). Man defies and renounces the truth of God and embraces a narcissistic lie of his own making. This is not the path to any glorious millennium; it is the road to perdition.

We are as watchmen on the wall. We must speak and we must act. We must warn. We must seek God’s wisdom in understanding these times and apply those insights to our own lives and to the lives we seek to influence.

We must stand boldly for what is right. And resolutely against that which is wrong. And we must pray that we may know the difference.

As we enter another tempestuous campaign season, you and I must stand for truth at all costs, and let the political chips fall where they may.

We must avoid being ensnared by a cynicism that views truth as expendable for the sake of power and gain. We must never rationalize lies and claim to follow the Lord who declares himself The Truth. There is such a thing as wanting to win too much.

God doesn’t want our success; he commands our faithfulness.

Let us put on the belt of truth that we may stand against our mortal enemy, the father of lies.

Where truth has stumbled and fallen, let us gently, lovingly, humbly, and firmly raise it up. Let us honor truth and take it seriously.

Let us defend truth, abide by truth, proclaim truth, and advance truth. If we are to live as people of The Way, we must be people of The Truth.

Honestly.

To order Jack Wyman’s book, “Everything Else: Stories of Life, Faith and Our World”, go to amazon.com, Christian Book Distributors or barnesandnoble.com. It is also available on Kindle and eBooks.

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