In an article about abortion rights, Stonestreet writes: “Imagine you’re a nurse in an ER. Someone comes in with broken, bruised, bloodied knuckles. Bandaging their wounds, you ask: “What happened?” They reply, “While beating my partner tonight, this resulted.” Would you reply: “We really need to legalize spousal abuse and give people boxing gloves so that, when they beat their spouses, they don’t hurt themselves”? (5 17 22, Breakpoint, edited)
Reader, let’s move from physical beating to verbal abuse. Although words can be used for good, here we contemplate words promoting evil. Speaking evil, we wound others. And, like the bloodied abuser above, we also hurt ourselves. Nevertheless, Liz Scheier insists: “Sometimes, we believe liars because we like the story they’re selling.” (“Never Simple”)
God, help us.
Scripture and Lying/Slandering
Scripture teaches: “Death and life are in the ‘power’ (literally, ‘hand’) of the tongue, those who love it will eat its fruits.” (Prov 18:21). “Tongues/hands” can heal and soothe. “Tongues/hands” also can be blood-stained/deadly. Friend, are you licensed for your concealed weapon?
“Jewish sages regarded ‘evil speech’ about a person as the worst of sins, as bad as the three cardinal sins – idolatry, murder, and incest – combined.” (Sacks, Lessons in Leadership, 141) “Slander kills three people, the one who said it, the one it is said about, and the one who listens.” (142)
Scripture describes weaponized words.
- Ps 52:2,3: “Your tongue devises destruction like a sharpened razor, O worker of deceit. You love evil more than good, falsehood more than speaking truth.”
- Ps 57:4: “My soul is among (those) whose tongue (is) a sharp sword.”
- Prov 12:17,18: “A false witness utters deceit…(their) rash words are like sword thrusts.”
In short or long-term verbal abuse, what do verbal sword-thrusts/sharpened-razors divide?
Family: Tongues can alienate family relationships. Reconciliation may take great effort.
Friends: Tongues can trash friendships on the ash heap of lies/slander. “A whisperer separates ‘close’ (‘bff’) friends.” (Proverbs 16:28; 17:9)
Community: “If a ruler (employer, pastor/elder, community leader) listens to falsehood, all his officials will be wicked.” (Proverbs 29:12) Listening to lies is particularly abhorrent in the church. “The church of the living God (is) a pillar and buttress of the ‘truth'” (‘alḗtheia’- ‘reality, the opposite of illusion/partiality’). (1 Timothy 3:15)
The abused: When the right brain and left brain get disconnected, the right brain acts impulsively without input from the logical left brain. PTSD distress can unfold. Do word-sword thrusts/lies disconnect our brains?
Friend, what damage results! Have you met the walking wounded? Offer help before it’s too late.
The abusers/liars/slanderers: They wound themselves.
Asking a friend about such brain disconnects, she confessed: “I stood in my parents’ kitchen, noticing the absent appliances, coupled with Daddy’s missing car, meant the guy I had left alone in their house had stolen their goods, irreplaceable keepsakes, jewelry, art … all gone.
Lying to myself, ‘It will be fine,’ I heard a distinct crack in my head.
As the results of my betrayal kept unfolding, utter despair devoured my heart.”
Dostoevsky (1821 -1881): “Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him.”
“Not respecting anyone, they cease to love, and having no love, they give in to coarse pleasures to occupy and amuse themselves. They like feeling offended; it gives them great pleasure. They shed tears in earnest, although, at that very moment, they whisper to themselves, ‘You’re acting, despite your ‘holy’ wrath.’
“What is truly offensive is that they lie and worship their own lying.” (Dostoevsky, “Crime and Punishment,” edited)
God: False worship divides liars/slanders from True/Holy God.
God exposes our lying hearts
God warns deceivers.
He sent prophets to Israel.
Paul quotes an author, probably Epimenides. “One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, “Cretans are always liars…” (Titus 1:12)
Psalm 116:11 enlarges the group: “All mankind are liars.”
Hear Jesus: “You cannot bear to hear my word (logos). You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He…does not stand in the ‘truth’ (‘alétheia’) because there is no ‘truth’ in him. When he ‘lies’ (‘pseúdo,’ “to falsify, misrepresent, mislead’), he speaks out of his own character, for he is a ‘liar’ (a con-man) and the father of ‘lies.'” (John 8:43,44)
Judgment is coming. The abused pray: “In my distress, I cried to the LORD. ‘Deliver my soul, O LORD, from lying lips and a deceitful tongue. What will He do to you, O deceitful tongue? Sharp arrows will come with burning coals of the broom tree!'” (broom tree coals ENDURED). (Psalm 120:1-4)
Valuing true words – Contra Mundo
We desperately need heart surgery.
Would you pray these prayers?
Holy Spirit, truly apply Christ’s blood-bought-heart-transforming-adoptive work of redemption to my deceitful heart.
Father God, truly adopt me into your family.
Father, truly give me a word of testimony, helping me obey the Ninth Commandment: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Ex. 20:16).
Truly, give me grace to honor your Law. “One witness is not enough to convict anyone accused. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. If the witness proves to be a liar, do to him as he intended to do to his brother. Purge evil from among you.” (Dt. 19:15ff) “Do not spread a false report. Do not join with the wicked as a malicious witness.” (Exodus 23:1)
True and living God, give me grace to fear you. You terminated church members Ananias and Sapphira for lying. (Acts 5)
Help me soberly realize the future of those who disgrace truth: “…All liars–will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur.” (Revelation 21:8)
Father/Son/Spirit, facilitate our repentance. In your true/present/coming kingdom gird us with the “belt of truth!” (Ephesian 6:14)
Friends, recall the woman whose brain cracked when she lied to herself? She concluded: “I now stand praising Jesus. He truly raised me up from that abyss!!”
Note 1: In “Live not by Lies,” Rod Dreher (1967 -) uses the title of Solzhenitsyn’s (1918 -2008) speech. Solzhenitsyn divines that because Russians forgot God, they forgot the truth. As a result, Solzhenitsyn estimates 60M Russians died. Read Dreher’s book.
Note 2: Solzhenitsyn: “Violence loses Since violence can conceal itself with nothing except lies, and the lies can be maintained only by violence. Violence demands from us obedience to lies and daily participation in lies. And this submissiveness is the crux of the matter.
The simplest and most accessible key to our self-neglected liberation is this: personal non-participation in lies. Though lies may conceal everything, though lies may control everything, we should be obstinate about this one small point: let them be in control but without any help from any of us.”
Note 3: To Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn add another Russian, Tolstoy (1828 -1910). Tolstoy closes “Sevastopol Sketches” with: “The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the strength of my soul, whom I have tried to set forth in all his beauty … is the truth.”
Note 4: Zechariah: “These are the things you must do: Speak truth to one another, render true and sound judgments in your gates, do not plot evil in your hearts against your neighbor, and do not love to swear falsely, for I hate all these things,” declares the LORD.” (8:16,17)
