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Strong Delusion!

FALLING AWAY
"Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first." 2TH.2:3a

The Post-Truth Era?
Compiled from articles by Albert Mohler and Kelly Boggs, Baptist Press, and G. Jeffrey MacDonald, The Christian Science Monitor

Have we now reached a stage of culture and society that is "beyond honesty?" That fascinating question is raised by author Ralph Keyes in his new book, The Post-Truth Era: Dishonesty and Deception in Contemporary Life. "I think it's fair to say that honesty is on the ropes," Keyes observes. "Deception has become commonplace at all levels of contemporary life." Dishonesty is now the order of the day.

Keyes has pulled together an enormous body of evidence, all pointing to the pervasive rise of dishonesty in American life. He even has a label for this new age of dishonesty. "I call it post-truth. We live in a post-truth era."

"Post-truthfulness exists in an ethical twilight zone," he explains. "It allows us to dissemble without considering ourselves dishonest. When our behavior conflicts with our values, what we're most likely to do is reconceive our values."

Most of us are unaware of the pervasive dishonesty around us, and we tend to minimize our own dishonesty. In 1998, a USA Today survey indicated that a majority of Americans make dishonesty a routine practice. While not a daily activity, most that participated in the poll said they lied two to three times a week. Respondents considered their deception to be at an "insignificant level."

Two to three lies a week adds up to 104 to 156 lies annually. But to most Americans this amounts to an "insignificant level" of deception.

A survey conducted by the Josephson Institute of Ethics found that 59 percent of teenagers believe that "successful people do what they have to do to win, even if others consider it cheating." The study also reported that 42 percent of young people said "a person has to lie or cheat sometimes in order to succeed."

In the professional world, resumes are now assumed to be inflated. "An estimated half million Americans hold jobs for which their purported qualifications are spurious," Keyes reports, adding that an investigation conducted by the General Accounting Office once revealed twenty-eight senior federal officials who did not actually hold the college degrees they claimed.

Making his way through the terrain of deception in American life, Keyes notes that some individuals have even become "recreational liars." They spin tales which are willingly received by some as truths.

What about the law? According to Black's Law Dictionary, a "legal fiction" is "an assumption that something is true even though it may be untrue." In other words, lawyers are obligated, according to the professional standards of the bar, to use whatever argument will work in defending a client, whether or not it is true. In one perverse case, Keyes documents the work of a Florida prosecutor who argued in one courtroom that a pair of teenage boys had killed their father and then entered another courtroom to argue that a family friend—not the teenagers—was the real murderer.

Lies are now routinely accepted in political argument and in literature. The line between fiction and nonfiction is now blurry at best. Some recent best-selling titles in the "non-fiction" category have been highly fictional. Journalists at USA Today, The New York Times, and The Nation, among other papers and periodicals, have presented fiction as fact.

Other studies and examples exist, but I think you get the picture. America, it appears, has become the land of the liar and the home of the deceiver. No matter how you slice it, many Americans practice deception on a regular basis. And many do not seem particularly bothered by it.

Lying has for many apparently become a way of life. People may know it's wrong to lie in theory, researchers say, but in practice they feel the success they want will be out of reach if they admit their flaws and sins along the way.

"They think, 'If I'm playing by rules that no one else plays by, then I'm disadvantaging myself,'" says David Callahan, author of The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead.

Faith seems to be holding little sway against what some call "pressures" and others call "temptations." Individuals, it seems, are getting weaker when faced with temptation. Or put another way, many seem to know right from wrong, but material success has become more important to them than the task of sculpting moral character.

This assessment resonates with Michael Josephson, president of the Josephson Institute of Ethics in Los Angeles. For signs of moral decay, he says, look no further than prime-time television. Shows such as "The Apprentice" and "Survivor," he says, send a clear message that the winner in life is often the one who deceives others without getting caught.

"Temptations were greater in the Depression when people were more desperate," Mr. Josephson says. "So it's not that temptations are higher today. What's changed is that our defenses have gotten lower."

In a Josephson Institute survey, students at religious schools proved more likely to cheat and lie to parents and teachers than the national average.

Meanwhile, the list keeps growing of top people who got snared in their own web of lies. Vice-presidential aide Scooter Libby was convicted of lying, and then pardoned by a U.S. president who made his case for the Iraq War by citing phony weapons of mass destruction—who succeeded a president who firmly declared he "did not have sex with that woman [Monica Lewinsky]."

Great progress could occur if Americans could reclaim the definitions of success as laid out in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, according to American University Islamic studies chairman Akbar Ahmed. The trouble is, he says, too many profess to abide by an ancient faith but in actuality their passion is for social status and material gain.

In what has come to be known as the Golden Rule, Jesus taught, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" (Matthew 7:12). The instruction could not be any clearer: You are to treat others the way that you would like for them to treat you.

If a significant number of Americans are dealing deceptively two to three times a week, how many times is any one of us on the receiving end of a lie? If you are lying on a regular basis, it would be naïve to think everyone is always shooting straight with you.

"The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed," someone once observed, "but that he cannot believe anyone else." The lie you tell today just might be the one you are told tomorrow.

Lying is like rust on the social framework. Left unchecked, it will eventually corrode everything it touches until the structure collapses. It's a gateway behavior. People who get comfortable with its use will be tempted to experiment with other nefarious habits.

Without the recovery of truth, this civilization is doomed to a descent into even deeper levels of deception and dishonesty. As a culture, it's about time we faced the truth about our acceptance of untruthfulness.

While pondering a culture that has embraced lying, a story comes to mind: Three high school boys played hooky from their afternoon classes. When confronted with their absence the next morning, one of the boys explained that they had gone to his home for lunch and that a flat tire prevented them from returning to school.

The boys anxiously awaited the teacher's response. "Well, you missed a pop quiz yesterday afternoon," the teacher replied, "but I'm going to give you a chance to make it up." The boys breathed a sigh of relief. The teacher instructed the boys to take out a sheet of paper. "Here's the first question," she began. "Which tire was flat?"

(Commentary) Christians should be people of integrity—honest, forthright, reliable and sincere. You're to be like Jesus. And what is He like? He's "the way, the truth and the life" (John 14:6). He's the Word, which is truth, and He's "full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). "All His commandments are truth" (Psalm 119:151).

The Devil, on the other hand, is just the opposite. "He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it" (John 8:44). So the next time you're tempted to lie, remember who the "father of lies" is, and resist the urge!

You know you shouldn't lie, of course—or I hope you do! The problem comes up when some of you are faced with a situation in which a "little white lie" will save your pride or your reputation or keep you from some sort of problem. That's when you're tempted to "reconceive your values," as the above article stated, figuring that the Lord will forgive you for a fib because you're His child and it's all for the good in some way.

Well, the Lord will forgive you, if you ask Him to, but He still hates lies and He doesn't look kindly on liars, either! You'd do better to just tell the truth and take the hit in your pride or your reputation or your pocketbook rather than tell a lie. Honesty is the best policy! "Provide things honest in the sight of all men" (Romans 12:17). "Give no occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully" (1 Timothy 5:14), saying that you lied. You may suffer a little short-term pain, but you'll enjoy long-term gain, as "an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, and in love" (1 Timothy 4:12).

[end of article]

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