My apologies if I’m beginning to sound like a broken record, but I must speak what God puts on my heart. And my heart is heavy these days with what I see happening around me in our great nation.

Time was, a man’s word was his bond. People could be trusted to keep their promise. Truth was valued as much as life itself, and good people told the truth no matter the consequences.

Where is that truth today?

Politicians lie, advertisers lie, the government lies, children lie, parents lie. It’s becoming harder and harder to separate the truth from the lie.

The other day I heard a man who was campaigning for national office boast of his war experiences in Viet
Nam—the truth was he was only in the National Guard and never served in active duty overseas. It used to be that people in public office tried to cover up anything shady they might have done in the past; now they are making up things and claiming to have done things they never did. It’s insane. Where does it all end?

The telling of lies is an act of rejection against God. Even so-called little lies! The Bible tells us that Jesus is Truth; that God cannot lie, that He does not lie. We are told that all liars eventually will be cast into the Lake of Fire, which is eternal separation from God. When we choose to lie, then, we are choosing to separate ourselves from God, and from the Truth—for all eternity.

It is bad enough that so many lies are spread through the media, where a gullible public laps everything up without question. But the lies we tell as individuals—if repeated often enough—soon become pseudo-truth in our own hearts. Years ago, I worked with a young man who was standing trial for the murder of a young woman. I’ll call the man “Jimmy.”

Jimmy admitted to me that he was present at the scene of the murder. He acknowledged that in a fit of anger he had placed his hands around her neck—just to scare her. He went so far as to confess that he was so angry that he squeezed his hands together as hard as he could. And shook her. Violently. But he adamantly avowed that he did not kill her!

She passed out, he said, and dropped to the floor. It was an acquaintance with him that did the killing…he said. Once the girl was on the floor, the other guy kicked her in the neck. That was what killed her. He said.

Our minds all work the same way. Because the horror of what he’d done was too much to digest, Jimmy convinced himself that his actions only caused the girl to pass out—nothing more. Someone else was responsible for killing her. During the arrest and subsequent questioning, Jimmy told the lie so many times that he eventually believed it as truth.

As a people, we are losing our grip on reality. Lying is becoming so commonplace that we believe it more often than the truth. We claim there is nothing absolute, so what’s true depends on the circumstances. In other words, truth is a moving target. How can we possibly hit it?

Jesus boldly claims in John 14:6 that He is the way, the truth and the life. The Bible also boldly claims that Jesus (who is God) does not change. Any way you look at it, that’s absolute truth. It’s something we can count on, now and forever more.

As you pray for the healing of our nation, pray also for the revival of truth.. We will never be “one nation under God” until we learn to value the Truth.