Famous men on a most famous problem

One of the more famous things Jesus Christ ever said was, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." The word "truth" is used 278 times in the King James Bible.

The “last days” will not just be represented by rampant, blatant, brazen delusional lies, it will be found in the subtlety of who people pretend to be, never showing their true colors--or even understanding the concept of “being true to yourself”-- because their lives have been immersed in fine-tuning a facade; their personal performance art.

Mark Twain observed in 1899, "Almost all lies are acts, and speech has no part in them...all people are liars from the cradle onward, without exception, and...they begin to lie as soon as they wake in the morning, and keep it up, without rest or refreshment, until they go to sleep at night."

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I’ll never forget my first day of class in Journalism 101 at Ohio State University (circa 1985) when the professor asked us, “What do you think is the strongest emotion?”

Students offered answers such as hate, love, fear and anger. The professor told us it was jealousy. He then said only 7% of what we communicate to another person is based upon our chosen spoken words. More than half of all communication is body language alone and another 38% comes through our tone of voice as well as non-verbal cues.

One of the take-home messages is people can read our hearts and we’re only fooling ourselves to think otherwise.

This favorite professor of mine at OSU, Henry J. Schulte, was also the first person to make me understand that there are, according to him, “two types of people: those who want the truth and those who don’t.”

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Just as we have components to our respiratory, vascular and muscular systems, our soul is a system that includes our conscience and heart.

  

People on a regular diet of lies (in all its forms) damage the healthy function of their conscience and it eventually shuts down. As Proverbs 11:17 warns, “The merciful man doeth good to his own soul: but he that is cruel troubleth his own flesh.” People seek to anesthetize themselves to avoid being haunted by their conscience.

Jesus Christ warns us in Mark 7: 20-23, “That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.”

Forms of evil identified in the Old Testament include pride, hypocrisy, guile, malice, envy and deceit. It is in the secret intents of men’s hearts where evil thrives. It works at a compound rate too—the more you indulge it, the more ground it gains and the more it darkens and hardens the heart to eventually render a person incapable of distinguishing the evil inside them. That’s how you can have grossly evil men think themselves perfectly upright and good.

“If Al Capone, ‘Two Gun’ Crowley, Dutch Schultz, and the desperate men and women behind prison walls don’t blame themselves for anything—what about the people with whom you and I come in contact?” asks Dale Carnegie in How to Win Friends and Influence People.

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Jesus Christ tells us that as long as we think we're telling the truth when we're not, we cannot hear or see the truth for what it is and our life is clouded from the truth of God.

Look at this passage from Matthew 13: [13] Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.

[14] And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive:
[15] For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.
[16] But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear.
[17] For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.

Christ points out in the Sermon on the Mount, “But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!”

No human lie, no matter how subtle, goes unnoticed by God, who confirms "the very hairs of your head are all numbered."

If telling the truth is the only way to truly love someone, it wouldn't make sense for the Bible to only be partially true. That would mean God is not interested in the deep emotional sharing that equates to love.

As a famous quote from C.S. Lewis says, "Jesus Christ was a liar. Either that or a complete raving lunatic. Oh yeah, there's one other option (and only one): He was, and is God, just as He claimed. If the claim was false, then either Jesus knew that, or He didn't. If it was false and He knew it, then by His intentional deception He has scammed the world with the greatest hoax ever conceived. Liars don't tend to make particularly good moral teachers. If, on the other hand, He honestly was convinced in His own mind that He was God (and wasn't) then it's pretty clear that He was a lunatic. The only remaining possibility, as implausible as it sounds, is that the claim was true: Jesus really is God. He really does love you. And He really can forgive your sins.”