We live in a world of lies. We are either convinced by them or are being convinced of them. The result is that the lies we believe are the lies we embrace, and the lies we perpetuate will shape our character.
Years ago, I walked into the office of a church member who I was scheduled to have lunch with. He was on the phone. I waited in the lobby, but I could see he was deep in a serious conversation with the person on the other end of the line. I waited as the conversation felt like it was part of a “never-ending story.” When he hung up the phone, he came toward me. Shaking hands, we began to exit his office, and he said, “They’ll lie to you, Jon. They’ll lie to you.”
To this day I do not know what the nature of the conversation was, nor who the person was on the other end of the phone. I do remember his words and that they remain crystal clear today, “They’ll lie to you.” And they will.
Lies come in all shapes and sizes, and colors too. They infiltrate our society and our lives, not only becoming part of our vernacular but framework and mindset to understand the world. If unguarded, lies will fester like a cancer and before we know how deceived we are the prognosiswill be terminal. The problem is that we are so easily deceived.
Just ask the radio listeners in 1938 to Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater on the Air program, who believed that Martians were invading the world. Radio then was today’s version of YouTube or TikTok, and with Wells purchasing the rights to HG Wells’ novel, The War of the Worlds, he set about presenting it in dramatic fashion. As the program unveiled landing sites with play-by-play destruction, pandemonium broke out across the nation. People were reacting to events based on a lie.
Or, just ask the Enron employees who were encouraged to reinvest back into their corporation. Believing their company was sound and profitable, they lost everything in less than six months. Actually, the money believed they had in stocks never existed. Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling developed a means to exploit loopholes in their accounting to hide billions of dollars in debt from shareholders. Employees invested, not in their future, but in the CEO’s lies.
Or, just ask the good German Christians who supported the Nazi Regime. Following the demoralizing defeat of World War I, Hitler used his charisma and vision for a new and improved Germany. The Jews were not only excluded from their “New World Order” but were scapegoated and blamed for their nation’s problems. The Jews were criminalized, dehumanized, and victimized. Tapping into the anger of the people, Hitler called the Jews, “parasites,” “race-tuberculosis,” “blood suckers,” and “vermin.” How could good German Christians be accomplices to the genocide of an entire race of people? Allow a big lie to be told over and over until you start to believe it, then rationalize it, then act on it.
Andy Andrews might have said it best when talking about one of his childhood friends, “The truth has no chance against such a convincing lie.”* He may be on to something.
The big lie of the ancient world is so foreign to the contemporary American culture, it’s often minimized and mocked. The big lie? Idolatry.
We don’t understand it. By either caricaturing the wood and stone carvings or over-simplifying it to hours watching TV or electronic devices, we reveal our ignorance. While idolatry offered lies about answers to life issues – such as explaining the turning of the seasons or why tragedy strikes – their fake answers were that the gods were angry with humanity or in a battle with each other and the fallout impacts life on earth. By removing the mystery of the universe, they felt they had more control over their lives. All of this is and continues to haunt us today. It was all a lie, but it felt like the truth to them. If we were honest, we’d fall for it too.
From the Ancient Near East to Greco-Roman times, three factors helped drive idolatry. First, sex sells, and it has always been marketed. Fertility rituals ensured successful crops and were always coordinated to temple prostitution. If you can imagine a modern-day marketing firm selling idolatry and linking it to religion and sensuality, then you can begin to understand the draw. Secondly, money talks. Ensuring that the right amount of rain will fall on the land is essential for an agrarian society. The rain makes the crops multiply. Rain allows grass to turn green and to grow so that herds and cattle may graze. This rain, they believed, was controlled by the gods. In our sexually saturated society, consumed with money and building wealth, we can understand the temptation to trust anything to increase pleasure and profit. Finally, politics warps. When a king imposes his idolatrous worldview on the people, this leaves very little room for resistance. From King Ahab to Nebuchadnezzar to the Caesar’s’ imperial worship, the pressure to fall in line removes the wiggle room for the individual to ignore or even protest. Standing against a king held deadly consequences. These reasons – sex sells, money talks, and politics warps – fueled the big lie of idolatry.
Corinth had its own struggle with believing the big lie. Paul had already warned his church to stay away from born-again Christians who worship idols (1 Cor. 5:9). With further questions, Paul spent three chapters helping the church navigate the culture of idolatry (1 Cor. 8-10). Unfortunately, the issue moves beyond the big lie, to the role and place of the pagan temple in the lives of the people. It wasn’t just a place of worship but served as the community center for the people as well. Banquets were held at the temple. Weddings took place in the temple, and if your neighbor invited you to his daughter’s wedding, what are you going to do? Work guilds held meetings at the temple, and if you were a member of the fishing or hospice guild, and you didn’t attend, you could be blackballed. What do you do? The struggle was real and the temptation to buy into the big lie was always present. Always.
Paul tackles idolatry and its lie one more time with the Corinthians, and he pulls no punches. First, he frames his argument in 2 Corinthians 6:14 by prohibiting the yoking of believers with unbelievers. The use of yoke takes the reader back to Deuteronomy 22:10 where Moses forbade yoking oxen to donkeys. Foreshadowing our own “cruelty to animal laws,” the oxen’s size and strength would overpower and kill the donkey. The two are incompatible. Paul views such yoking as a real threat to the life of the believer using words like “purify” and “holiness” while avoiding anything to “contaminate the body and spirit” (2 Cor. 7:2).
Secondly, Paul poses a series of five rhetorical questions (6:14b-16a) where he basically asks what truth has anything to do with lies. Clearly, the answer is “nothing.” Idolatry is the big lie and Jesus is the Truth, and the two merging is like food contaminated with salmonella poisoning. Even though the idolatry draw is so magnetically powerful, and the lie feels so right, Paul wants Corinth to fight and resist its pull.
Finally, Paul quotes a series of Scriptures in rapid fire. The quote in 6:14b is particularly interesting. “Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you” is from Isaiah 52:11. It’s the hopeful instructions to Israel as they see the day when they will return home from exile. The very lie they believed was that lie that shaped their character, which led to their destruction, which ushered them into exile. That lie is the one Isaiah says to avoid at all costs. The warning to the Corinthians is that something more is at stake than a home in Jerusalem, but a home with God.
We swim in a world of lies. They are all around us, enclosing in on us while suffocating the truth. Like an onion, the more layers of lies we peel off, the more painful they become until our eyes water and our hearts break. If everyone has their own truth, then it’s likely everyone believes their own lie. The struggle to find the truth is real. Herein lies the hope. We can take steps to curb the onslaught of lies, many of which we likely believe.
First, open our eyes to how many lies are woven into the fabric of society. Simple awareness goes a long way in stopping lies from shaping our character and defining who we are. Secondly, if it’s too sensational to be true, then it’s likely a lie. Lies will lead you into a rabbit hole till you are lost in its caverns with no way of escape. Their magnetism will suck you in convincing you how everyone is involved in its plot. But if you cannot pull off a surprise party for a family member, how can you expect the whole world to be involved in a lie? If it’s too good to be true, it is. And finally, realize that sex, money, and politics fueled idolatry in the ancient world, and it continues to fuel the new form of modern-day idolatry. We need to live with this tension that all three are necessary for living. That said, all three will distort reality making you believe you’re serving God when in truth, you are really serving something evil. Something very evil.
It’s the lies we believe as my friend reminded me, “They’ll lie to you, Jon. They’ll lie to you.” Or, as Andy Andrews once said, “The truth has no chance against such a convincing lie.”* He may be right. But Jesus countered, promising, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (Jn. 8:32-32). And it will.
Soli Deo Gloria!
(i.e., only God is glorified!)
* Andy Andrews, Baseball, Boys, and Bad Words.