Tag Archives: lies

Slipping Into Error

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I’m sure you already know this, and yet, just in case you don’t, Israel launched preemptive strikes against Iran’s nuclear sites on Thursday. As expected, Iran responded. It was reported in the news that we knew those strikes were coming, even as America was attempting to broker a peace deal with Iran. However, Iran appeared to be doing what Iran always does, which is to make every excuse for not securing peace. Meanwhile, Israeli and American intelligence agencies reported that Iran was only days away from having enough enriched uranium to build a minimum of fifteen nuclear weapons, only one of which would be needed to turn Israel to glass. Used against the United States, millions here would die.

Is any of this news reporting accurate? Is the media telling us what’s true? It’s hard to tell these days.

On one hand, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Hosseini Khamenei, has said they would pursue nuclear independence. He also said as recently as 2023 that “Death to America is not just a slogan. It is our policy.” And of course, Iran—the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world—has made it a priority to rid the world of the Jews. That’s not breaking news. That’s an open and longstanding fact. What’s more, Iran’s desire for Israel’s destruction, some have said, is the only truly unifying principle that keeps the nation together. A largely tribal nation, Iran would likely come entirely undone if not for its leaders’ radical Islamic ideology.

On the other hand, nearly everything the news reported about COVID turned out to be false. Masks and social distancing absolutely did not accomplish anything, except to decelerate development in generations of children. It turns out that ventilators made the sick worse. Ivermectin, the Nobel Prize-winning medication prescribed to humans for decades, was negatively labeled a “horse dewormer” and called dangerous, ultimately getting doctors who knew better and prescribed it into heaps of trouble. And yet, it turned out to be wholly sufficient for treating the illness. If a person added vitamin D to his regimen, he would be good to go. Conversely, most news outlets insisted that the vaccine would protect from infection. They streamed Biden’s thank-you to the vaccinated while warning the unvaccinated to expect “a winter of severe illness and death.” And yet, the opposite was true. In fact, the rates of unexpected deaths have seen a sharp increase only among the vaccinated.

I read an article this morning from CBS News saying that the FDA is insisting Pfizer and Moderna “expand the warning labels on their COVID-19 vaccines about the risk of a possible heart injury side effect linked to the mRNA shots, primarily in teen boys and young men.” It goes on to talk about unusual spikes in myocarditis. A peripheral article warned of the same, but then added strange cancers and other diseases to the list of concerns, conditions that were never as prominent until after the COVID vaccines and boosters were so widely administered. One particular example shared was that sudden athlete deaths were off the charts by comparison to pre-COVID statistics.

By the way, I should say I’m not surprised by the vaccine results. Dr. Mary Talley Bowden was recently on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and she mentioned that we now have five years of data stacks confirming the vaccine’s dangers. She essentially noted that anyone who received the vaccine is now, in a sense, permanently rewired—because what the news called a vaccine isn’t a vaccine. It’s an mRNA injection. It’s gene therapy. Gene therapy rewrites DNA. Vaccines, in theory, are designed to prompt and arm the body’s immune system. Gene therapy is designed to manipulate the body’s very DNA. It works at a genetic level.

Still, the public’s response to COVID proved how quickly fear and misinformation can bend entire societies—even churches—toward error. I say this as so many churches, even after the lockdowns, continued to forbid worshippers through the door unless they were masked, vaccinated, and sat two rows apart. This is an absolute violation of God’s Word, regardless of the government’s mandates! The same patterns are playing out again, just under different headlines.

However, I didn’t start writing this morning with COVID-19 on my mind. I was more concerned about the possibility of war. More precisely, I was thinking about how easily things come undone—or how easily human beings can steer into falsehood—when our handling of source material is faulty.

Concerning everything I’ve described so far? I suppose the only answer I can give is to say, “Read, read, and read some more.” As Christians, I encourage you to do this, remembering three things in particular.

First, understand that skimming content is rarely helpful. Dig in and digest, reading from various sources in order to get a topic’s fullest spectrum of perspectives. Second, pitch everything you read against the Word of God. In other words, let everything you take in pass through the filter of Scripture. God’s Word shapes our opinions, not the other way around. Third, make sure your doctrine is sound. Doctrine doesn’t just articulate what we believe about salvation. It provides necessary boundaries, becoming a primary tool for discerning everything we see and experience. If you claim the Bible, and yet your theology depends on the modern nation of Israel going to war with Iran as a fulfillment of end-times prophecy before Christ can return, then it’s likely the first two recommendations weren’t heeded. In other words, first, you aren’t all that familiar with the Bible’s actual contents; and second, your opinion has become your strongest filter. As a result, your doctrinal compass is misaligned, and you’re destined only to distort the source material—the Bible.

Now, I say this as someone who’s spent a lot of time wrestling with how theology and the public square intersect, particularly through the lens of Church and State, or the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms. What we believe about God’s rule and our role in the world carries consequences, both for faithfulness and for clarity during incredibly confusing times.

Be aware that confusion has a way of hardening into error.

You may have already noticed from what I wrote earlier about Israel and end-times prophecy that one particular distortion in times like these is Christian Zionism. It’s a theological framework that merges biblical language with modern political expectations, often assigning messianic significance to the nation of Israel. This confusion leads many to misapply sacred titles and divine promises in ways that seem patriotic or spiritually inspiring, but ultimately are biblically reckless and incredibly dangerous.

For example, Israel’s current offensive has been dubbed “Operation Rising Lion.” An online friend posted on Saturday an image of a lion with an Israeli flag blended into its face. The tagline read, “The Lion of Judah has risen.” The image made me cringe. Yes, I support the nation of Israel’s right to protect itself from annihilation. Still, the nation of Israel is not the Lion of Judah. The phrase “Lion of Judah” belongs to Jesus Christ alone (Revelation 5:5). Furthermore, it was posted by someone who assumes the modern nation of Israel still carries an unbroken divine mandate, simply by virtue of its geography or ethnicity.

To believe and confess this is to upend the fuller testimony of Scripture. It replaces Christ-centered fulfillment with nationalistic nostalgia and, in doing so, distorts God’s promises and perpetuates grave theological error.

This kind of misreading reflects the same pattern I’ve addressed already. Whether it’s Iran’s deception or the media’s COVID narratives, when we abandon faithfulness to God’s Word, we can only lose our bearings in life’s fog. Reality becomes distorted, and we are just as vulnerable to being swept away by falsehood as anyone else.

Of course, whenever someone challenges the notion that modern Israel holds a unique divine status, the charge of antisemitism isn’t far behind. Even as someone who supports Israel’s right to defend itself, I’ve borne that charge. But the accusation misses the mark entirely. I’ve written before that it is by no means antisemitic to say (alongside Saint Paul, the inspired writer and chief apostolic interpreter of Christ and the Old Testament Scriptures) that Christians are the “Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16). The Israel of God is not ethnic or a localized nation. Saint Peter clarifies it is “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession…” (1 Peter 2:9–10). And again, Saint Paul writes, “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:29); and “For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children… it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring” (Romans 9:6–8).

Children of the promise—Christians—are regarded by God as Abraham’s true offspring. Like Abraham, they believe in the promise (Genesis 15:6; Romans 4:3; James 2:23). And what is the promise? The One who was promised—Christ (Galatians 3:16; Luke 1:54–55; Luke 1:31–33; Acts 2:29–31; Hebrews 8:6–13; Romans 15:8–9; 2 Corinthians 1:20; and countless other texts). All who look to Christ in faith will be saved (John 6:38–40) and brought into the new Jerusalem—eternal life (Revelation 21–22; Psalm 46:4–5; Isaiah 65:17–19; and others).

To say that only believers in Christ are saved and given eternal life is not antisemitic, but it is fundamental to Christian theology, and it does show Christian Zionism’s error. If it were antisemitic, then the apostles were antisemites for believing and declaring, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). What’s more, Christ Himself would be an antisemite for saying in absolutist terms, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6); and, “Whoever believes in [God’s Son] is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son” (John 3:16–18).

It is right and godly to defend and protect anyone and everyone from persecution or attack. Long before the events of this past week, Iran and its proxies had launched over 500 ballistic missiles into Israel. Christians should support restraining Iran. To do so is to love one’s neighbor as oneself. But that doesn’t change the fact that Christian Zionism is a dangerously confused theology—a dreadfully miscalibrated doctrine—that must be avoided, if only because it corrupts the Gospel that can save everyone in both Israel and Iran.

I suppose in the end, my main point is to say that if Christians are not vigilant—biblically, and therefore doctrinally—we will find ourselves swept along by narratives that feel righteous but stand in contradiction to God’s revealed truth. Whether it’s the media rewriting science or Christians assigning eternal significance to things that do not deserve it, the temptation to trade discernment for ideological capture is only ever a step away.

This is why being in God’s Word is so important. I encourage you: make it a part of your everyday routine. And as I said, don’t skim. Even better, don’t search the Scriptures just to find proof texts that reinforce your existing political views or cultural assumptions. Instead, go there to be corrected, shaped, and grounded. Go there for truth. Go there to find Christ. He is enough, and His Word is sufficient. And the Church—His true Israel—must live and speak as though both of those things are actually true.

Truth Can Win

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I’m guessing you heard the news about Jussie Smollett. He’s an actor who claimed he was attacked by two white men in Chicago because he’s both black and gay. He said they hit him, used bigoted slurs, put a noose around his neck, poured an unknown substance on him, and shouted, “This is MAGA country!”

Almost as soon as his story made the news, he was the golden child of the Democrats and the progressive Left who, together with their partners in the mainstream media, were doing all they could (and still are) to frame conservative America as deeply intolerant and unforgivably racist. Suddenly, Smollett’s relatively less-than-profound career had found powerful traction. He became a prominent guest at events, went on talk shows, and was even granted a primetime interview with ABC News’ Robin Roberts.

I watched the interview. Smollett cranked up the emotion and Roberts fawned, almost grotesquely. It was hard to watch, and not because I sympathized with him, or because I felt shame for being a conservative, but because something wasn’t right with Smollett’s story. Like so many others who watched it, I didn’t believe what he was saying. The thing is, much of the law enforcement community involved with the situation disbelieved him, too. Still, a few higher ranking officials in Cook County managed to pull enough strings to shield their celebrity friend from any attempts to reveal what was, even in their minds, looking to be a hoax.

Eventually, the tables turned. A fair-minded prosecutor was presented with the evidence, namely, that the men involved in the supposed attack were not even white, but black, and Smollett actually hired them. As it would go, Smollett was charged with six counts of orchestrating a hate crime against himself. Last week, the case and its facts unfolded before twelve jurors, and on Thursday, Smollett was found guilty of five of the six counts. Truth defeated untruth.

But it almost didn’t, which I’ll get to in a moment. First, I’ll let you in on a little secret—and I’ll bet it’s one to which others who do what I do for a living would likely nod in agreement.

It’s likely the reason I choked on the believability of Smollett’s interview with Robin Roberts is because pastors are pretty good at spotting liars.

If the job is being done right, no small portion of a pastor’s time involves interfacing with the underbelly of Sin’s grossest offenses. Lies rule in this realm. In one sense, this is true because the devil, the father of lies (John 8:44), labors tirelessly to maintain this dimly lit kingdom. Pastors know this. They know he uses lies like a model maker uses glue, connecting this and that misshaped part to create a seemingly insurmountable monstrosity that’s eventually found capable of hiding truth in its shadow. Still, I won’t place all of the blame on him. Even without his crafty influence, sinful humanity is more than capable of maintaining a kingdom of deceit. The Sin-nature is a powerful wellspring that feeds every human being’s ability to lie to others, and perhaps most disturbingly, to lie to oneself. What’s most troubling about this tendency is not only that it so often demonstrates itself with a twisted joyfulness—as if to suggest that without the ability to lie, humanity would be overcome by boredom—but that lying seems to be the first thing people will do to acquire what he or she wants, or to defend what he or she already believes.

Again, if pastors are doing their jobs, it’s likely they know the telltale signs of deception. They know the signs because they’ve heard and seen the same forms of dishonesty in countless situations. For example, all too often the man who confesses to having fallen out of love with his wife eventually proves he’s had eyes for another woman all along. He didn’t fall out of love. He lied to justify his desires and get what he wanted. Pastors see this all the time. Another example that repeats itself: It’s not uncommon for disgruntled church members to blame their unhappiness (or non-existence) on the pastor or a fellow member of the church community, landing on just about anything they’ve done or said as cold, unloving, or offensive. In my experience, the disconnect usually has to do with the wayward person’s desire to embrace an ideology or behavior contrary to God’s will and Word. It’s only after the pastor and church community have spoken truthfully to the errant Christian about the dangers of his or her living that the trouble begins. It’s then that the ones reaching with the truth are no longer counted as friends, but rather as unloving accusers. And yet, they’re not unloving. That’s a lie. They’re being faithful to both God and neighbor. They’re seeing a fellow Christian in need, and rather than closing their hearts to the opportunity for expressing God’s loving concern, they act. As Saint John points out, they epitomize love “in deed and truth” (1 John 3:17-18). On the contrary, the one who stubbornly refuses the truth is living in a perpetual darkness ruled by lies (1 John 1:6-9).

I could go on and on sharing similar examples, but I promised an explanation to my previous comment about truth nearly losing to untruth in the Jussie Smollett situation. What I meant is that if those who knew the facts had decided not to go the extra mile for truth, had those who were bothered by the lie being guarded by the people in power chosen to remain silent, an already monstrous narrative of untruth would have gained a deeper footing in America. But honest people took a chance at confronting dishonesty. They took a chance at offending the false narrative. They pursued truth, and truth won.

We can learn from these nameless advocates.

By their diligence, a deception was uprooted, and justice was served. What’s more, the blast radius of truth’s detonation revealed the scoundrels intent on weaponizing the lie. Thankfully, those frauds were silenced. Whether or not those same people are dealing honestly with themselves when it comes to public opinion, I don’t know. I will say that until they come clean, they’ll continue to simmer in their own foolishness in a glaring way. In other words, if I were Robin Roberts, or any of the other liberally progressive automatons who condemned anyone who questioned the verity of Smollett’s story—and this includes Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and countless other ever-droning agendizers in government, Hollywood, and mainstream news and entertainment outlets—I’d apologize to America soon, all with the hope that my gushing foolishness would be soon forgotten. I’m sure the social media giants at Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are certainly doing whatever they can to help scrub the crime scenes.

In the end, my real hope is that the shame these people are experiencing will not only shepherd them toward honesty, but will encourage them to measure their responses in the future. Admittedly, my hopes are not high in these regards.

So, why bring any of this up? Well…

A man is a man. A woman is a woman. Stand up to the lies that claim otherwise. Maybe take a chance and write a letter to the NCAA. Push back against their woke policies allowing transgenders to hijack women’s sports, ultimately stealing away so many well-deserving female athletes’ aspirations. The Smollett case has shown us that truth can win.

A person is not inherently evil because of the color of his or her skin. Fight in your communities and school districts against the deceptive race theories that claim otherwise. Go to the school board meetings. Call your local representatives. Do these things knowing truth can win.

An unborn child is a unique person, both dignified and worthy of life. Muster as much muscle as you can against the pro-choice devilry that would call this untrue. Get involved with your local Right to Life chapter. Give of your time and treasure to the cause. Be present at the gates of a Planned Parenthood to pray. Do this. As we’ve seen, truth can win.

Again, I could go on and on with this. The list of topics that would benefit from truth’s pushback is long. And yes, it also includes much of the pseudo-science that’s driving so much of what Americans are being required to endure these days. Against these looming deceptions, know that truth is forced into the shadows when those who are to be its hands, feet, and voice remain quietly indolent. Perhaps worse, truth teeters at the edge of burial when we wait for someone else to act.

I suppose in conclusion, whether any of us chooses to engage on behalf of truth, we can all rest assured that truth won’t settle for our disregard indefinitely. It certainly won’t forever tolerate those in the Christian community who, having been offended by it, take their marbles and go somewhere else. As I’ve said on countless occasions from the pulpit here at Our Savior, eventually the Last Day will come and the divine light switch will get flipped. In the bright-beaming streams of Christ’s return, even as every human being alive and dead will be found on their knees paying homage to the approaching King of Kings, all will see and know what is true and what isn’t. Joy or regret will be the two available emotions as all deceptions are stripped away and the final standards of judgment are laid unquestionably bare. By God’s grace at work through His revealing Word right now, Christians are equipped for that day. Through faith in Christ—the One who is truth in the flesh (John 14:6)—we are not only rescued from the perils of Sin and the regret it brings, but we are given hope for that moment of moments. Just as wonderfully, we are changed to know and desire truth in the here and now (John 8:32; James 1:18), and we are equipped by the Holy Spirit to protect and defend what is true (1 John 4:6).

By that same Gospel of deliverance in Christ alone, be strengthened to stand for truth. I say this knowing that if anyone is truly destined for the job, indeed, it’s Christians.