Political Rhetoric...by Another Name

Excerpts from The Truth About Lies, by Frank Allnutt

• "Political rhetoric" is today's kinder, gentler rendering of
  "Political lies."
  

• It's understood.
  

• It's expected.
  

• It's sometimes detested and other times accepted.
  

• It's even an esteemed thing to grasp. Because it can deceive minds and garner votes.
  

We're exposed to more Political Rhetoric today than ever before, thanks to the communications revolution. If you watch TV and cable, listen to radio, read newspapers and magazines, go to the movies, tweet or otherwise text, spend much time on the web, turn out for a Town Hall Meeting, answer automated phone calls, read candidates' and governmental officials' "newsletters," you know what I mean.

While technically we have witnessed a communications revolution in recent years, we have also witnessed a propaganda revolution within that once respected and trusted "Fourth Estate" (more commonly known as "journalism" or "news").

But Political Rhetoric is only a small part of the bigger picture that we once referred to as "lies" and "lying." And even that is part of a bigger picture known by that archaic term "sin."

The lie has always had its double standard: It’s one thing to tell a lie, and quite another thing to be lied to.

We recognize most lies for what they are. But the thing that irritates us most is when we fall for a lie. Like you, much of my life has been given over to culling out lies and searching for truth. And it’s more maddening today than ever.

A few decades ago lies and lying had become a widely unnoticed epidemic in America. Now, as never before, the veracity of certain celebrities in politics, sports, entertainment and business come under question, and the piranhas of the news media turn each savory mess into a feeding frenzy. (The lies of common folk rarely raise a ruckus.)

On talk radio and television...in the supermarket rags...in internet chat rooms and forums...within the hallowed halls of justice...from behind pulpits and in schoolrooms...at local bars and pool halls—and other such institutions of traditional debate and quasi-intellectualism—there has spawned no less than a national forum on lies and lying (concerning other people, of course; not oneself). The good it serves is to raise the public consciousness about lies and lying. But does it raise the public’s conscience?

A century ago, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) penned this ageless observation: “A lie is detestable to Almighty God...but a welcomed friend in time of need.” Now, as then, some people just couldn’t get through the day without their “welcomed friend.” Lying offers them both self-protection as well as a hopeful way to get ahead in life. Lying is the only way they know to avoid getting divorced, to keep their job, to close a deal, or to stay out of jail.

Lying just isn’t the scandal it used to be. A few months back I read a newspaper story about a management consulting firm that holds seminars on “The Art of Corporate Lying.” People used to climb the corporate ladder one rung at a time, now it’s one lie at a time. Does it work? Ask some former CEOs and CFOs (they have regular visiting hours).

The sad truth is that lies and lying are what really make the world go ’round—not that other “L” word.

The sanitization of lies
Why have lies and lying become so fashionable? Quite simply because we live in a sinful world. And “all sin is a kind of lying,” St. Augustine observed. Another reason that lies and lying are fashionable, I think, is because we don’t use the words “lie,” “lying,” and “liar” as much as we used to. No sirree! In today’s more sophisticated, diversified and tolerant, Politically Correct society, we use kinder, gentler, sanitized words like fib, fabrication, smoke and mirrors, stonewalling, snow-job, slight distortion, twisting the truth, stretching the truth, misstatement, whitewash, sidestep, a story, a tall tale, pretending, kidding, fantasy, B.S., P.R., a line, colored facts, falsehood, invention, figment of imagination, an expediency, rationalization, approximation, spin, embellishment, generalization, over simplification, exaggeration, propaganda, political rhetoric...and the list surely goes on and on. Whatever you call it, a lie is a lie.

Our preoccupation with lies
Most of us do it unconsciously: We spend much time every day trying to sort out the truth from lies. We do it in response to what we hear from the mass media, politicians, advertisers, salesmen, and purveyors of all sorts of religious dogma on television. And many of us, some more so than others, spend a lot of time trying to figure out ways to skirt the truth in discussing sensitive subjects with spouses, bosses, bill collectors, and the IRS.

Our preoccupation with lies has been around for quite a while, having its genesis in a garden when a fateful conversation over knowing good and evil took place between a snake and two naked people. Not quite so long ago—in 1924—a philosopher wrote

The whole world is absolutely brought up on lies. We are fed on nothing but lies. We begin with lies and half our lives we live with lies. Most human beings today waste some 25 to 30 years of their lives before they break through actual and conventional lies which surround them.—Isadora Duncan

Lies in high places
I don’t know about you, but I was raised to respect, obey, and trust those in authority. The thought never crossed my mind that someone in authority might actually lie. But the truth, as we all know, is that even those in high places are not impervious to temptations to lie.

In the last century, two of the world’s most dreadful rulers were also two of the world’s biggest liars. Benito Mussolini said, “Our motto must be to lie in order to conquer.” But Il Duce’s (The Duce's) lies were not nearly in the same league as his notorious role-model up north. Mussolini, along with fascist sympathizers and many other Germans, accepted Adolf Hitler’s lies as justifiable means to usher in his vision for a “Third Reich.” Some people naively assumed that Hitler always told them the truth. Others believed he was a godsend, and a few thought he was the Messiah—the savior not only of Germany but of the whole world. However, they were without excuse: Before Hitler came to power (during his imprisonment), he spelled out his philosophy about lying in his book, Mein Kampf:

The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of a nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell big ones.—Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

Think of the potentially greater devastation of Hitler’s lies and how far he might have plunged the world into deeper darkness had he today’s communications technology, especially television and the internet. And wonder if the world’s next Hitler is now walking among us.

The “Father of lies”
This title was given to Satan by Jesus Christ (John 8:44). One of the greatest things the Devil has going for himself is that people are gullible. It’s been evident since Eden, and will be more pronounced as we near the time of Christ’s second coming:

And then that lawless one [Antichrist] will be revealed whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His coming; that is, the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, and with all the deception of the wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. And for this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they might believe what is false, in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness (2 Thessalonians 2:8-121 ).

What Mussolini, Hitler, and millions of others today, including some Christians, have in common is that, because of pride, they are deceived by the same lie Satan told Adam and Eve: that man, through his own resourcefulness, is quite capable of becoming like God and managing his life.

It is the outgrowth of a self-deifying attitude like the one expressed in this 19th Century English poem:

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
—William Ernest Henley, Invictus

Life’s Messages
Lies come to us directly and through subtle and indirect messages. We can see the effects in those who profess to captain their own ship or rule over the kingdom of self.

The information we receive throughout life is stored in the memory of the soul. It forms a matrix of mixed messages from which we form our concepts of truth and lies, good and evil, right and wrong, reality and fantasies. In effect, they become the basis of our beliefs and values. The person who functions out of false beliefs and values develops distorted concepts of moral imperatives, self, others, God, the temporal world, and the spiritual realms.
Misleading messages also impact the emotion, will, and conscience, and can cause them to become unstable and damaged. They routinely steer the gullible person to attempt to fulfill their needs and desires in faulty ways that are outside of God’s will.

In our early developmental years the source of misleading messages can come from some of the most unsuspecting sources, even well intentioned but errant parents, siblings, teachers, and peers.

As we grow older and our social circle expands, so do the potential sources for more lies, deceptions, and fantasies. False messages about God, others, self, and the Christian life can hold a Christian in conditional and functional darkness and captivity. They can render the individual partially blind and deaf to what otherwise would be empowering messages from God of truth, love, faith, and hope. False messages can lead to sin, which divides the heart or inner person—functionally separating the soul from the spirit, and therefore from the indwelling Holy Spirit—and leaving the believer dysfunctional in terms of spiritual discernment and Spirit-empowerment and guidance.

A person’s mixed bag of memorized lies, deceptions and truth, wrongs and rights, fantasies and realities, set before them a confusing array of moral, philosophical and religious concepts. Through this clouding of the eye of a person’s mind, they see things in fleshly and worldly distortion.

Worldly Deceptions
The world employs what, in modern terms, is called Hegelianism. Here’s an example of how this philosophy of deception works in a politically-oppressed society: People are killed by guns (thesis), so guns should be outlawed (antithesis). All the while, the ulterior objective is to disarm the populace and lessen its ability to defend against governmental oppression (synthesis).

Now let’s consider a few examples of how some people are typically exposed to damaging worldly lies, deceptions and fantasies.

Intellectually. Children are educated in humanistic philosophies in the world’s secular schools, and people of all ages are influenced by worldly entertainment and mass media, including publishing, broadcasting and the internet.

Economically. People are duped by their own lust and ignorance into buying into worldly financial systems, methods and philosophies that promote materialism, debt, gambling, and speculative high-risk investment schemes. The accumulation of wealth, in the worldly mind, translates into happiness, security, and controlling power, all of which are deemed essential to development of a favorable self-identity, high self-esteem, and proud self-sufficiency.

Politically. Lies and deceptions come from many sources, including some governmental, cultural, ethnic institutions and special interest groups.

Spiritually. False teachers and false religions and philosophies wrongly influence people’s concepts and beliefs about almost anything—about themselves, others, and especially about God.

We Act Out of What Fills the Heart
Scripture sometimes refers to our memory as a “storehouse” or “treasury,” and its contents—memories, concepts, beliefs, values, knowledge, wisdom and the like—as “treasure.” Jesus spoke of this when He scolded a group of Pharisees: “You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. The good man out of his good treasure brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of his evil treasure brings forth what is evil” (Matthew 12:34, 35).

The lessons of life’s experiences greatly influence our intellectual, emotional, volitional and behavioral response to circumstances, real and imaginary, past, present and anticipated. Some believers seek the help of others, such as Christian counselors, in facing this onslaught. Often times counselors can help a believer understand how false messages have wrongly influenced their beliefs and values, caused them to develop fleshly defense mechanisms, and perhaps even contributed psychosomatically to physical and mental health problems. A spiritually gifted Christian counselor will help his client take a fresh look at life’s messages from a biblical perspective and to rely on the Holy Spirit for enlightenment and guidance.

Seven Major Truths About Lies and Lying

The Bible tells us not to lie to one another because it is an evil practice (Colossians 3:9). Scripture also reveals other truths about lies and lying that every believer should take to heart. Let’s take a look at a few of them:

Truth Number 1:
“It is impossible for God to lie” (Hebrews 6:18).

Truth Number 2:
God hates lies and liars: “There are six things which the Lord hates, yes, seven which are an abomination to Him: Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that run rapidly to evil, a false witness who utters lies, and one who spreads strife among brothers” (Proverbs 6:16-19). "Thou dost hate all who do iniquity" (Psalm 5:5). Note: God also loves them! (John 3:16).

Truth Number 3:
Liars are banned from the Kingdom of God: “He who practices deceit shall not dwell within My house; he who speaks falsehood shall not maintain his position before Me” (Psalm 101:7). “Outside [the New Jerusalem] are the dogs and the sorcerers and the immoral persons and the murderers and the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices lying” (Revelation 22:15).

The person who “loves and practices lying” is the Adamic person who is a liar in accordance with his nature and is separated from God and His Kingdom. Though a Half-Hearted Christian might lie, this person is a child of God, has a righteous nature, and is a citizen of God’s Kingdom. His unconfessed lie may temporarily estrange him from fellowship with the Holy Spirit, but it has no adverse effect on his relationship with God.

Truth Number 4:
To lie places a person in conditional and functional bondage to sin. As natural people, we were slaves of sin (Romans 6:16). But at the time of our salvation we were set free of that enslaving relationship (Romans 6:17, 18). And yet, when we lie or sin in any way, we depend upon sin by committing actual sin, and we therefore make sin our functional master—a false god.

Satan, with the help of his demons and unwitting human accomplices, tempts people to believe that the quickest and easiest path to self-sufficiency is the way of the common lie—that in lying is found the ultimate power to manipulate the minds of others and thus control them. But lying is not the path to self-sufficiency and godlikeness; it is the path to destruction.

An unknown author jotted down these words of wisdom for us all to heed: “A lie on the throne is a lie, still, and truth in a dungeon is truth, still; and a lie on the throne is on the way to defeat, and truth in a dungeon is on the way to victory.” And Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that, “Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits them all.”

Truth Number 5:
To lie is to commit spiritual adultery. To lie is to avoid and reject the truth. The liar, whether he knows it or not, yields to Satan (the father of lies and the personification of sin) and rejects Jesus (the personification of truth and the expression of God’s perfect love). Romans 1:25 speaks of those who “exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and [thus] worshiped and served the creature [Satan] rather than the Creator.”

When a believer lies, he or she yields to Satan’s seductive temptation and enters into what the Bible calls “improper relations” with him. This person is unfaithful to Christ (our “bridegroom”) and carries on a spiritually adulterous relationship with Satan (an “illicit lover”).

Lying is a form of worldliness. James writes, “you adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world [including its penchant to lie] is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: ‘He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us’?” (James 4:4, 5).

Truth Number 6:
To lie is to glorify Satan. Those who lie, according to Jesus, do the desires of Satan, who is the “father of lies” (John 8:44). When a person lies he imitates Satan. And, as the old saying goes, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” Through lying, a person flatters Satan. And by flattering Satan, a person pays homage to Satan. And by paying homage to Satan, a person glorifies the Devil!

Truth Number 7:
To lie renders the heart dysfunctional. At the time of our salvation, we were made righteous new-hearted, new creatures in Christ (Ezekiel 36:26, 27; 2 Corinthians 5:17), and were substantively cleansed of sin in our heart or inner person. However, when we lie, or sin in any other way, “sin-debt” is left within the soul of the heart—defilement such as guilt, shame, and anxiety. Such sin-debt renders the hearts of believers dysfunctional, temporarily strains their fellowship with the indwelling Holy Spirit; and places them in temporary functional bondage to Satan and sin.

How to Experience Freedom and Victory Over Lies and Lying

Lies and lying wound the heart and can place the believer in conditional bondage to Satan and the power of sin. So how can believers be released from such bondage, rid themselves of sin-debt, resume walking in Christ, and be healed in their wounded hearts? By themselves, they can’t, but with the Spirit of Christ they can.

How lies influence mind set
As Jesus taught, we act out of what fills the heart. When a person’s heart is filled with lies and fantasies, their mind, emotion, and will are conditionally corrupted; their mind set or focus in life is distorted; their behavior is controlled by lies and is fleshly or sinful; and, they are blind to certain truths and realities.

Many Christians are deceived by the lie that they are the master of their life and have strong enough self-will or will-power and intellect to overcome sin. They focus on what they should not do, rather than on what they should do, and this is because they set their mind on the flesh rather than the Spirit. While they have good intentions, their fleshly self is attempting to manage their fleshliness. And that is tantamount to the blind leading the blind, and attempting to put out a fire with fire. The simple truth is that “flesh management” ultimately ends in failure, and it is opposed to “Spirit management” or the Spirit-led life.

Keep in mind that, technically, the Christian is neither in the flesh nor has ontological flesh in the spiritual sense. So when the believer is spoken of as having “flesh” or attempting to manage “flesh,” understand this to mean conditional, functional, or behavioral “fleshlikeness” or “fleshliness.”

Half-Hearted Christians who are not getting their needs and desires met, typically approach flesh management in two ways, and neither of them is God’s way to experience freedom and victory in Christ: One is the attempt to supplant broken-heartedness or wounded-heartedness with fat-heartedness, or as some of my respected colleagues might say, “to exchange negative flesh for positive flesh.” Sadly, this approach is taught from many pulpits. The so-called “prosperity gospel,” the “God helps those who help themselves” gospel, and many forms of wrongly regarding God’s law (legalism, antinomianism, libertinism), are no less than attempts to change from an undesirable, fleshly life-style to a more affluent and comfortable, though fleshly, life-style.

The second method for flesh management is to overcome fleshliness and sin out of fleshly self’s limited strength and resources. This is why setting the mind on what not to do quite often results in doing that very thing. When we strive not to sin, that sin (whatever it might be) becomes the central focus of our soul’s mind, emotion, and will. And that sets us up to be tempted by our own fleshly thoughts.

Let’s consider the example of a Christian man who is heavy into pornography, and is convicted of his sinfulness. All he thinks about is that he must stop reading those magazines and watching those videos, and stop clicking on to those seductive websites. But look at the dynamics of what is going on in his heart: Pornography occupies his mind all the more, filling his heart with lies and fantasies, and this arouses sinful passions in his will. His lust then gives into temptation, and he ends up doing the very thing he doesn’t want to do. The harder he tries to repent out of his fleshly mind-set, the more he gives in to the temptation to use pornography. In some mysterious way, lust blinds his will to the word “not.” His mind resolves, “I will not watch pornography,” but his lustful will deletes the word “not,” and his resolve changes to: “I will...watch pornography.”

Freedom, victory, and healing are but three of the blessings that derive from our progressive sanctification—cooperating with the Holy Spirit to functionally conform us to the holiness of Christ Jesus. For our part, we must initiate exchanging the lie for the truth, and the flesh for the Spirit, through genuine repentance, setting our mind on the truth, yielding to the Spirit of Christ, and wholeheartedly walking in His ways.

Focusing on Jesus
Paul wrote to the Colossians: “Keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth” (Colossians 3:1b, 2). The NIV gives this rendering: “set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” To “set” means to focus, occupy, and to fill. We are constantly to focus, occupy, and fill the soul of our heart with Christ, His truth, and things above. And He will respond. Jesus said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with Me” (Revelation 3:20).

Jesus wants to fellowship with us. But we must open the door of our soul to Him. When our heart is united in love for Him, this opens the door of the soul so He can come in and fill our soul with His love, truth, peace, joy, and many other spiritual gifts. The result is that we function wholeheartedly in fellowship with Him. But when our soul is set on self or anything outside of Christ, the door to our soul is closed to Him and we experience conditional darkness and fleshliness.

The Apostle Paul offers this teaching on mind set:

For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you (Romans 8:5-9a).

To set our mind on the Spirit of Christ is to fix the eyes of our heart on Him. The writer of Hebrews sees the believer’s journey with Jesus as a race, and as we run this race we are to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus: “And let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus...” (Hebrews 12:2).

When we fix our eyes on Jesus, our hearts and bodies will be filled with His glorious light. Jesus said:

“The lamp of the body is the eye; if therefore your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matthew 6:22, 23).

We experience countless distractions every day of our lives. If they are trials or temptations, certainly they cannot be ignored. But they must be dealt with in accordance with biblical precepts. We should not allow our mind to overly dwell on them, but rather on Jesus, who is our strength, our sufficiency, and the healer of broken and wounded hearts.

The healing power of truth
The truth is one of God’s remedies for the lie. Just as dark is dispersed by light, so is the lie dispersed by the truth. As believers, we have access to the truth of God, and we have the mind of Christ and the indwelling Spirit of Christ to empower us to discern truth and lies. Furthermore, we possess the indwelling Spirit of Christ, who is Truth personified: “I am the truth,” said Jesus, “and the truth shall set you free” (John 8:32).

The healing power of confession and cleansing
There is a misleading teaching going around that believers never have to confess or ask for forgiveness, or to be cleansed of sinfulness, because that all was taken care of at the time of their salvation. Now, in terms of who we are and our relationship with God, it was taken care of. But we continue to sin and this conditionally defiles our soul with sin-debt. This has no ill-effect on who we are or on our relationship with God, but it has much to do with the condition of our heart, how the inner man functions and behaves, and fellowship with God. So we need to confess our known sins for the sake of cleansing our souls, reuniting the soul and spirit of our heart, and restoring fellowship with God.

When the ancient Jerusalem Temple was desecrated, it became superficially unclean, but not substantively unclean. Likewise, when we, as Temples of the Spirit of God, defile the souls of our hearts by sinning, the defilement is superficial or conditional; our heart cannot be substantively defiled. While the Spirit of God forever indwells the believer’s spirit, He will not fill the soul that is contaminated by and harbors sinful content.

James indicates that we are to purify our hearts after we sin (James 4:8b. See also 2 Corinthians 7:1; 1 Peter 1:15, 16). This is accomplished through repentance, confession, and cleansing on our part, and through cleansing, renewal, and healing on the part of the Holy Spirit. If we lie, we sin against the person to whom we lie, but also against God, because all sin is an affront to Him (Psalm 51:4). To lie, like all actual sin, creates “debt.” Jesus used “debt” in the sense of unconfessed sin in Matthew 6:12 (“The Lord’s Prayer”). And this sin-debt must be cleansed from the soul of our heart in order to restore fellowship (2 Corinthians 2:7-10).

We have responsibility to confess to other people to whom we have lied, and to ask for their forgiveness. This can remove some sin-debt and open the door to reconciliation. But we must also confess our lies to God and receive His cleansing; not to confess known sins to Him is, in effect, to deny that we have sinned. And, “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:8, 9). Those verses do not refer to salvific or judicial forgiveness by God, which we received at the time of salvation, but to His parental or filial forgiveness for the sake of holy living and the restoration of fellowship. Now, when known sins are not confessed, then there is no repentance and cleansing on the part of the believer, and God, out of His love for us, will respond with discipline and chastisement. His purpose in doing so is to lead us to a change of heart.

The healing power of love
To lie is to sin and to emulate Satan; “but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the head, even Christ” (Ephesians 4:15).

A Change of Heart

A functional change of heart begins to take place within believers when:

1. We are humbled by God’s love and truth.
   

2. We place Him first in our lives, with the desire to love Him with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength, and to love others as our self (Mark 12:30, 31).
   

3. We exercise love and truth in making our heart “whole”—uniting our heart’s soul and spirit, and thus enabling us to function in harmony with the indwelling Holy Spirit.
   

4. We are moved by the love of Christ (2 Thessalonians 3:5) to “wholeheartedly” obey Him (Romans 6:17, NIV).
   

5. We walk in Christ, in His love, in His truth, in His life, in His power, in His kingdom, in His grace; in His total sufficiency.
   

6. We experience the reality of loving unity with Jesus and with other believers. In this way Jesus lives His life in us and through us. Paul put it this way: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the [mortal] flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me” (Galatians 2:20).

Wholehearted living does not mean we live in sinless perfection or that we are gods. But it does mean that we are cooperating with the Holy Spirit in the process of progressive sanctification —becoming conditionally and functionally conformed in our hearts to the character and conduct of Christ.

This is living in the Truth—experiencing living in Christ and His living His life in us and through us.

Woundedness and troublesome memories may follow us for a time, but our mind, emotion, and will are functionally being renewed by Jesus, who is Love, who is the Truth, who is the Word, and who is the One who promised to bind our wounds, to heal our broken hearts, and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness. Even lies and lying.

And that’s the truth about lies. You have God’s Word on it.