Why All the Lies, Falsehoods and Deception?

There is a very good reason why unreason and unreality reign today:

One of the better descriptions of the West today is this: truth has disappeared, and people are living by lies. We are wallowing in deception and deceit. We are rejecting truth and embracing falsehoods. We are turning our backs on reality and embracing unreality. And the West is dying as a result.

Simply consider the tsunami of lies that have swept throughout the West concerning the issue of human sexuality. Now a man can decide he is a woman, and expect others to fully believe and accept his delusion. If others do not go along with the deception, they are treated as haters and bigots.

But in a sense people have always lived this way. The Christian knows that the truth of God is rejected by most people, so they end up believing lies and welcoming falsehoods. The Bible speaks to this often. Consider just these passages:

They take pleasure in falsehood. (Psalm 62:4)

We have made a lie our refuge and falsehood our hiding place. (Isaiah 28:15)

Truth is nowhere to be found. (Isaiah 59:15)

Falsehood and not truth has grown strong in the land. (Jeremiah 9:3) 

Everyone deceives his neighbor, and no one speaks the truth; they have taught their tongue to speak lies; they weary themselves committing iniquity. (Jeremiah 9:5)

You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8:44)

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness.” (Romans 1:18)

They exchanged the truth about God for a lie. (Romans 1:25)

Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor. (Ephesians 4:25)

Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. (Revelation 22:15)

The importance of truth is everywhere affirmed in the Bible, and warnings against falsehoods, deception and lies are repeatedly given. But here I want to look at just one more text. It is short but powerful:

They went after false idols and became false. (2 Kings 17:15)

The context has to do with Israel (the northern kingdom) going into exile because of idolatry. Here is the fuller passage (2 Kings 17:14-18):

But they would not listen, but were stubborn, as their fathers had been, who did not believe in the Lord their God. They despised his statutes and his covenant that he made with their fathers and the warnings that he gave them. They went after false idols and became false, and they followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the Lord had commanded them that they should not do like them. And they abandoned all the commandments of the Lord their God, and made for themselves metal images of two calves; and they made an Asherah and worshiped all the host of heaven and served Baal. And they burned their sons and their daughters as offerings and used divination and omens and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight.

By going after false idols, the people became false themselves. When people go after idols, they become like their idols. Many have spoken to this sad reality. For example, back in 2008 the American New Testament scholar G. K.  Beale penned We Become What We Worship (IVP). He said this:

The thesis of the book is not that people become the idols they worship or become the God they worship, but they become like the idols or like God. The point of figuratively omitting the word like is to emphasize that the worshiper reflects some of the important qualities or attributes of the object of worship….

 

What do you and I reflect? One presupposition of this book is that God has made humans to reflect him, but if they do not commit themselves to him, they will not reflect him but something else in creation. At the core of our beings we are imaging creatures. It is not possible to be neutral on this issue: we either reflect the Creator or something in creation….

 

All of us are imitators, and there is no neutrality. We should disabuse ourselves of the notion that we can be spiritually neutral. We are either being conformed to an idol of the world or to God.

The 2 Kings passage is another case in point. Let me draw upon a few commentators here. Dale Ralph Davis makes these helpful remarks:

Note the statement in verse 15b: ‘They went after worthlessness and became worthless’ (see also Jer. 2:5). There is a word play on the root hbl, the noun hebel referring to what is worthless, useless, or futile. Here it refers to the nature of false gods – they are nothing, zero, worthless. The ‘worthlessness’ of these cipher-gods, however, does not simply lie in state. There is a sad transformation that takes place in their worshippers – ‘they went after worthlessness and became worthless.’ We become like what we worship. There was a clip in Credenda Agenda several years ago about a four-year-old girl in North Wales whose complexion had turned orangy. Her doctor discovered she had been consuming 1.5 litres of Sunny Delight every day. According to the report the manufacturers did admit that their product would turn people yellow or orange but only when slurped up in such nearly limitless amounts. This little girl had something of a hebel experience: she became what she drank. This is why worship is different from getting a haircut or wearing green socks – it really changes you. You will become like what – or Whom – you worship.

Philip Graham Ryken looks at the broader issue of the iniquity of idolatry, and what believers today must learn:

Several features of Israel’s iniquity can help us understand the shape of idolatry in our own lives. Second Kings 17:9 tells us that at first the unrighteousness of the Israelites was done secretly. But by the time they had built high places in every town and set up Asherim under every tree, they were sinning openly. Sin has a way of becoming more obvious over time. Little iniquities that begin in secret will not stay secret for long. If we are wise, therefore, we will strive to be as godly in private as we try to be in public. Godly character is forged by the decisions we make when no one else is watching. We should also be as vigilant to avoid misdemeanours as we are to avoid felonies. Most people do not intend to become moral failures, but when they end up that way, it is because of a lot of bad little decisions they made along the way.

 

We should also notice how imitative idolatry is. The little phrase “as the nations did” speaks volumes. Israel’s idolatry was directly influenced by the gods and goddesses that the Canaanites and other people groups worshiped. We are not immune from this kind of outside influence. If we are wise, therefore, we will think critically (not judgmentally) about the goals and ambitions of our friends and acquaintances in secular society. Their greed is not good for us. Their lusts will not give us life. The pleasures they pursue will not bring peace to our souls. What these sins will bring instead is the judgement of God.

 

But perhaps the most noticeable feature of Israel’s idolatry was how widespread it was. The people worshipped idols everywhere. They did it high and they did it low – in the city and in the countryside. They worshipped as many idols as they could. Not content to worship a deity or two, they bowed down before an entire pantheon.

 

When we refuse to worship the one true God, we are not likely to put a single deity in his place but to worship many gods and goddesses. Human beings are endlessly creative, and when we turn this gift in the direction of idolatry, our idols proliferate. John Calvin famously described human nature as “a perpetual factory of idols.” In other words, people are busy inventing new things to worship all the time. The heart’s R&D department is always coming up with new things to love, which then get mass-produced as objects of worship. Calvin went on to explain: “Man’s mind, full as it is of pride and boldness, dares to imagine a god according to its own capacity; as it sluggishly plods, indeed is overwhelmed with the crassest ignorance, it conceives an unreality and an empty appearance as God.”

 

This is exactly what the Israelites did, alongside their ancient neighbours: they constantly invented new objects to worship. We are tempted to do the same thing. There is always something new for us to see or purchase – a new star to emulate, a new fashion for us to adopt, or a new toy to show to our friends. The idol factory of the heart will not stop production until the factory closes. In the meantime, every false and empty thing we worship leads to one and the same result: the righteous judgement of God.

There it is: untruth, unreason and unreality. That is the world we live in and have become when we reject God and his truth. We start to live a lie, we become a lie, and we spread falsehood and deception to all those around us. That seems to be a good take on the trans delusions and all the other falsehoods of our age.

They went after false idols and became false.

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