Lies

Lies and how they work in the world

What is a lie? Where do they come from? How do they control us, and how can we fight against them?

"Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth."

1. Welcome to your new home: Falseworld
2. The Definition of a Lie
3. Sources of Lies
4. Turning to Truth
5. Anti-Lying Practices
6. Conclusion

Welcome to your new home: Falseworld

What does a liar do when he's dead? This riddle starts the movie 'The Batman'. Throughout Batman's pursuit of truth and justice for Gotham, he comes to understand that the world which he believes he lives in is not the world as it actually is. He has certain ideas and beliefs about the people in his life which he comes to know do not match up to reality. At key points in the movie, he has to recognise who, out of two contradictory stories, is telling the truth. So do we all.

What do you think about lies? Do you think about them often? How many lies do you think you encounter in a day? How many lies do you think you say in a week? What if instead of 'lies' we say 'falsehoods'. Would you answer to these questions change? My contention in this work is that our beliefs about our world are much, much more formed by lies than we tend to believe.

I'm going to argue that three things in our lives work together to create a 'false world' which we live through. Imaginatively, I'm going to now call this Falseworld.

This world keeps us blinded from the truth, and keeps us from achieving our true happiness in knowing God.

We will look at how each of these three things create lies, and how their lies join together in creating the Falseworld. Finally we will look at some ways to break through to see the true world. The world as it really is.

The Definition of a Lie

The first distinction to draw out is the clear difference between lies and falsehoods, as presented above. A lie requires someone to intentionally deceive the person they are lying to. A falsehood is any time something which isn't true is presented. Even with this distinction, the practice of living in the Falseworld is very similar.

I want to point us to two things now: the role of personality and ignorance in creating the Falseworld.

Lying requires speaking to a person. When a lie is said, it must be received by a rational being who can understand the ideas which the words express. Therefore, lies mean nothing outside of the understanding of persons. You cannot lie to a dog. Your senses cannot lie to you. The Falseworld is therefore a world only in the minds of the people who believe the ideas which make it up. This will be important for how we turn away from the Falseworld, which I will discuss later.

The second thing is that the Falseworld can be continued without the ongoing activity of lying, although it must start with a liar. If lies can only exist in the mind of a person, then without a person introducing a lie, then the Falseworld would be nothing. These lies could come from an intentional deception, or it could come from an incorrect inference which is believed to be true. This will be important when discussing the sources of lies.

Sources of Lies

The Falseworld has three major sources. These are the springs which water the garden of the Falseworld. These are three traditional 'enemies of the soul,' which have been present in Christian thought from the earliest times.

The Devil

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`

As the father of lies, all lies have, in some way, their origin in the Devil. Perhaps the particular lie isn't directly from him, but like a mutating virus its origin can be traced back to him. He is the father, the grandfather, and the great-grandfather of all lies. From the beginning he has encouraged men to doubt and disbelieve God. Like a leaking sewage pipe which drips poison into a pure river, so the Devil's lies mix falsehood into the pure truth of God's creation.

The Devil is opposed to Christ, therefore all lies will also be opposed to Christ. If all lies have their source in him, then all lies will be infected with his hatred for Christ. If in Christ 'are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.' (Colossians 2:3), then in the Devil are all the empty lies of folly.

Speaking of demons was much more prevalent in the early church and middle ages. For example, through the City of God Augustine who speaks about them frequently in the context of Roman idol worship. He extensively argues that the 'gods' which the Romans and other pagan societies worshiped were actually demons, fallen angels. St. Antony in the desert regularly fought the lies of demons, and encourages Christians to have little fear of them. Paul says explicitly that 'what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God.' (1 Corinthians 10:20)

To see how these demonic spirits have led to the lies surrounding us, let us considering the major religions of the world. Apart from Judaism and Christianity, you have:

• Explicitly idol worshipping religions. This includes most of the theistic eastern religions. Hindus give offerings to statues, which clearly follows the pattern of demonic depection outlined by Augustine in the City of God, and therefore we can expect that these have been influenced by demons. Japanese and African folk religion, for example, is full of sprites and demonic forces. All over the world, without Christ we see the deception of demons making men worship idols.
• There are two major Christian offshoots currently in the world: Islam and Mormonism. Both of these were established by individuals who claimed to receive their message from an angel. More likely is that they were deceived and received their message from a demon. Both these groups claim to give honour to Christ, but neither recognise his true being. Islam claims him as a prophet, but doesn't respect his claim that “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” Mormons accept that Jesus is the Son of God, but thereby deny the true unity of God by teaching that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are separate beings. These lies could have their origin in the false revelation of the demon. (Augustine makes this argument for the oracles relayed by Porphry, see City of God Book IX Ch. 23)
• Secular liberalism is becoming a significant religion in the West. In this case, the devil is noted for his lack of action, rather than explicit deception. A cunning enemy, he recognises the way man is taking himself and will play into this. There is nothing better than getting your enemy to fight for you. A way to illustrate this would be a recent game of Avalon that I played. In this game, I played as Mordred. This player wins if they convince the group to let evil people into the 'quest', who then fail the quest. Yet Mordred is hidden even to the evil players. In this game, it got to the point where one of the most vocal 'good' players was strongly arguing that a set of other 'good' players must be the 'evil' team. At that point, I sat back and let him talk. I could easily pretend that I just agreed with him, and let him do all the hard work. In a similar way, the Devil, recognising that men are convincing their societies that God and the Devil don't exist, sat back and let them do the work.

We therefore need to recognise the demonic side of the lies and falsehood surrounding us. There are malicious forces at work, which seek to break down societies and destroy the bonds between men. They will do anything in their power to turn people away from Christ, and keep them from entering the Kingdom of God. The Devil and his demons are much more cunning than we expect. Would it surprise you if Mormonism was a great deception put forth by the devil? Do you think it's beyond him to convince people to worship a false Christ? We must be aware - the Falseworld has its roots in the demonic.

However, we are not afraid of the future. For Christ himself tells us that "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven," and "we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs." We must have confidence in the word of Christ. But more on this later.

The World

The World is that society of men who are opposed to the kingdom of God. 'The World' is not the same thing as the world in the sense of the Earth or God's creation. In fact, 'The World' as an enemy of truth and source of lies is also opposed to the world as a collection of natural objects. God's creation - the irrational animals, the rocks, planets and plants, the laws which these things obey - they are part of the kingdom of God. Therefore, 'The World' is opposed to them and destroys them.

Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel. - Proverbs 12:10

In the first chapter of Romans, Paul outlines the way that 'The World' has given itself to lies.

The society of men and women who make up The World doesn't care for truth. In fact, 'the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.' (Romans 1:18). The truth points to the existence of God - that Being from which all other beings derive their existence.

But this truth, if accepted, forces a change in outlook. For everyone recognises within themselves their inability to meet the demands of their nature. Everyone's conscience, at some point, accuses them. This requires either further suppression or some kind of ritual to be introduced to make the balance sheet right.

Therefore, men 'exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator' (Romans 1:25). Worshiping God with gratitude and justice was replaced by idol worship - loving things and people with the love which should have been reserved for God.

This 'World', this society of men, create lies out of a spiritual necessity. Lies about God and his world must be continually created to enable that society to avoid turning to God by honouring him and thanking him for their existence. In particular, this 'World' lies by presenting things other than God as worthy of the worship God deserves.

The important thing to recognise is that often, when we are in the society of other people, this will happen. In the conversations we have with people, the desires they have for themselves, and in the images which we are given, things other than God will be presented as things worthy of your love and devotion. This is The World at work.

The Flesh

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. - 1 Peter 2:11

How does our flesh contribute to creating the Falseworld? Primarily our flesh lies by blinding our desires to what is actually good for us. The flesh lies to us by disordering our loves. Without going through the steps required to come to this conclusion, I'm just going to state that the truth is that we are happiest when we love what is best for us, when we use our greatest powers to love the highest object.

If this is what makes us happiest, then right reason would tell us that we must use all of ourselves (your heart, your mind, your soul) to love the most blessed and glorious thing - God. After that we must love and seek the good of human beings, those rational animals who carry the image of God. We must love our neighbours as ourselves. After loving humans, we must love the creation as the creation of God.

Our flesh often lies to us. With respect to God, it lies to us by not desiring or loving him with everything we are made of. We create idols (see above), which are things which we love and turn to instead of him. Isaiah uses an argument to mock this in chapter 44. He shows that men use wood to cook and warm themselves, and then turn around and bow to a piece of wood from the same tree and prays for salvation.

It's worth noting that this is an argument, a rational demonstration. Our reason, operating correctly, must submit to the truth it sees. Cognitive dissonance is the phrase which has been created to explain that feeling of tension you have when your mind recognises that two things you think are true cannot both be true. This experience demonstrates that our reason cannot rest in an acknowledged falsehood - it must instead accept the lie as true.

The cycle of lies

Here I'd like to introduce 'the cycle of lies.' This is a way of thinking about how these lies sustain themselves when we come up against the truth. When we encounter a lie and believe it as true, inevitably at some point we will either develop another belief which rests on this lie, or act on the false belief.

After we do that, since it is a lie the world around us won't respond in the way we expect. We may expect certain logical consequences to follow which turn out to be wrong, or the consequences of our actions won't be what we intended. At this point we make a choice.

Either we double down on the lie. Perhaps it's not the lie that was wrong, but the way we implemented it in our thinking or our actions. This is what 'The World' does when it constructs its idols.

The other option is to respond with repentance. Here, we recognise that we believed or did something wrong. In response, we turn away from those things and turn to the truth as it is available to us.

This cycle will be important when we think about how we live well while surrounded by the Falseworld.

Back to The Flesh

Now, with respect to ourselves and others (human beings), the Flesh lies to us by presenting false things as good for us. We all know the experience of knowing what we should do, and yet we fail to do it. Whether it's wanting to avoid eating certain things, wanting to exercise, wanting to spend more time on certain things and less time than others, our Flesh will send us down wrong paths.

Here, we need to recognise that the Flesh is going to promise much, and tell you that you will be happy when you achieve its desires. These are lies because they won't grant you the happiness you are expecting. We only need to look at a drug addict as an example of someone who is trapped in the desires of The Flesh. Yet these desires are much more complex than a bodily desire taken too far.

The traditional seven deadly sins are pride, lust, wrath, sloth, greed, gluttony, and envy. This comes closer to understand what The Flesh is pulling us towards. The Flesh is that tempting element of the Falseworld which makes it so attractive. Without The Flesh, we almost feel like the Falseworld would be easy to reject. If the Falseworld is a tree, the lies of The Devil is its root, the idols of The World are the branches, and the temptations of The Flesh are the fruit - the poison fruit.

We need to have our desires fixed. We need to begin to love the right things again. But how can we know what are the right things to love? To know them, we need to turn to those sources of truth that we can trust.

Turning to Truth

When I presented the definition of a lie, I focused on two key parts of lying which contribute to the Falseworld. The first was the role of personality and the rational mind in creating or maintaining the Falseworld. If the Falseworld only exists in a mind or comes from another person, the first part of escaping the Falseworld is to turn to some impersonal sources of truth. I'll discuss this first in I. Creation.

The second thing I emphasised was the role of false inference. Even in the cases where we don't interact with other people, the Falseworld can still come about if we hold an inference from our experience which isn't actually the way things are. To counter this, we'll need a standard which we can turn to to deal with our false inferences. I'll discuss this second in II. Scripture.

I. Creation

We begin with impersonal things. These things are true. By that I mean that they are what they are. Because a falsehood is saying that something is what it is not, or saying it is not what it is, anything which is what it is and is not what it is not, must be true. Even if it's strange to talk about things being true (as we usually only think about true and false in the mind), it is still right.

A couple analogies can help with thinking about how things can be true. Let's take the phrase 'a true friend' and its contrary, 'a false friend'.

A true friend is someone who fulfils the definition of a friend. A true friend is someone who does what 'being a friend' means. That person is 'a friend'. And since they are fulfilling 'being a friend', they 'are what they are', in the same sense that an object is true.

We can write the same paragraph in reverse for a false friend. They are someone who fails to fulfil what is means to be a friend. They are still 'a friend', but because they do not do the things a friend does, they 'are not what they are.' Therefore, they are false.

This way of speaking doesn't only apply to people, who are more prone to appearing differently to what they are. Consider what is called a 'false summit'. It's a ridge or peak which looks like the top of a climb, but when you get there, it's not actually the top. Because it 'is not what it is' (the summit), we call it false.

This helps us recognise that all things, in reality, are what they are. They are true. Yet it's in our perception that they could be, in a sense, not what they are. Again we see that it's only when the mind gets involved in the process that we begin to see falsehood. The false friend has always not been a friend, and the false summit has always not been a summit, yet in our minds we thought they were, so they get called false.

Our senses do not lie to us, it's our inference from our perception which is false.(¹) This means that you can trust your senses - you can trust what you see, hear, smell, touch and taste. The important thing is coming to understand the causes of the things you are sensing. Incidentally, knowledge of causes is how Aristotle defines a science.

Here's a trivial example from everyday life. In the shower at home we have a glass door which water droplets fall onto while the shower is on. When I look through these droplets, the view outside of the door (the sink, the window etc.) is flipped upside down and left to right. There's truth hidden in that experience, truth about the way light works with different materials. If I were to play close enough attention and investigate what's going on, I can come to know the truth.

If you want to begin getting out of the Falseworld and developing a habit of listening to truth, one of the best ways to do that is to engage attentively with God's creation around you. All manner of objects and things are present to your experience. You can trust that there is going to be truth all the way down, it's just up to you to find it. It's the perfect place to develop a habit of identifying the truth.

In this way, we can start to form right words and true thoughts for ourselves by attuning our minds to the truth which is present to us.

II. Scripture

As much as we can listen to the impersonal to get away from the Falseworld, we are still persons: rational substances of an individual nature. Therefore we need to hear right words to be able to be fully formed people. No one wants to live lives completely empty from words, and it would be bad for us to do that. The point of listening to creation isn't to get away from words, it's to develop right words.

We've already seen how we can develop right words for ourselves by attuning our minds to the truth which is present to us. Yet we still need a personal source of truth. This comes to us in personal revelation.

Scripture is the revelation of the living and personal Word, given through the prophets and apostles. It is the personal source of truth which we need. God, either immediately or through the work of angels, revealed to the prophets before Christ the truth. He spoke words to the prophets, as Hebrews says:

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. -Hebrews 1:1

I emphasise that God spoke to draw our attention to the fact that this is a revelation of words, and words signify ideas, and ideas are where we find truth or falsehood. Hebrews continues:

but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. - Hebrews 1:2

God spoke through Christ to the apostles, who then preached the good news of God's kingdom to the world. The prophets and apostles, led by the Holy Spirit, recorded God's spoken revelation in the Bible, in scripture. By the Spirit's ongoing work, the Church now recognises God's words in the canon.

Much of what is contained in this revelation are restatements of the natural law or truth which we could recognise if we paid attention to the world. As Richard Hooker writes:

When supernatural duties are required, natural duties are not rejected as needless. Even though the Law of God is principally delivered to teach us the former, yet it is suffused with the latter as well. Scripture is shot through with the laws of Nature, so much so that Gratian describes Natural Right (the right which naturally obligates men as they are men) as that which is contained in the Books of the Law and the Gospel. Nor is it in vain that the Scripture abounds with so many laws of this kind. Scripture does this because they are either such as we could not easily have found out on our own, or because, in cases when they are obvious, the Spirit may set them down in Scipture in order otp rove things more obscure, and this application of the laws of nature to difficult particular cases is of great value for our own instruction. Besides, whether or no they are plain in themselves or difficult, God's own testimony added to our reason strengthens our confidence and confirms our conclusions.

As Hooker points out, the main aim of Scripture is to tell us supernatural truth, but in doing so it also restates things which we could have discovered by ourselves. Yet this supernatural truth is concerned with the most important thing - the reformation of our mind and will. By teaching us knowledge of God, our minds are filled with truth which we believe. By guiding our actions in love for others and hope for the future, our wills are transformed according to the truth.

God gives us true knowledge and right actions. This is in contrast to:

• The Devil, who lies and is the source of lies.
• The World, which gives us false knowledge through oppressing the truth and replacing it with idols.
• The Flesh, which pulls us towards evil and teaches us wrong action.

If we want to turn aware from the Falseworld, which is built up by these three things, we need to turn to the revelation of God. This revelation is found in Scripture. Scripture provides that final reference point for the most import things. It tells us what we need to know and what we need to do to be happy.

Anti-Lying practices

To end, I'm going to present some things which I've already suggested to some degree. These are things which I'm calling 'Anti-Lying Practices.' The point of them is that they are things which develop the habits needed to stay on the right path out of the Falseworld.

1. Repentance & Humility

It's important to regularly repent for your sins. Searching your heart for you wrong intentions or desires, investigating their cause and resolving to act differently is going to keep the soil of your soul regularly turned over. This will prevent some of the impact of the lies which you receive from being absorbed. You will have the ability to reject them.

This goes hand-in-hand with an attitude of humility. Humility is really an expression of truth, it is an attitude in which you try your hardest to see yourself rightly and as you really are. It therefore requires you to view yourself from the highest reference point you are able to - God's reference point. You see what you owe to God and what you owe to your neighbour. You see where you fail to give others was you owe them (your love). And this prevents you from being entrenched in the lies in your mind, because you continually seek to see yourself as you really are.

2. Be cautious around social media

If lies are always personal then we need to be careful around occasions where we interact with people. They could, even without intending to, lie to us.

The most dangerous place in the modern world for being exposed to lies is social media. Apart from the physical device which you use to view social media, the entire experience has been constructed and is maintained by people. It is almost entirely devoid of the natural tempering which we have when we live in the physical world. Among the many problems which social media and the digital structured which we give our attention to, one of the worst is the concentration of falsehoods.

What we experience in social media is presented to you by another person. It is up to you to determine the truth of what they say, and often they are speaking about situations which you have no real life experience to base your judgment on. Not only this, but what they say will be catered to their experience, so anything you receive through social media will always be mediated by another persons beliefs and their Falseworld.

Not only this, but social media is designed to maintain your attention and provide you with a constant stimulus. The screens which we use to access social media are able to produce colours of a vibrancy almost impossible to see in natural things. The posts and content presented come in a continual stream without time to meditate upon and form a judgment. It does not lead to well formed mind which can differentiate between truth and falsehood.

Because of the risk it presents in determining what is true and the little benefit it provides, I suggest either massively reducing your social media use or abandoning social media altogether.

3. Listen to creation

You need to pay attention to the world around you. Very often, we are too quick to interpret our experiences through the ideas and theories we already have, living habitually rather than living consciously. If we recognise that often our thought-life is a mixed bag when it comes to truth and falsehood, we are going to need to stay in regular contact with the sources of truth which are around us.

As I've said above, the natural world cannot lie to us. This means that if we need to pay attention to it to ensure that our thoughts match it as closely as possible. By 'the natural world' I don't only mean plants, animals, and rocks. I mean anything which is not crafted by human artifice. This includes, to some degree, the behaviour of the people around us (insofar as they are acting naturally).

This comes down to being present attentive to the things around you. Ask yourself if you understand the principles behind the things around you, and does their behaviour match how you expect them to? Is there a principle or law at work which you can't explain, or is there something you are expecting to happen which isn't happening? These are signs that you can improve the mixture of truth and falsehood in your mind to be a little more truthful.

4. Listen to Scripture

Lastly, the most important thing is to pay attention to God's revelation in Scripture. He has graciously provided us with truth about himself and about how we should think, desire, and behave. Fixing the mixture of your mind will need you spending time meditating on the words of Scripture so that your beliefs and habits of mind are formed more by these words than the words of the World, the Flesh and the Devil.

Conclusion

In summary:

1. Be aware of where lies come from.
2. Do not hold onto your own ideas too tightly, they might be wrong.
3. Pay attention to the real world and scripture.

In writing this I have realised that the task at hand was much greater than my abilities. I hope that, at least, this has given you some clearer thoughts on lies and how they work in the world.