Lies I Have Told

When I was a junior in college, I was required to take a class on preparing for and giving sermons. Sermon assignments required classmates to preach various kinds of sermons to the class. As the class progressed through the semester and sermons were assigned, we eventually got to a sermon where the teacher prohibited any notes in hand for the sermon-giver. I was gaining confidence in public speaking, but I was worried about getting up there in front of my peers and forgetting what I wanted to say.

 

My solution was to make Scripture reference notations in the margins of the Bible I was using. When I would get to the end of my thoughts on a particular passage, there in the margin of my Bible was a notation that directed me to the next passage to continue with. And it worked! I got the message out and received positive feedback from my classmates and professor after sitting back down.

 

My relief was short-lived. Out of all the hours in a day, the sermon class was scheduled immediately before chapel. There I was then, in chapel after my little cheat in the sermon class, and I got all convicted about what I had done. I had, in fact, perpetrated a lie. I had deceived the professor and my classmates into believing one thing, when in reality something different had occurred.

 

Lunch happened to follow chapel and on the way to the cafeteria, not more than 20 yards ahead of me, walked guess who? I picked up the pace and caught up to the professor. As we walked side-by-side, I told Dr. Rupp what I had done. My conscience convicted me to tell the truth, yet I was shot through with anxiety over how he would react. As if he already knew what was coming, Dr. Rupp thanked me for telling him, said it was ok, and let me go.

 

Fast forward forty years. One morning a few weeks ago, I received a group text from one of my sister in-laws. She was asking if anyone in the group had read Dane Ortlund’s book, Gentle & Lowly. I quickly replied, “Yes! Great book. Love his temperament.” Later that day, I got a sick feeling in my stomach—the same feeling I had in chapel four decades back.

 

After getting to work the next morning, I wrote this text to the group: “Hey fam, here’s an irony: I’ve been thinking, reading, and writing some lately about lying, and I got convicted yesterday that I lied to y’all when I implied that I had read Gentle & Lowly cover to cover. That is not true. I do own the book, but have only skimmed parts of it. I’ve already prayed this out and asked the Lord to forgive me. Now I’m asking if you will. #growingpains”.

 

It’s humbling to observe that I continue to struggle with truth-telling in certain circumstances. To see this pattern span no less than forty years of my life lets you know how stubborn sins can be to uproot. There are a number of reasons someone is tempted to lie, but let me focus here on one reason that ties together the two lies I just told you about.

 

People who are motivated by approval-seeking, those who tend to be conflict-avoidant and risk-averse, those who are emotional processors, those who care too much what others think of them, those are my people. And people from this tribe are tempted to lie (not tell the truth, or the whole truth, and nothing but the truth) when it feels like people are going to judge us, potentially be upset with us, or think less of us if we were to tell the bare truth.

 

Christian Scripture has a tidy phrase for this messy dynamic. The Bible calls this “the fear of man.” Which is why, in my group text reply to my wife’s siblings I also wrote this sentence, “My old nemesis, the fear of man, rose up and I gave in.” The fear of man exists when we are too aware that others are watching and we adjust our behavior to either align with what we think others are thinking or to influence what we want others to think. The bottom line is we don’t trust the hearer’s heart that if we were completely honest with them they would love us just the same.

 

The Bible’s radiation treatment for the cancerous fear of man is another fear: the fear of the Lord. Writers of Scripture have different points of emphasis when using the phrase, the fear of the Lord, but they are commonly referring to a reverential awe of God in His being and His works. On the heels of being dramatically freed from slavery in Egypt, Scripture says, “And when the Israelites saw the great power of the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant” (Exodus 14:31).  

 

I doubt you have witnessed the ten plagues of Egypt nor have you crossed a divided Red Sea on dry ground. What works of the Lord, then, have you witnessed and experienced that would cause you to fear Him? Have you experienced this: “Lord, if you kept an account of iniquities, Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, so that you may be feared” (Psalm 130:3-4)?

 

When we trace the fear of the Lord into the New Testament, this fear is akin to faith in Christ. Faith in Christ not only affects and corrects our view of reality, it reminds of us of the greatest work He could do for humankind—His crosswork—which was His labor of love on our behalf. Looking from one perspective at the cross of Christ, He is saying to us, “Your sin is this bad.” Looking from another perspective at the cross of Christ, He is saying to us, “And I love you this much.”  

 

If we could only remember that Gospel truth from day to day and internalize it more and more, we wouldn’t be lying so much. Doing so is practicing the fear of the Lord. When we get busy, distracted, lazy, too confident, we’re susceptible to giving into the fear of man. In that case, Sir Walter Scott would say, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave…when first we practice to deceive.”

 

Because Christians are works in progress who are sometimes tempted to signal they’re all put together.