You likely forgot that today is the anniversary of the horrible Covenant Christian school shooting in Nashville at the hands of a transgender activist. That last part of the sentence being why you likely missed it, and why it was swept under the rug as soon as possible. I had to Google "Covenant" to see it pop up among multiple other stories. Only when I Googled "Covenant School Shooting" did I find a long list, and then almost all focused on gun control.
I know that during the great Liars for Jesus kerfuffle many went way off the rails about lying. In a way of legalism that would shame a pharisee, they boasted that it's better to let a thousand children be murdered than so much as tell a white lie in a desperate bid to save them. Personally I liked what an Orthodox priest said who I was talking to about that time. He said it's not lying as much as honesty. Truth. Sure, we shouldn't lie if at all possible - and never for our own gain. But it's because Truth matters most.
We live in an age of endless lies upon lies upon mendacity upon more lies and subterfuge and lies galore. We are told C-A-T spells DOG, squares are round, teaching math is racist, and O'Brien was holding up five fingers. And there is no end to the cheating lies that continually pour our way in order to sustain the endless falsehoods.
That's never good. We often salve our wounds by insisting everyone in history is was bad as this. Everyone has always lied and been selfish and what have you. I've always thought you have to be pretty lousy if your go-to excuse after decades of trying to save the world is 'it's always been this bad.'
But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, as for murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their lot shall be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. Revelation 21.8
(Tom New Poster)
ReplyDeleteIn Dante's Inferno, the lairs, frauds and betrayers are punished lower down and closer to Satan than the merely lustful and violent. The last two named consent to impulses that often arise outside them, but the first instigate their sins (as Satan did) in their own minds. The Inferno reflects scholastic and possibly patristic thinking that sins of the intellect are the worst, perhaps because they are the most cold-blooded and deliberate and the most like those of the First Offender.
Yes. It's one thing to sometimes slip with a lie in a pinch, even to save your own rear end. Not that this is a good thing, but it happens. It's another thing to be purposefully false and deceitful, and then in order to promote agendas of grave evil. And frauds and liars aren't just those who actually lie, but those who purposely suppress or attack the truth.
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