Lie. Deceive. Obfuscate. Such words denote a suppression or distortion of truth. What is truth? Truth is “that which corresponds to or adequately expresses what is real.”[1] Any proposition that corresponds to reality is true, whether or not anyone embraces accepts it. Any proposition that fails to correspond to reality is simply false. Most undesirable is the malicious suppression of truth. Nobody is ever pleased to be misled, hoodwinked, or bamboozled. Lies brings forth violence. Violence is covered up by lies.
Lying is antithetical to life in union with Christ. “Do not lie to one another” writes the Apostle Paul (Col. 3:9a).[2] Cessation from the spewing of falsities is meant to be a continual activity. This prohibition against lying is conspicuously distinguished from the other lists of vices in vv. 5-8, which suggest particular attention is to be given to this problem. Hardly anyone has escaped bondage in the habitual spewing forth of falsities with malicious intent. Moreover, deception is often employed to cover up violent acts and sexual immorality as a way of setting the illusion of innocence.
It is unlikely the biblical writer is forbidding silence for the sake of extending social graces, like restraining oneself from blurting a brutally honest opinion on how awful that dress on the wearer. Neither is this forbidding the use of deception to uphold a moral of greater incumbency, like lying to protect the innocent. Rahab used misdirection to hide and protect the Hebrew spies and she was welcomed into the assembly of God’s people (Josh. 2:1-24; 6:22-25). Her actions exemplified authentic faith (Heb. 11:31). The prohibition against lying to one another has to do with malicious deceit. Falsities employed to hurt others, justify one’s own misdeeds, or give the appearance of innocence.[3] Deception is employed because “truth is often inconvenient, untidy or embarrassing, and we are constantly tempted to bend it into a less awkward shape.”[4]
Believers are reminded: “You have put off the old self with its practices” (3:9b). Their identification with the deceptive ways of the old life in sin and separation from God has come to an end. They have taken off that old filthy garment. Instead, they “have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (3:10). They have a new identity in Christ. They are in a daily process of renovation and restoration into the image of their Maker. They have been clothed in God’s righteousness (Rom. 3:21-26; Gal. 3:10-14; 2 Cor. 5:21).
Christ is the Truth[5] and Christians are to bear witness to the Truth (Jn. 1:6-8; 15:26-27). They are to speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15). Even the agape (divine love) they are to manifest “does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth” (1 Cor. 13:6).
Vices of rage and deception are ultimately socially corrosive, a volatile mix that divides people and fosters inhumanity. But the new life is different: “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all” (3:11). Ancient Colossians would have been familiar with the social divisions mentioned: Greeks who entered the Church had to cease considering Jewish members the less sophisticated who lacked proper Hellenization; Jews had to cease considering Greeks uncircumcised heathen without the covenant promises offered through Yahweh; barbarians were never of any lesser significance simply because they were non-Greek speakers, Scythians were never to be considered as the worst of all barbarians; freemen were never of greater significance than the slaves; all these types of social distinction since Christ has come and a new day has begun. [6] But Christ brings reconciliation between God and others. Those united to God are to experience unity (Jn. 17:10, 20-23).
Russian novelist and historian Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) was arrested in 1945 for having written private letters criticizing Joseph Stalin. Solzhenitsyn then spent eight years in the Soviet labor camps followed by three years of exile in Kazakhstan. Nevertheless, he used the power of storytelling to share of the mistreatments experienced while in prison in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962).[7] Upon receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, Solzhenitsyn remarked, “Violence cannot conceal itself behind anything except lies, and lies have nothing to maintain them save violence. Anyone who has once proclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose the lie as his principle.” He acknowledged “the simple act of an ordinary brave man is not to participate in lies, not to support false actions!” Moreover, he added, “It is within the power of writers and artists to do much more: to defeat the lie! For in the struggle with lies art has always triumphed and shall always triumph!” Weaponless writers’ capacity to expose and topple lies, according to Solzhenitsyn, is crystalized in the Russian proverb: “One word of truth shall outweigh the world.”[8]
It was within the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) that Solzhenitsyn experienced the violence concealed through lies and the lies perpetuated with violence. Yet, this was hardly the only place where such evils existed. Even the Chinese Communist Party attempts to whitewash its own bloody history. Both are failed attempts to build Utopia based upon Marxism.[9]
Even modern cancel culture fails to successfully resolve social disparities; rather, it exacerbates the problem through open shaming, banishment, and dismissal.[10]
Better worlds can never be built upon violence concealed by lies and lies preserved through violence. Any attempt at resolving social disunity apart from union with Christ ends in futility.
Christians are to put away the anger and malice that brings about the violence. They are likewise to cease lying. They are to be lovers of truth. Blaise Pascal puts it this way: “Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that unless we love the truth, we cannot know it” (Pensees, 10.864). Deception is characteristic of life in this sinful and fallen world, but God’s people are to be a light in the darkness.
— WGN
Notes:
[1] C. Stephen Evans, Pocket Dictionary of Apologetics & Philosophy of Religion (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 118.
[2] All Scripture cited from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), unless noted.
[3] For further related reading, cf. Hank Hanegraaff, The Complete Bible Answer Book: Collector’s Edition Revised and Updated (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2008, 2016), 406-407.
[4] N.T. Wright, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries: Colossians and Philemon (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1986), 137.
[5] Christ says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn. 14:6). Since He made all things (Jn. 1:3; Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:1-2), He stands alone as the one with the perfect wherewithal to assist us in discerning truth from error, good and evil, right and wrong. Truth proclaiming among Christians is woven together with their union with Christ.
[6]Curtis Vaughan writes, “The various groups mentioned reflect distinctions of national privilege (“Greek or Jew”), legal or ceremonial standing (“circumcised or uncircumcised”), culture (“barbarian, Scythian,” the former denoting persons who did not speak Greek [that is, foreigners], the latter thought of as the lowest of the barbarians), and social caste (“slave or free”)”(Curtis Vaughan, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Ephesians through Philemon, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 11 [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1981], 213). Craig Keener, likewise, states, “Of all peoples in the Empire, Greeks, fiercely proud of their own heritage, were usually the most intolerant of Jewish people. Circumcision divided Jews from non-Jews. In the Greek language, which was widespread by Paul’s time, ‘barbarians’ technically still meant all non-Greeks, although some non-Greeks broke down these categories differently (i.e., some Alexandrian Jews claimed to be Greeks, even though this claim infuriated Alexandria’s ethnic Greeks). Scythians were generally considered the most barbaric, cruel and anti-Greek people (although some ancient writers portrayed them as ‘noble barbarians’). ‘Slave and free’ was one major way of dividing humanity socially, although some slaves were more advanced socially than many free persons. ‘Christ is all’ may mean thus that he, rather than any human divisions, rules all of human life” (Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993], Col 3:11).
[7] Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is considered a literary reply to the assertion of the Grand Inquisitor that humans are not strong enough to bear the burden of freewill from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. This is explicated in Stephen Mitchell, “Alexander Solzhenitsyn Confronts the Grand Inquisitor,” Christian Research Journal, 36, 6 [2013]: https://www.equip.org/article/alexander-solzhenitsyn-confronts-grand-inquisitor/ Solzhenitsyn also published a historical memoir entitled The Gulag Archipelago (1973-1975) recounting his imprisonment.
[8] Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, “Nobel Lecture in Literature 1970,” trans. Alexis Klimoff, https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/nobel-lecture
[9] Interestingly, the dialectical materialism of Karl Marx necessitates bloody revolt as the means to an end. Marxism purports that within the world system there is persistent conflict between oppressor and oppressed. This class conflict escalates into an uprising out of which comes forth a new world system. Conflict and revolution cycle from one world system to the next until all disparities are eliminated. Unfortunately, the utopian experiments based upon Marxism that came about never really resolved the social disparities. Inequalities and injustices still persist in communist and socialist states. Despite all the historical baggage, Marxism still gets retooled into one critical theory after another. Whether or not any retooled form of Marxism, like Critical Race Theory, can successfully resolve the disparities without the necessity of an upheaval is doubtful. It stretches the imagination to conceive of the total dismantlement of entire social structures happening in peace and harmony without bloody revolution. For further discussion, Cf. Jay W. Richards, “History’s Bloody Mess: Why Marxism (and Socialism) Always Fails,” Christian Research Journal, 42, 1 [2019]: https://www.equip.org/article/historys-bloody-mess-why-marxism-and-socialism-always-fails/ and Cf. C. Wayne Mayhall, “The Original ‘Fight Club:’ Understanding the Philosophy of Karl Marx,” Christian Research Journal, 36, 4 [2014]: https://www.equip.org/article/the-original-fight-club-understanding-the-philosophy-of-karl-marx/
[10] cf. Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (London: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2019); Joe Dallas, Christians in a Cancel Culture (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2021; Mary Grabar, Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation Against America (Washington, DC: Regnery History, 2020.
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