The Lying Season

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Thank God, we’re almost through one of the worst “lying seasons” ever. That’s what I call the time before elections when candidates air campaign ads full of wild exaggerations, half-truths and downright lies.

It’s appalling. It makes you wonder how the authors of these ads justify their creations. Does winning require searching for any possible damaging information about an opponent? And is winning all that matters?

I imagine many producers of these ads, and the candidates that approve them, would say that if you can’t win, you can’t make the changes that the candidate promotes, as if life itself depends on a particular candidate winning.

The explosion of these misleading ads makes me wonder about their effect on the public’s notion of truthfulness. I believe it erodes many people’s determination to be truthful. After all, if prominent people are willing to “bend the truth” to get elected, why shouldn’t I lie to get a job, procure a life mate, prepare my taxes?

Gotten Much Worse

Exaggerating and lying in political ads is not new, of course. But in my view, it has gotten much worse and I place a lot of the blame on the former president, who – to use the most charitable view – is careless with facts. A president can have an oversized influence on public opinion, for better or worse.

But it’s not just politicians who are at fault. Our culture is addicted to the “little white lie,” which often is neither little nor “white.” Advertising is rife with exaggeration and we seem to accept it with a yawn. Maybe that’s because we do the same in our personal lives, accepting lies about ourselves and others.

Few institutions are free of the lie. They include industry and commerce, entertainment, education, the courts, state and federal government, medicine, and yes, religion. Many, in fact, believe religions – because they purport to hold themselves to higher standards - are the worst offenders.

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If lying is nothing new to politics, it’s nothing new to civilization, either. It seems endemic to humans. We’ve always been a bit cynical about the truth. Recall Pontius Pilate’s question when interrogating Jesus before condemning him to death. “What is truth?” he asked.

So, what does all this have to do with the search for God? It’s that the search for God is the search for truth, and contempt for truth makes the search impossible.

Part of the problem is that for some people, “truth” itself is fictitious. For them, we each have our own truth. What’s true for you isn’t true for me, they believe.

I think, however, that the vast majority of people still believe there is such a thing as objective truth. It’s just that its value has taken a big hit. Many believe that if a lie achieves its goals – political or otherwise – it’s OK. They believe the end justifies the means.

Respect for Truth

But the search for God requires respect for truth – even when it doesn’t appear to support our ideas and beliefs. For believers, that sometimes appears to be the case regarding science, whose means of arriving at truth differs from that of faith.

But our God is the God of science, who gave us brains that he/she presumably expects us to use to figure out how science aligns with faith.

For people searching for God, respect for truth starts with trying to see ourselves as we are and committing to truthfulness. If hypocrisy is an “occupational hazard” for those who profess to believe, it’s important for those searching for God to aim to be truthful in everything we think and do.

The “lying season” reminds us that the search for God, and being truthful, is counter-cultural. In a previous blog, I used a graphic by an unknown author that says, “Truth is truth even if no one believes it. A lie is a lie even if everyone believes it.”