Anyone would be a fool to think that lying is new to American culture. But the level of lying we see in modern society goes way beyond what we have seen before. At the very least, lying used to be seen as wrong even by those who were speaking the fabrications. It used to be that people only lied when they thought they could get away with it. In modern culture, it seems we have come to a place where there is no stigma to lying, and even if someone is caught it is no big deal. Let’s look at some recent examples.
During the time the Hobby Lobby case was being heard by the Supreme Court, the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart made the statement that Hobby Lobby’s owners, the Green family, were denying its workers contraception and that they likened any form of contraception to abortion. This is simply a lie. There are 20 forms of contraception that ObamaCare demands and Hobby Lobby’s employee insurance covers 16 of them. The Greens simply object to the 4 forms which are potentially abortifacients.
Recently, U.S. Senate majority leader Harry Reid made a speech on the Senate floor asserting about ObamaCare, “There’s plenty of horror stories being told, all of them untrue – but they’re being told all over America.” The truth is, there are plenty of horror stories – about people losing insurance, about people not being able to afford the ObamaCare alternatives, and about people having to pay massive amounts of money because they couldn’t sign up for the new coverage. All of this is well documented, but Reid stood up and lied about it anyway.
Congress has been investigating the killing of the U.S. Ambassador to Lybia and three other people for nearly a year and a half. And still the investigators have not been able to get at the truth because high government officials have been continually lying about what happened and lying about who is even involved. The same kind of thing is happening with the IRS and NSA scandals.
And even the White House (including the President himself) has told frequent lies about how under ObamaCare people can keep their doctors, keep their insurance if they like it, and that premiums would be lower. All of these are blatant lies.
The truth is, we could go on all day documenting examples of this lying. But in spite of the horribleness of the lies themselves, the more important issue is to determine why people in our culture all of a sudden think telling these kinds of brazen falsehoods is okay? And they really do believe there is nothing wrong with it.
The answer to this question lies (no pun intended) in the increasing dominance of a naturalistic worldview in American culture. Naturalism is the belief that there is no supernatural reality, thus no objective moral standard. Morality, based on this worldview system, is determined by the people who hold enough power to enforce their own viewpoint. In the cases above, the media believes it has that kind of power. Politicians believe they have that kind of power. Government bureaucrats believe they have that kind of power. And the proof is that they can lie and no one can stop them. Media liars keep their jobs, political liars continue to keep investigators at bay, and bureaucrat liars continue to use the system to do illegal acts.
Ultimately, measures must be taken to take down the liars. These people will have to be brought to justice. But as important as that is, it is secondary to a more important matter. The only way something like this changes is with a change of heart. Naturalism asserts a belief that lying is okay if you can get away with it. When a person comes to know Jesus Christ, that kind of motivation goes by the wayside because God is a person of truth and his character becomes the believer’s character.
Making efforts to hold people accountable for their lies is important and even necessary in order to maintain order in society. Working toward that goal is a worthy work. But the only permanent solution to the problem is a change of heart by massive numbers of people as they enter a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Any Christian who seriously wants to see a different outcome than what we are now witnessing must begin to take seriously Christ’s commission to share their faith.