April 1, 2012 | Leave a comment Today, Sunday April 1, 2012, is the thirty-seventh day of preparing our hearts, souls and minds for the most high of all Christian holy days, Easter Sunday. Today I need to “put off” lying and “put on” speaking the truth. You and I live in a society where honesty is in short supply. Today the two major political party’s version of reality is so diametrically opposed to one another that the only logical conclusion which an unbiased, outside third party can draw is “one of them is lying.” The problem is determining who. The prevalence of lying has become so great in America that a former president of the United States, and fellow Southern Baptist, Bill Clinton became famous, or infamous, for so carefully parsing the words of his legal testimony that in one specific area he said its truthfulness depended on what ones “meaning of the word ‘is’ is!” Our predisposition for lying has even become the butt of jokes. Mark Twain wrote that their are “lies, d*** lies, and statistics.” We have become so comfortable with lying that we use a color code to absolve ourselves from a lie’s severity. A “white” lie is widely believed to be harmless, perhaps even healthy. The problem with this logic, however, is that any lie and every lie is a sin. This is yet another reason to value silence. Such a casual attitude for the truth is clearly in violation of God’s word and reveals why you and I need to “put off” lying and “put on” speaking the truth. Writing to the people in the Church at Ephesus Paul reminds us that speaking truth is a prerequisite for holiness. 22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. 25 Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Ephesians 4:22–25 (ESV) Lying is part of our old nature. Whenever we lie we are guilty of keeping rather than putting off our old nature. Lying is more insidious than this, however, because when we lie we are not only hurting ourselves, but we are also hurting our neighbors as well. The entire community is harmed by our falsehoods. Clearly lying is no joking matter. After the children of Israel have returned from their Babylonian captivity (punishment for their continual idolatry) and are beginning to reorder their society God tells the nation of Israel what they should do. 16 ‘These are the things which you should do: speak the truth to one another; judge with truth and judgment for peace in your gates. 17 ‘Also let none of you devise evil in your heart against another, and do not love perjury; for all these are what I hate,’ declares the Lord.” Zechariah 8:16–17 (NASB) Do you understand what you have just read? God hates perjury, God hate injustice, God hates it whenever we do not speak the truth to each other. If God hates it, then I should hate it also! God’s desire for Israel then is also His desire for America today. Therefore, because God hates it I need to “put off” lying and “put on” speaking the truth.