Piddingworth Greg Benton |
| 'Piddingworth...where St. George's Cross is not yet banned.' --Mark Steyn |
 |
 |
| LIARS |
| "You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it." Jesus of Nazareth |
| Liar, liar, pants on fire! American schooyard rhyme |
| We are, it seems, forever surrounded by liars and their lies. It would be impossible to give an accurate and up-to-date statistic for how many lies have been told so far this year like those other things listed by the rather revealing World Clock, from Peter Russell, e.g., as of writing there have been 93,395,187 births, 39,743,451 deaths, 1,135,707,635 internet users, and 32,031,957 abortions...which, if the little kids had been permitted to live, would have changed the birth statistic to 125,427,144 or children actually conceived and existing. Hmmm. There doesn't show any statistic for the reasons why so many women chose to kill their babies, excuse me, I mean 'foetus' which means 'non-human glob of stuff'... oh, wait a minute, that's a lie! It actually means 'offspring' or 'suckling'. So, in truth, over 32 million human offspring never became sucklings. Oh well, as former Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli is supposed to have said: 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.' I suspect that the number of lies actually committed in word or deed already this year would dramatically exceed the estimated statistic for the world's population of 6,620,566,114 and counting. What is a lie anyway? We've heard of black lies, white lies, little lies, big lies, fibs, hurtful lies, unhurtful lies, serious lies, joking lies, as well as 'doublespeak', 'gobbledygook', 'oxymorons', decronstructed lies, fraud, falsehoods, pretense, perjury and bearing false witness, fallacies, false memory, deception, and even 'hoaxes'. Whatever type of lie, it is something that does not live in the truth, i.e., the objective reality of that which is good whether in our own minds or in the mind of God who is pure truth. Whether the lies we tell are 'sins' depends on other criteria. In the meantime, because we are surrounded by lies and liars, we ought to 'put on the whole armour of God' to resist the onslaught of deception, temptation and destruction that others use to manipulate, use, or even destroy. Of course, there is a big difference between lying about what one thinks of someone's art (the best answer is always 'that's interesting') and telling someone that you love them in order to have your way with them or saying something false about somebody that will ruin their lives. When a politician breaks a promise he may or may not be telling a lie...it all depends on whether what is true is his intent or whether what he intended is deliberately used to gain something, e.g., votes or power. It's probably more the latter and that ought to enliven any electorate to put on their 'bull****' filters before trusting someone to exercise authority over their lives. Lies, deep down, are really the words and acts of betrayal, not only of trust (which is good and true) but of the very self. When we betray others, we betray ourselves, we lie to ourselves about who and what we are in ourselves, i.e., human beings created for good. Then there is 'The Big Lie', a term popularised in George Orwell's novel, 1984, where 'newspeak' has two mutally contradictory meanings' that informs the habit of saying that 'black is white' and 'white is black' in 'contradiction of the plain facts'. Whew! George was a prophet! Never mind the news media that so distorts 'the plain facts' to serve it's own perverse interest, the contradiction, the Big Lie, like that expression, 'a women's right to choose' (instead of deliberately terminating the life of a child) has become so immersed in our popular culture that the truth is hidden from view and the evil abounds and tacitly, even explicitly accepted as 'true' and 'good'. What was 'good' is 'evil'. What was 'evil' is 'good'. M. Scott Peck, M.D., the author of The Road Less Travelled, also wrote a powerful book titled 'The People Of The Lie'. In it he determines the nature of evil, 'militant ignorance', that is The Lie, through a series of analyses of certain of his own patients. Evil arises out of free choice where 'every person stands at a crossroads, with one path leading to God, and the other path leading to the devil. The path of God is the right path, and accepting this path is akin to submission to a higher power. However, if a person wants to convince himself and others that he has free choice, he would rather take a path which cannot be attributed to its being the right path. Thus, he chooses the path of evil which forms in the human person as a 'character disorder'. He asserts that truly evil people realize the evil deep within themselves but are unable to tolerate the pain of seeing or admitting to themselves that they are evil. Habitually, they run away from their evil by putting themselves in a position of moral superiority where they can falsely place the evil onto others. This is the authentic 'Liar'. Anti-semites, and neo anti-semites, 'blame' the Jews for just about everything. How many people do you know are constantly, repeatedly blaming George W. Bush for the evils in the world. This is certainly a defining characteristic of the 'global anti-globalisation' anarchists... who blame Iraq on Bush and the Jews, Afghanistan the same, 9/11 was a Bush conspiracy, Sweat shops in Indonesia...Bush's fault, Global anti-global warming...Bush. It used to be Ronald Reagan but he's gone. Bush is undoubtedly responsible for a lot of things, including some good things, but it is lie to make him out to be the Father Of All Lies whose influence, contrary to the newspeak, is somewhat greater than even the United States of America. And the malignancy of this ignorance and deceit grows in the fertile fields planted and cultivated by liars, malicious and ignorant, as more and more are add to the legion. The kinds of people who habitually repeat the gobbledygook of newspeak; whose interest in themselves is disguised by the thin veneer of 'Oprah-like' feel-good sentiment, are invariably those who cannot look into the moral mirror of their own character where there is little if any truth to be seen. Those who are forcibly made to see themselves and even the truth itself are the 'self-loathing' amongst us whose personality in the moral, political, historical arenas of our society has dramatically risen in recent decades. The Big Lie gang even dominate, in varying degrees, the very institutions built to defy the Big Lie. The United Nations, built after Hitler's Big Lie about man, superman and the Jews, with noble intentions has itself become a vehicle for the same where evil tyrants and murderers sit at the same table and determine policy with those whose who, though not perfect or 'without sin' remain true that noble purpose. Liars abound...in governments, labour unions, business corporations, the Church, the military, and, good grief, in charitable organisations whose use of funds truthfully donated for relief or a cure or whatever, sometimes find their way into the back of a limo on it's way to Las Vegas or Monte Carlo, or to buy weapons that can be used to starve, murder and destroy whole groups of people. What a sunami! How about that Katrina! Anyone for Darfur or Zimbabwe? Like most things that are both true and good for human beings, the antidote to lies and The Big Lie and to Liars, is to be found first, 'at home'...not a house...but the hearth of heart in the self, one's very soul, wherein the eternal Truth dwells in every conscience. It is the place, one's 'mirror', where, by choice, each of us seeks to 'inform' our character with what is true, loving, wise and good. That way, when we do look, even if it is sometimes painful, we do not run away like those 'People Of The Lie', but cleanse ourselves of the lies we have lived or said, so that we can begin anew in our journey toward the fulness of Truth. 'A contrite heart' God will not despise. That is why there is the sometimes mind-boggling contrast between those who, knowing that they have lived a lie, told lies, acted out a lie, but in the end reject and turn away from them, are of greater virtue than those who in their wilful ignorance just keep on pretending that their 'lies aren't so bad'. In the second instance, there is a corporate or collective responsibility that is required of us to assert the truth from our consciences and into the world in which we live. The Common Good that is at stake is precarious without a determined and vigilant commitment toward decency and the principles of a truly 'human' society. It may or may not be political in the formal sense, but it usually does require the virtue of courage. The advocates, often through the voices of young people, to preserve human life from the atrocity that is abortion is one example but there are, sadly, so many, many more. So much of what we knew to be 'true' just a few decades ago has been surrendered. In some places 'marriage' has been abolished and nature overturned. Sodomy, fornication, buggery are now celebrated with the approval and participation of our political and civic leaders. The lie that is 'political correctness' has insidiously overtaken much of our public life and institutions. There is 'fear' for offending the enemies of way of life, our identity, our civilisation, our principles and sometimes our souls. It will require more than 'a voice crying in the wildnerness' to put a stop to this wreckage that, if it were to ultimately achieve it's end, would cover the globe and sentence our succeeding generations to misery and darkness. Evil and the lies it promotes and generates, if it has it's way, will, like a giant tumour, overcome the good and the innocent and even our way of life of freedom and prosperity; both our material and spiritual fulfilment. It is not enough simply to put on the 'armour' but often necessary to take up the sword against the foe. The sword can be the truth that we proclaim with our mouths but it can also be that which we slay with all of our might. Jesus said: I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. I believe Him and in Him. For those who do not, however, there is still a way, a truth and a life that, by common sense, by our inherent nature as rational, moral human beings, can be found. Listen to the voice of the Liar. If it conjures up in your conscience something that just doesn't ring true; if it animates discomfort and unease; if it seems to contradict the plain facts.... turn away from it and devote yourself to learning more of the accepted truths that have been embraced and honoured in the generations that have lived amidst the lies of the past. Let us choose to not become another lie, damned lie, or statistic. G.B. edited 13Sept07 |