This is a sifter.
If you find an antique kitchen cabinet (in these parts, they are called “Hoosier cabinets,”) you’ll find that there will usually be a built-in sifter and a flour bin. The sifter was not an item that was used primarily to make the breads and cakes light and fluffy by the addition of air into the formerly packed flour. Rather, this was a very practical tool that was used to sift out all the bugs and other irregularities. Flour was too valuable a commodity to throw it out because a critter had been in it. The sifter would hold back the undesirable elements in the flour and you could be free to use what was left in your breads and pastries.
When I was little and I first recognized that I had been deceived about Santa Claus, it made me really angry. People didn’t teach him to me as a myth or a story, or even as a hypothesis – they taught him as Truth. That was the problem – I believed it.
Me and Rennie, before the great epiphany.
I hated it when I found out the reality. It was not pleasurable to go along with the charade. I felt that I had been defrauded and that there had been a breaking of trust.
Classic literature teaches us that lying is immoral. For example, Pinocchio’s nose grew longer and longer whenever he told a lie, in order to teach him not to do it, that it was wrong.
Sir Walter Scott wrote that at best, lying makes things very complicated, and we have a hard time getting out of our homespun trap: “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”
Even The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf shows that once a person proves he is by nature a liar, he loses the trust of others. “Fool me once, shame on thee; fool me twice, shame on me.” Who listens to a pathological liar? And there can be deadly results.
The Bible teaches us that lying is a sin, against both God and our neighbor.
Lying is something God does NOT do and cannot do, because of who He is:
“... in hope of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began …” ~Titus 1:2
“God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?” ~Numbers 23:19
Lying is of the devil ‒ it is who he is:
“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.” ~John 8:44 (Jesus speaking to the Pharisees)
Lying is a violation of one of the Ten Commandments:
“Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” ~Exodus 20:6
Lying is something God hates:
“These six things the LORD hates, Yes, seven are an abomination to Him: A proud look, A lying tongue, Hands that shed innocent blood …” ~Proverbs 6:16-17
One of the things my mother taught me was to keep my promises.
One time when I was maybe ten, she asked me to sew a button on something. One button, 5 cents. I thought it would be nice to have the 5 cents, so I agreed to do it. Then later on, I changed my mind and decided I didn’t need the money that bad. But Mom seemed to think I’d better just go ahead and do it anyway, since I had promised I would. I objected. She locked me in her bedroom. I ranted and raved about it. (Such bad behavior!) And then, when I realized she was holding the door shut and challenging my “authority,” I finally sat down with the button and had it finished in about five minutes.
And, I got the 5 cents as promised. After I kept my promise, my mom kept hers.
Mom spoke to me about becoming a woman who could be trusted to keep her word. That became important to me, and it became ingrained in me, that if I said I would do something, I would sure-enough do it. I hope I taught that to all our kids.
While we were raising our family, one of the highest crimes was lying. I never think it is “cute” to see a little child trying to keep themselves out of trouble by making up an inventive story and swearing up and down that they didn’t do it. That “cuteness” will only grow up to be something unbearable when the child reaches puberty, and it will not look cute anymore. Tolerating sin in a child encourages a sinful, rebellious heart in an adult.
So we enforced a no-lying rule by doing the following:
We made sure to explain why lying is wrong, and specifically, why what the child had done was wrong.
We charged money for each lie. The kids didn’t have much money anyway, and putting the nickel into the special “Lie Jar” was a pretty big deal.
They would be spanked. There was no way out of it. However, they understood that this wouldn’t have happened if they had owned up to the crime in the first place. And they didn’t have to be spanked very often, either – they were fast learners.
The child would pray and ask God for forgiveness. Then, all would be forgiven, and there would be hugs.
But just as we needed to teach our children not to lie, we also needed to teach them not to believe a lie.
These days, very noticeably, both sides in the political debate are claiming that the other side is lying. They proclaim it continuously and loudly. Much has been said about both “fake news” and “Russian disinformation.” The New York Times supposedly has a database of over 2,000 times President Trump has lied. And Facebook and Twitter have been ruthlessly “fact checking” (censoring) the views of conservatives, including the President of the United States, removing or covering their posts as the self-appointed Ministry of Truth.
Bill O’Reilly has a show called “No Spin News.” He means that he’s reporting the news as it is, without trying to embellish it to favor anybody. Fox News’s Tucker Carlson is famous too, for claiming that what he reports is true. Meanwhile, on CNN’s show, “Reliable Sources,” Jake Tapper said he won’t have White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany and others on his show because “I mean, these are just people who just, they just tell lies the way that most people breathe.”
But in the world, there is a lot of lying going on right now. We have to just not think about the fact that the person who “won” the election could not even fill up the social distance circles at his rallies with ardent supporters, but the “loser” drew crowds that extended towards the horizon as far as the eye could see. We have to not think about the fact that more people voted in several counties than there are residents of voting age, or that observers of our “free and fair” election were ordered to leave the building while counting was happening inside. (Okay, now you know where I stand on that issue.)
The obvious lying is such that any thinking person has to deliberately suspend his disbelief in order to enjoy life the way it is and go on with business as usual. In other words, stop thinking. Ignorance is bliss.
Interestingly, the word “hypocrite” (which was an accusation leveled at the Pharisees in Jesus’ day) comes from the Greek word that means “actor.” And suspending disbelief is a technique that actors work for – being so good at what they do that they can pretend to be anything, and the audience will accept it. Sometimes the actors even begin to believe it themselves! Have you ever seen a movie or play of “Harvey”? Could you believe that there was an invisible rabbit on the stage?
The first time our home school drama club produced Uncle Tom’s Cabin, about 28 years ago, I played Simon Legree. Nobody wanted to play that part, so I did. Eric applied a beard and shaggy eyebrows to my face, and another mother teased my hair and sprayed it with gray. I looked very wild, beastlike.
But it wasn’t the look I was going for. It was delivering my lines believably.
When you portray a character in a play, you have to “put on” their being, their thinking, their person. How could a nice Christian homeschool mom like me play a violent, pagan, even possibly demon-possessed murderous slave owner? I had to understand him, and the horror he must have felt when contemplating his own eternal destiny without salvation. By the time my part in the play came around, during our outdoor production at Canal Park, the sun was always down or mostly down. We had permission from the park to make a small fire by that set, and played in the light from the flames, my part looked particularly evil.
The only part I guess I didn’t deliver well was the scream: some of my kids (my critics) told me I sounded “like a girl.” But I inadvertently scared the daylights out of the actors’ little brothers and sisters in the audience, so I had to tone it down for the next performance.
So yes, even playing the Bad Guy in a play such as that had redeeming value. The unforgettable message that hell is, well, hellish, was worth the scare. But for me to do that part, people had to be comfortable for a while, with believing I was a monstrous villain, suspending their disbelief.
In writing of the antichrist who would one day wreak havoc on the earth, Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 2:11-12:
“And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”
The Scriptures warn us again and again not to fall for the lies of the false teachers, false prophets, doctrines of demons, and such. We must be wise! We cannot afford to be gullible!
“Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” ~Matthew 10:16
Here are some other examples:
“The simple believes every word, But the prudent considers well his steps.” ~Proverbs 14:15
“For those who are such do not serve our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly, and by smooth words and flattering speech deceive the hearts of the simple.” ~Romans 16:18
“And He said: ‘Take heed that you not be deceived. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am He,’ and, ‘The time has drawn near.’ Therefore do not go after them.” ~Luke 21:8
In my life, I found that my parents sometimes taught me important truths that I needed to retain, and other stuff I had to reject. My mother was the first person to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with me, when I was eleven. But I had to reject astrology, divorce (which is the breaking of a solemn vow), alcohol, and … Santa Claus. What is real, true, and good? What is not? I had to get out my sifter and sort out the truths from the lies. And what better sifter than the Word of Truth, the Bible?
It was the goal of our home school to teach the Truth, with conviction. The precepts I taught just couldn’t be confused with other ideas so that the kids had to sort out which parts were true and which were fairy tales. If we were learning about fairy tales, I told them so. But we taught the truths of the Bible – all the way through it. We made sure they understood that the flood of Noah was an historical event. We were fully aware and taught unflinchingly that the parting of the Red Sea, the virgin birth of Jesus, the raising of Lazarus, the literal resurrection of Christ, His Ascension into Heaven and His literal, physical return to Earth, along with the Rapture of the Church, are real and true events. The Rapture and the Second Coming are absolute, irrevocable promises made by the One who does not lie.
The Bible teaches us that the Truth is to be desired, and … that we can personally know Someone who IS the Truth:
“And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” ~Jesus, in John 8:32
“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No man comes to the Father, but by me.” ~Jesus, in John 14:6
This is how we can escape the lies of the devil. We must know Jesus, who is The Truth. We must study His Word, consume it, and make it part of our being. This is how we will know wisdom and have discernment. This is how He will keep us safe from the Deception, the Great Delusion, that will be coming upon the Earth.
Get out your sifter!
“Lord Jesus, grant us all a huge measure of wisdom and discernment in these Last Days. We who know You as the Truth are truly blessed. Help us to introduce others to the Truth as we have opportunity. Amen”
Oh, and one more thing. I have to tell you that after some reconsideration of last week’s blog post, I have decided that my memory must have been playing tricks on me when I told you it was Jeremy Camp as a baby that caused me to want another one of my own. I think now it must have been Caleb Goodrich, who was Meagon’s little brother. Sooooo… I went back and changed things. It wasn’t a lie – just simply a faulty memory. I apologize for the misunderstanding!
No comments:
Post a Comment