Once Upon a Lie
For when people renounce lies, lies simply cease to exist. Like parasites, they only can survive when attached to a person.
~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Live Not By Lies
By our ordained birthdates, we are all living in the most dichotomous days of confusion our country has ever experienced. On one side of our bifurcated reality, each of us carries in our pocket more computing power than NASA utilized for all their Apollo missions combined. Assuredness of truth should be a given.
Yet, on the other side of this paradigmatic fence, we are constantly assaulted with fact-checking that intentionally disregards facts, Google searches that disregard our search criteria, and a battalion of trusted experts who disregard the truth.
I wonder if information was more thoughtful and reliable when written with quill and ink and delivered via the Pony Express.
The rapid rollout of AI has been a mushroom cloud of fabrications because the creators, not the computers, baked biased ideology into the algorithms. Unless, of course, you believe the Founding Fathers were from Africa, “white married people” resemble black gay couples, and a typical German soldier from 1943 looks like an Asian woman.
We’ll do better.
~ Prabhakar Raghavan, Senior Vice President of Google Gemini
Always be aware of what the “A” stands for in AI.
Over these past five years, nearly every proposition raised by intelligent, qualified people that was frantically stamped as a conspiracy theory has, over time, been quietly and sheepishly conceded as true. The most troubling aspect of this cultural phenomenon is that the ones doing the stamping are always the trusted experts.
The Wuhan Lab Leak; Safe and Effective Vaccines; Ivermectin; Masks Prevent Spread; Six-foot Distancing; School Closures; Small Business Closures. Hunter Biden’s Laptop; The Steele Dossier; Transgender Sterilization and Surgeries on Children Decrease Suicidal Ideation; The Most Secure Elections; The Most Secure Border; No Combustion Engine Cars by 2030; and the list goes on.
We will not subscribe to, nor buy in retail, a newspaper or journal that distorts or hides the underlying facts.
~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Live Not By Lies
The highly anticipated presidential debate showed the world what the press has been scrambling to hide for years: The president suffers from a type of early-onset dementia. While the media puppets and political pundits played Whack-a-Mole, trying to prove to us which candidate lied more during the debate, I was enthralled with the unexpected display of rapid-onset honesty that erupted across the outlets.
The same corporate media personalities who vociferously convinced us for the last three years that Joe Biden was sharp as a tack, intensely probing, and intellectually and analytically the “Best Biden ever” were suddenly squawking that his mental degradation is so severe that he needs to resign.
Whether the media was lying then or is lying now, they have proven themselves wholly untrustworthy—at least by those who refuse to live by lies.
The well-oiled machinery of captured media apparatchiks should be despised and disowned by We The People for their constant lying. Our money is their oil, our brains are their canvas, and globalist power turns their gears. Unthinkably, blind allegiance to them marches on.
Tell the truth, or at least; don’t lie. To tell the truth implies that you know the truth, which is not always possible. But a lie is when you know what you are saying is not true, and you say it anyway. That’s a lie.
~ Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life
In 1998, President Bill Clinton lied under oath while the entire nation watched. As he hissed his proposition of “what is, is” and slithered, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” I believed at that moment a spirit of deception and lying was boldly released in our country. Yes, presidents lied to us before and will lie to us again. But the insolence and impudence of that moment brokered an open door for sin, deception, and demon-sized lying unparalleled in modern history.
You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. When he lies, he speaks his native language, because he is a liar and the father of lies.
~ Jesus in John’s Gospel, Chapter 8
From Without and From Within
While I arguably spend too much time following culture and politics, my primary pursuit is warning the Church to resist conforming to the pernicious spirits controlling culture. While we are buffeted by a daily barrage of deception and intentional falsehoods, it should never be so within and through the Church. The Church has been aptly fitted with the Gifts of the Spirit so she can detect and disable any lie trying to worm its way inside.
But what if the lies originate from within the Church?
These past few years have revealed a depth of notorious sin and chronic lying from national church leaders that have not only destroyed marriages, ministries, and trust but have also impacted entire communities of faith, which are now demolished beyond recognition in the rearview mirror.
Robert Morris, Ravi Zachariah, Carl Lentz, Brian Houston, Bill Hybels, Mark Driscoll, James MacDonald, Tony Evans, and the list goes on.
The most personal for me was the treacherous sexual predation and subsequent lies of Mike Bickel and the controlled demolition of both Forerunner Church and IHOP (International House of Prayer, KC). IHOP was arguably one of the most influential churches in the world. In 2021, I was blessed to attend two days of private meetings with some genuine heroes of the faith, including Francis Chan, Eric Metaxas, Chris Reed, Ken Fish, and Andy Byrd. Also present were the leaders of IHOP: Mike Bickel, Stuart Greaves, David Slyker, and Misty Edwards. All four have since resigned from IHOP in shame and scandal.
I wrote an article about my experience there and have since completed a whirlwind of soul-searching to understand what it all means. With God’s help and talking with some of these leaders, I can now clearly discern the parts that were holy for me and the parts I can lay aside.
I have a picture of my son in high school posing with Carl Lentz. We often attended Hillsong NYC and watched Carl preach many sermons. Little did we know that while he was thumping out his a-bit-too-hip sermons, he was hiding multiple affairs from his wife. And from his leadership team. And from his staff. And from everyone.
He recently said he would have kept going — If he hadn’t been caught.
Robert Morris’ story is the most recent and deeply upsetting for our family. He led Gateway Church, one of the largest churches in the country, and we enjoyed his sermons for many years. Thanks to one of his sermon series, our boys were baptized in The Holy Spirit here at home. We have since learned that in his early twenties, while married and a pastor, he began sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl and continued until she was 16. In his book, he admits moral failures but explains he stepped down from ministry for two years because of pride — Not pedophilia.
We have also learned that a small group of his closest leaders helped hide his secret.
In many of these unthinkable accounts, a small group around the celebrity leader helped perpetuate the lies. It takes supernatural boldness to stand up to lies, but it must be done.
Catholic Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano was recently charged with Schism and was summoned to Rome for discipline. His crime? He has rightfully been calling out Pope Francis’ institutional lies. And more importantly, he was the whistleblower when defrocked child molester Cardinal McCarrick was secretly slipped back into service.
The powerful protect their lies by punishing the truth tellers. But in this case, Vigano published a strong statement and refused to appear in Rome. He refuses to live by lies.
Over the past few years, some of the prophets I follow said there would come a great shaking of the Church: Any church that can be shaken will be shaken. Dismayingly, we are watching this prophecy unfold before our eyes. But remember, this is not just an act of God’s judgment but also of mercy. If sin is hidden in a church, despite outward appearances, it must be rooted out, or that church will drift into powerlessness. And supernatural power in the church is the leading attribute necessary to guide us into the tumultuous days ahead.
What About Me?
It may seem convenient for me to sit here with my keyboard in my blogosphere barcalounger, pulling pins and lobbing my grenades. So, allow me to end this on a more personal level.
I work hard to discern the lies around me, but what about the lies within me? What internal lies do I believe? More importantly: What internal lies do I speak out loud about myself -- To myself?
For those who have been following my personal journey (Described in Dark Night of the Soul and Hazan), I am still struggling to rebuild my career and receive a clear vision of what is ahead. The despair and discouragement that sets in can be debilitating. Too often, in these moments, I begin to cultivate and curate lies in my mind, allow them to nestle into my heart, and speak them aloud.
The things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them.
~ Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter 15
When beset with internal warring, some lash out at their spouse, children, or friends, creating grave hurt and damage in these relationships. But it is no safer when the recipient of my lashing is me. The hurt is just as painful, and the damage is just as real in my soul. And it’s built on lies.
I can’t afford to have thoughts in my mind about me that My Father doesn’t have in His mind about me.
~ Pastor Bill Johnson
Whether a national mega-church leader or little ol’ me, we all must vigilantly guard our minds, hold every thought as apprehended by Christ, and never allow a single lie to pay rent in our heads. Whether it is a NY Times article, a personal sense of faithless despair, a panel of CNN analysts, or a rogue thought antagonistic to scripture, we are responsible for the lies we curate. Therefore, live not by lies.
The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in people who are trustworthy.
~ Proverbs 12:22
Photo Credit: Peter confronting Ananias for lying in Acts 5. “You have not lied to people, but to God.”
At time of writing, Archbishop Vigano was excommunicated by Francis from the Catholic Church. The powerful protect their lies by punishing the truth-tellers.
