Lies #6 - The first conundrum

Ok, so I'm procrastinating. Sue me.

 Nathan put forward a juicy difficulty for my position on lies in a comment. It runs:

 "[God] also seems to either commend or participate in the deception of Israel's enemies, assuming the prophet in 1 Kings 22 is telling the truth, for example..." 

Let me quickly break the passage down for you.  Roughly summarised:

Ahab, king of Israel, consults his 400 non-Yhwh prophets to see if he should attack some cities.  They say yes, you'll win.  He gets advice to go a prophet of Yhwh, Micaiah (Mick to his mates).  Ahab hates Mick because he's always prophesying that Ahab's going to cop it, but he asks him anyway.   

Mick says, "Sure, go for it!"

Ahab says, "Yeah right, since when do you ever prophesy anything good for me?" 

Mick says, "Yeah, just joking.  You're going to get so smoten if you do.  Also, I saw a vision where God told a spirit to tell all your dodgy prophets that you'd win, just so you'd go for it." 

Then he tells everyone, "Mark my words, if he comes back alive from this battle, I'm not Yhwh's prophet."

Knowing the truth now, Ahab decides to have a crack anyway, but in disguise and with a stunt double.  Short story shorter, the stunt double makes it out alive but Ahab cops an arrow to somewhere more vital than his knee.

Now, there's lots to say about this passage about truth and lies.  And lots of it, I think, mitigates the uncomfortableness of what God does in the sense that through this incident truth massively wins.

Despite this, the fact remains.  God sent a spirit to deceive.  God made Ahab believe something untrue.  The thing that I think is most important to note is that God does so in judgement.  Much, in fact, as God killed Ahab in judgement.

You see, what I'm getting at is that God's denial of the truth to someone, and even his giving them over to their delusions, (and given the nature of the prophets Ahab consulted this was definitely a product of Ahab's delusions) is destructive judgement.  It was an act predicated upon his righteous decision as judge to finally destroy this wicked king after years and years of grace.  In this case of deception, the only case of this exact nature I'm aware of in Scripture, it is synonymous with the bringing of death.

Now, Ahab actually knew what Yhwh had said before he went to battle.  And Yhwh arranged that.  So it's not as if God doesn't actually tell him what's in store if he fails to take heed.  In fact, he makes sure the false information comes from the mouths of false prophets.  The word from Yhwh's prophet came perfectly true.

But in reference to our current question of ethics, of what is right for humanity to do, the passage raises question marks.  Is lying always wrong?

I would suggest that lying is in a similar category to killing.  It almost never the right thing to do.  I think that the kind and degree of reasoning that we ought apply before deceiving is of a similar order to that which we ought to apply before taking life.  Partly because that's what lies end up doing.  They destroy life.

God's purpose for this reality is life and thriving for people, and it is our duty to uphold this.

Yet, God reserves the right to destroy the destroyer.  It's the kind of thing that God is free to utilise in judgement, but not so humanity.  Not in the same way.

Lies #4 - Why the truth matters pt2.

Nathan, forever my valued interlocutor, asked in an earlier comment in this series whether I could point to a place in Scripture where God commands his people not to lie.  I think the answer to that is 'yes'.

Let's look at a few examples.

The LORD detests lying lips, but he delights in men who are truthful. (Pro 12:22 NIV)

You could suggest that this is wisdom literature, not law, and so carries the weight of what is good rather than what is necessary.  So let's go to some law.

Do not lie. Do not deceive one another. (Lev 19:11 NIV) 

Seems fairly clear.  But you could suggest that this is the OT and perhaps there's more 'freedom' in the New Testament on these sorts of issues where wisdom suggests that bending the truth may perhaps bring a better outcome.  So let's go to the NT.

Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. (Col 3:9-10 NIV)

Now one could further again argue that perhaps there is an escape clause here in that the command seems to apply only to discussion within the Christian community.  So Christians could technically lie, but only to non-Christians?  Yet, lying in general seems to be a sin that God suggests leaves its exponents culpable:

But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars--their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulphur. This is the second death." (Rev 21:8 NIV) 

Now, I'm generally not one who likes to build my case based on one-verse prooftexts, but having been challenged to do so I don't think that the Scriptural evidence points away from my central thesis.  Even if you're building your ethics from a very flat view of the 'divine command' approach, you're really going to struggle to think that it's godly to engage in any sort of deception without very serious prayer and reflection on why these commands might not apply in that particular case.

Lies #3 - Why the truth matters pt1.

In my next few posts in this series I'm going to work a few different angles on bits of Scripture that show how important truth is.  So hopefully there'll be a few of these, in quickish succession, but they should each be reasonably short.

The first angle I'm going to work from is that that the ethics of creatures proceed from their Creator.

So, who is our Creator?

God is not a man,a that he should lie... (Num 23:19 NIV)

He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie (1Sa 15:29 NIV) 

God, who does not lie... (Tit 1:2 NIV) 

...him who is holy and true... (Rev 3:7 NIV)

Just and true are your ways, King of the ages. (Rev 15:3 NIV)

... is called Faithful and True. (Rev 19:11 NIV) 

But do we need to try and be like God in this respect?  Or is truth an 'incommunicable' attribute of God?  One that He possesses, but we're not commanded to emulate?  Well, Colossians specifically combines the command not to lie with the destiny of the believer to be like his/her Creator:

Do not lie to each other,a since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. (Col 3:9-10 NIV) 

This is not only our future, but also the expectation of the character of our lives now:

Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks.  24 God is spirit,a and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth." (Joh 4:23-24 NIV)

 And this in anticipation of our future.  As John sees in Revelation:

Then I looked, and there before me was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father's name written on their foreheads. ... No lie was found in their mouths; they are blameless. (Rev 14:1-5 NIV) 

So while we may not necessarily act truthfully instinctively, honesty is the direction the Christian must be pointed towards because it's what conforming to the image of his/her Creator looks like.

Our ethics flow from the nature of our Creator.

A public perception of Christianity...

This article was quite interesting to me. I know that Christians are always dealing with the perceptions (often wrong) of non-Christians on how they ought to be acting. This particular version, however, hits interesting points because of the public character of the debate.

Does K. Rudd's stance on asylum seekers have any conflict with his Christian morality?

Interestingly, the comments on the article itself take a singularly 'anti-Rudd' bent.