We were all a little confused about lying before Trump came on the scene — if you can remember a time when he did not dominate the air. Even when we were lying, then and last week, most of us wondered if it was the right thing to do. But we also had our reasons to do it.
Psychology will back us up; there are many reasons humans lie. There is bound to be an evolutionary psychologist out there who has “proven” we survived as a species because we are so good at deception. We’re still conflicted about it, however.
Science implies there are facts and there are unproven hypotheses — and we should be on the side of facts, since they are real. But all us humans, if we think about it, know it is difficult to tell one straight truth about ourselves, we are all so complex. At least once a week, I dispute what my wife claims to have said to me — and she may claim it was just an hour ago!
But she, and the rest of us, can’t really prove much of what we assert, even when it comes from the depths of us. And when we look around, it is difficult to have a sure grasp on what is true about almost everything else, the universe feels so mysterious and beyond our complete understanding.
Now we have Trump, ready to impose a reality of his own making – science, common sense, and morality be damned. Some people are gleefully adopting a life of lying and have become, with him, a relentless wave against the common institutions and assumptions Americans hold. Punditry dashed to their computers to explain how Trump won, even though he is a proven, unrepentant prevaricator. How could anyone elect a proven liar? F.D. Flam wrote in Bloomberg:
Trump won with surprising decisiveness, despite his evasiveness and failure to justify his extraordinary claims. It’s tempting to conclude that we live in some kind of post-truth society. Perhaps, instead, we live in a society obsessed the truth, but we’ve lost our appreciation for explanatory depth and different perspectives. At the same time, we’re just as persuaded by a speaker’s confidence as ever.
Most of what passes for “telling it like it is” comes down to Trump making completely subjective judgments with a tone of certainty — that some of his enemies are “losers” or “morons” or “low IQ” or that one of his rivals somehow has a face that’s not fit for office. Some might call this brutal honesty, but there’s nothing honest about it. The Week Magazine calls it “maniacal overconfidence” which “sounds to some people like forthrightness.” In that sense, he is telling it like it is — in his own self-serving head.
In my territory, I can’t ride down the elevator or go to a party without hearing how hard it is to be one of those morons and losers. “Maniacal overconfidence” seems like an overly sweet way to characterize what Trump is full of.
The voice of Jesus
I’m not a pundit, of any merit, at least. But I had to make a few contributions to what people were saying on Facebook and such after Trump won. I was mainly concerned that we all confront the lying before we all conform to it, since it is alarming how quickly the media adapted to “Mr. President” as if he were introducing a new normal. For Christians, I think not conforming comes down to pondering John 8 again if we want to hang on to truth and love, as I do. I still believe in the promise from Ephesians 4: 14-16:
We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.
Paul obviously couldn’t care less about what society finds normal. I think he is channeling Jesus, as we all aspire to do if we follow Christ. That’s Jesus, who says, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”
In John 8, Jesus is having an amazing dialogue with religious opponents who are absolutely sure they are living out the truth as best as anyone can. They are just as sure they are speaking God’s truth as Donald Trump is sure he was spared the assassin’s bullet so he could personally make America great again. Most of us are so unsure about the truth and too sure alternative facts cause conflict, we don’t get into it with people on elevators or at parties, even though Jesus apparently would. He tells his opponents:
You don’t even understand what I’m saying. Do you? Why not? It is because You cannot stand to hear My voice. You are just like your true father, the devil; and you spend your time pursuing the things your father loves. He started out as a killer, and he cannot tolerate truth because he is void of anything true. At the core of his character, he is a liar; everything he speaks originates in these lies because he is the father of lies. So when I speak truth, you don’t believe Me. — John 8:43-45
If your first thought after reading this was, “Do I even believe there is a devil?” that’s OK. There is so much theologizing generated by John 8, we might never get done with it. Stick to what Jesus is asserting, don’t stick with your own defensive response. I think the point is, “You need to hear my voice or you will never hear the truth.” Negatively, that is, “If you pursue the things the father of lies loves, everything you say will come from that core.” We’ve got to ponder that before lie-lovers control us inside and out.
Listening in the day of lies
I don’t think Donald Trump is new. He is just the terrible bloom of a society adapting to the media and providing false-self images for it to feed on.
In 1984, Ronald Reagan won every electoral vote except for Minnesota’s, the home state of Walter Mondale. For his first term, he had handily beaten an actual Christian trying to be president with the Iran hostage deal. He later did one of his masterful jobs of lying when he explained the Iran-Contra mess. Reagan was the beginning of all sorts of evils, but his main legacy is using the screen so well. We used to watch him speaking and say, “He is lying, but people forgive him because he looks like he believes it. I’m tempted to believe him myself.”
I did not believe him. He galvanized my faith to stick with The Way The Truth And The Life no matter how effectively the father of lies carpet-bombs my consciousness.
Fortunately, people in my feed were trying to keep me listening last week. I appreciated how Bryan McLaren summed up the process of listening to the Truth and hanging on to it in the middle of anxiety. He really takes himself seriously, as we probably should too.
@brianmclaren If you’re afraid, anxious, tired … election. #terrified #tired #trump #harris
I don’t think we can listen to the voice of God unless we can learn to hear what is in the silence. So this is one thing I posted. I love how this little tune is usually repeated, second verse same as the first. It makes us wait, slow down, and enter the peace that passes understanding. That is where we are most likely to hear from God.
I also don’t think we can hear the voice of God unless we talk back to, or shout back at, the voices that compete for God’s place in our thoughts and feelings. If we don’t step up, we could be “blown about by every wind of doctrine by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.” Then Jesus might say, “So when I speak truth, you don’t believe Me.”
Fortunately, several of my friends were not having it. Their minds turned to a defiant song we used to sing in our old church. I dug out a recording from Internet Archive.
That song is good shouting back. Sometimes we sang it in a group of 100 or more. It was a good way to reroute some neural pathways.
I am not sure there has ever been a day of lies like this one, since there has never been the kind of media which surrounds us and trains us. But maybe I’m taking myself too seriously, too. After all, Jesus was talking about people who were in such unwitting collusion with the father of lies, they could not recognize the Son of God, for whom they were purportedly waiting, even when he was talking to them face to face!
I feel sorry for those guys. And I feel sorry for us, too, since were are inevitably a lot like them and lying is still extremely typical of human beings. Our media has made it a worldwide industry. But if McLaren is right, and I believe he is, from all the lying the Truth is born again and again.
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Today is Lucretia Mott Day!
Speaking of someone who was “not having it!” She is a premier example of standing up for truth and justice.
Visit her at The Transhistorical Body.