Liar, liar, pants on fire, nose as long as a….

Paul makes a rather revealing statement in 2 Corinthians 4:2 when he writes, “We have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.”  

And don’t you wish we had politicians, journalists, social media moguls, behavioural scientists, corporations, medical experts and pharmaceutical companies who could say the same for their professions as well? But that’s not the world we live in right now, is it? People and institutions we trust in are becoming open sewers of lies. Even so-called “fact checkers” have to be fact checked, because they can’t be trusted to tell the truth either. 

William Blake in his poem, The Liar, asked, “from what pit of foul deceit are all these whoppers sprung?” Imagine a famous Shakespearian actor rumbling out that beautifully slicing question at a Senate hearing on misinformation, censorship and outright lies being told by respected authorities, and then quoting Jesus’ answer in John 8:44, “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire.” So it’s the devil, my dear fellows, the actor rumbles, who is that “pit of foul deceit” from which your lies and “whoppers spring.” 

And that’s just the first part of John 8:44 – and the milder part too. Jesus goes on to describe the devil whose desire liars wish to carry out, and it’s not a pretty picture, because “(your father the devil) was a murderer from the beginning, not holding the truth, for there is no truth in him.” The devil is simply incapable of telling the truth, because “When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” 

No wonder the lies that respected authorities tell spring to mind so easily. Lying has become their native language too.

I wonder, then, if these children of the devil are even capable of making the connection between their father being a “murderer” and the trail of death and misery their own lies have created. There are now many shattering and harrowing videos and personal stories of vaccine injuries and deaths that have resulted from the claim that the vaccines for Covid 19 were perfectly “safe.” But no expert in his or her right mind would declare an experimental drug as safe. No drug is safe from the risk of injury and death, as any educated medical person knows.

So why tell lies that have, and could yet still, kill people? John, the same John, answers that in 1 John 3:12, when he writes, “Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s righteous.”

Cain thought he’d got away with an inferior sacrifice compared to his brother’s, but God called him out on it (Genesis 4:5-7). But rather than admit he’d made a mistake, Cain lied (verse 9). Why? Because he’d been shown up as weak and wrong, and that made him angry enough to kill. 

And likewise the authorities in our day, when caught out saying the vaccinations were perfectly safe and facts have since proved they aren’t. But rather than admit they were wrong they try to distort the facts, censor them, wreck the livelihoods of those who expose them, and lie to protect their own jobs and reputation. 

Why? Because at some awful point in their lives they sold their souls to the devil – for money or pressure to conform, perhaps, or because they discovered how easily people can be deceived. Who knows? But for some reason it happened and now we’re stuck with them, just as Jesus was stuck with similar people in his day, who were willing to lie, distort facts, make false accusations and even seek to have him killed too. 

But Jesus wasn’t intimidated by them, and he didn’t hold back from saying they were liars, just like children catching a peer lying and crying out, “Liar, liar, pants on fire, nose as long as a telephone wire.”