I got another one of those emails calling me a liar. It
comes with the territory. It was not that my particular view was wrong,
misinformed, or even misguided. Nope. I was a liar. I was deliberately
misleading people. I know the truth, but I withhold it so that I can
consciously exchange it for something that is false. The old
bait-and-switch. I was a “liar from the pit of hell.”
I am often humored by extreme rhetoric that Christians will employ,
but never more so than when people become so loose with the accusations
about lying. Maybe humored is the wrong word: it’s a very disturbed type
of humor.
The presupposition is this: Whenever someone teaches something we
disagree with, the rhetoric employed to combat such is accusations of
lies. In other words, if someone does not teach the truth in our
opinion, they are lying.
Period. No question about it. Since I am right
and they are wrong about the issues, they must be liars. That is the only solution, right?
Be careful with such rhetoric. Better, let’s just stop it.
I read it on blogs and hear these accusations in debates. It is the
default position in the media. Christians—well-meaning Christians—use
such rhetoric in blogs, sermons, books, articles, and on Facebook. All
the while proclaiming to defend the faith.
According to the dictionary, a lie is “a false statement made with
deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.”
There are a couple of things to note here. A lie is intentional and deceptive.
It is not simply something that is untrue. There is the supposition of
intent with deception to make someone believe something that they know is false.
I believe that there are indeed many times when people teach
something that could truly be called a lie. I could give many examples.
But when our default position is that when someone else teaches something we believe to be wrong that they are lying, we have big problems.
Four come to mind immediately. Continue at C Michael Patton
