Ramon Arias | April 13, 2015
We are only too familiar with pollution and the damage it causes. The impact of pollution is even felt in distant lands. It can be seen in the landscape, in dangerous soils, oceans, lakes, rivers, dead plants and animals; humans also suffer the consequences. There are facts demonstrating how bad pollution is for every living thing on planet Earth. Does it make a difference then how we view pollution and the responsibility we all bare to contain it? You’d better believe it!
There is another type of deadly pollution too many people are agreeable to live by. This pollutant is one that most people disregard easily and brush off in spite of what the historical facts reveal about its destructive force. What is this super destructive pollutant? Lies!
America is contaminated by unchallenged lies that have been allowed to go on in hopes that some day things will straighten themselves out. Perhaps the next generation will be wiser and braver to make things right. In the meantime, here we are.
You may ask, if the norm is for everybody to lie, what difference does it make to be dominated by lies? Do I really have to spell it out? You can be sure that people who live under lies and accept that culture is because they breathe, eat, and sleep deception. This is no different than people who think pollution of the earth is just fine, that is, until the poisons damage their bodies.
The original America has a different cultural foundation, which was built upon the Truth of God’s Word. The generation of the Founding Fathers had to deal with the lies of their time and we have reaped the benefits of their success. Consider the speech made by Patrick Henry, in the Virginia Convention, 1775:
“It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth – and listen to the song of that syren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things, which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it might cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.”
Henry’s generation fought against lies because it made the difference for right living. Our present generation has been burdened by the lies of past generations and, from what we can see, it would seem that people want to be lied to without thinking of the mortal and immortal consequences.
The illusion of hope is just that, an illusion, which is another word for lie. Shutting our eyes, ears and mouth against this universal truth will not make it go away. Henry was right in pointing out that when people listen to the song of illusion they can only be transformed into beasts.
Individuals, as well as nations, who embrace lies as a lifestyle and see no apparent consequences for their lives don’t realize they have succumbed to the lying spirit. They even rejoice and worship those who lie the most, however, history teaches us that no nation can escape the consequences of the pollution of lies.
Jesus told self-righteous Israel that they were mistaken in thinking they were favored by God regardless of the evidence against them, which clearly revealed a culture of lies. They embraced the source of lies when they rejected the truth, “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).
Thomas Jefferson in his Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 17, 1781 said, “It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors?”
In a letter to James Smith, 1822 Jefferson told him, “Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck.”
Over the next year and a half, until the November 2016 elections, will we hear truth or lies from those candidates running for office in all branches of government? Furthermore, what are we hearing in the world of academia, the arts, entertainment, media, the church pulpits and the home? Gullibility has destroyed lives and nations because people’s minds are seared with lies.
Truth and nothing but God’s truth will liberate us from this present pollution of lies. We, like Patrick Henry, should be willing to know the whole truth regardless of how ugly it will look. It does not matter how bad it is. We must be willing to stand for revealed truth knowing it is our only way out, especially to rebuild the cultural foundations. If we do this, future generations will be grateful; if we don’t, they will curse us.
“There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.” – George Washington, letter to Edmund Randolph, 1795
What difference does it make? You make the call.