Have you ever played the game, two truths and a lie?
It's an icebreaker for groups to get to know one another better. You share two things that are true about you and one that is a lie, and the rest of the group tries to guess which is the lie.
I am rather horrible at this game. I have a million tells, apparently, and am not good at thinking of a lie.
It can be a fun game. You learn new things about one another. One of which is how good (or not) other people can convincingly tell a lie.
Our culture is full of lies. Sometimes it can be hard to tell what is real and what is false. As Christians, we are taught that the Father of Lies is Satan, and God is the God of Truth. So, rejecting lies and believing Truth should be easy... except, it's not. Over and over again we see Christians being easily manipulated, sucked in, and led astray by lies. Why?
I heard someone once say the reason why Christians are so easily misled by lies is because of their faith in the unseen. As though believing in a God we cannot see or touch makes us more susceptible to believe in other things, regardless of the evidence, or lack thereof.
While I would agree that Christians are easily misled, I do not believe it is because of our belief in the divine. After all, everyone believes in things they cannot see or touch. Like gravity. The wind. Sound. Temperature. Heck, even wi-fi!
So. why is it we can be so easily drawn in by lies?
Sometime ago, before the Trump years, before Covid, before my religion crumbled, my friend told me a story. She was raving about the church she was attending. She said the pastor there was amazing. He always did what God told him to, even when it was hard.
The example she gave was this: one Sunday, the pastor stood in front of the congregation, and said that God had revealed to him that he wasn’t supposed to be married to his wife and the mother of his children. He was supposed to be married to this younger woman in the church, who I believe was his receptionist. And so, he would be divorcing his wife, and marrying this other woman, by the will of God.
Somehow, he was so convincing that the whole church stood behind him in this decision. Because, after all, if the pastor said God told him to, who were they to question?
My eyebrows must have risen up to my hairline as she was speaking. The thought racing through my head was, "He didn’t hear this from a higher power, but from a much lower region."
There is no doubt in my mind that he did not in fact receive an order from God to divorce his wife. He was manipulating his congregation into accepting his sinful behavior. Possibly he has been having an affair with this other woman. Even if he had never touched her, there had to have been some level of emotional affair for him to have decided to leave his wife for her.
It shocked me how easily a church could be misled.
Of course, now, after Trump and after Covid and everything that has happened over the past six years, I’ve seen how an entire 81% of white evangelical Christians can be easily misled.
Why? Why are we so easily conned by people spouting falsehoods?
There might be a few different factors at play. For one, a large number of Christians in America do not attend church regularly. According to a Pew Research Study, as many as 38% of Christians attend church only a few times a year or not at all. They believe in God and attend on holidays, but they are not connected to a home church. That's more than 1 out of 3. It's closer to 2 out of 5.
Now, I know there may be Christians included in that group who continue their personal faith through Bible reading and prayer and other spiritual practices even without attending a service. But I suspect the majority do not. It is hard to be a Christian in a silo. We need each other to grow.
Sometimes those who call themselves Christians but are not part of a church are called "cultural Christians". Every religion has those who are of that religion culturally, but do not practice the faith of the religion.
Cultural Christians are at risk for believing lies because they are not plugged into a community. The Bible talks a lot about the importance of continuing to meet together, to encourage one another, to build one another up, and to partner together in God's work. Trying to be a Christian without a church is like trying to run a marathon without arms or legs... or lungs.
I've written about how I was out of the church for over two years. I know how difficult it can be to find a church community where you feel welcomed and accepted and where you feel God at work. It took me three months to find my current church. I had to be willing to travel farther away from home. I had to be willing to put myself out there. I encourage you, if you have no church home, to find one.
A second contributing factor that should be considered is even those who have been raised in the church are largely Biblically illiterate. We don’t actually know what the Bible says.
In Lifeway Study, they found that among Evangelicals, only 60% read their Bibles at least once a week, meaning 40% do not. If we don’t know what the Bible says, how can we challenge the things we hear?
For instance, if the church in the previous example where the pastor was leaving his wife had known their Bible, they would have known he was lying about God telling him to leave his wife. God will not contradict Himself or His Word, and the Bible has a lot to say about marriage fidelity. You don't even have to go very far in Scripture before arriving at the seventh commandment, "Do not commit adultery". Jesus said, “I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman, commits adultery” (Matthew 19:10). You can't get much clearer than that.*
If we do not know the Bible, we may think that the church's teachings on marriage are only cultural and not Biblical, and therefore ignore them. If we do not know the Bible, we are more likely to believe whatever someone else tells us the Bible says. Especially if they are pastors or leaders. We figure they know what they are talking about.
But sometimes, they don't.
Every time you hear a sermon, a teaching, a Bible study, or somebody claiming to be speaking from God or the Bible, regardless of who they may be, you should be checking it out for yourself. Not all Biblical teaching is actually Biblical. People have a way of using verses to their own purposes and gain. We need to know our Word.
After all, twisted teaching of the Scripture has been used to justify all sorts of horrors: the Crusades, the Holocaust, the genocide of Native Americans, the "conquering" of the "New World", slavery, the subjugation of women, child abuse, ... need I continue?
Nowadays with the internet, reading and studying the Bible is easy. There is no excuse for Christians not to read the Bible. There are audio versions, big print versions, child or adolescent editions. There are multiple free apps and websites and podcasts to help you. There are multiple books and studies available. And, most local churches have Bible studies you can join, as well. We need to be in the Word if we are going to live by the Word and truly know God's Truth.
If you are new to the Bible, it is generally recommended to start with the Gospel of John. (Unless you have a Jewish background, in which case, start with Matthew.)
Just for fun, I'm going to list here in closing some of the most common things people think are in the Bible, but actually are not. There are no truths and lies here, these are all false. Feel free to check and see if I'm correct or not:
- God works in mysterious ways.
- Love the sinner, hate the sin.
- God will not give you more than you can handle.
- God helps those who help themselves.
- If God closes one door, He'll open another.
- God wants you to be happy.
- Everything happens for a reason.
- To become a Christian, ask Jesus into your heart. (I'll write a blog on this sometime.)
What would you add to this list??
*My point here is not to argue for marriage nor against divorce. My point is to show how a lack of Biblical knowledge can lead people to being easily led astray.
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