Is Telling the Truth Always Right?

While this may seem like a ridiculous question for a Christian pastor to pose, in this Postmodern American Church Society, it is a question that will raise eyebrows as well as tempers among good church going folk. To the detriment of all people, even “church folk” have come to believe that all truth is relative. Given this “relativism” it is interesting that anyone would fight over ANY hard and fast position, but they do so seeking to justify their own “relatively” white lies and outright deceptions.

A humanist is not a humanist because it is the most reasoned position. Any child can see that on its face the position is one made in a moral vacuum by blindfolded intellectuals seeking to justify their own immorality. Some, including the most influential signers of the Humanist Manifestos (1&2), have openly acknowledged this in formal interviews. A Postmodern Christian justifies lying, or any other immorality, for the same reason. Self-justification.

Whenever we have to stoop to moral lows for a high cause, we are in sin and the cause is either not nearly has high as we might perceive it, or it did not really need our deception for achievement. In attempting to manipulate people and events to obtain some specified end, Christ is not fully glorified and God’s very Sovereignty is being manifestly questioned by the very one seeking this “high purpose.” Sometimes these purposes are not high at all, but are selfish and full of ambition, lust, or guilt. In other words the high calling expressed does not match up with the actions and are genuinely rooted in self service.

Rahab’s lie was not made right by the end result (Joshua 2 and Joshua 6) . It was not made right by the spies being saved and God’s plan going forward. She was not rewarded for her lie. However acknowledged she was for her actions (James 2:25), here is the bottom line. God did not need her lie to save the spies NOR to have His plan implemented and made successful! God’s grace saved Rahab and the spies, not her works. The ends do not EVER justify the means. Perfect “means” always yield God’s perfect ends. Even when in our limited view of reality, we can not see that perfection.

Right is always right and wrong is always wrong. Most intellectuals in this postmodern world see this statement as morally territorial and highly intolerant. In this case I would agree with them! The difference is that they would say that it is I who is intolerant. Christians should clearly see however, that God’s Word contains these absolutes and it is He that has established within every person what we know instinctively is right (see: “conscience” – Romans 2). Thus it is not MY morals, but God’s standards and truths that I profess and seek to live, that humanist’s find impossible to deal with. Secular Humanists kill all gods (but man) for precisely this reason. If there is no God but man, then there are not set standards and thus no “real” sin and (halleluiah) no guilt and consequently no God! When Rahab compromised truth for the cause of the safety of God’s children, she compromised God, spoke to His limited power and, at the very least, her lie questioned His sovereignty concerning what they had already been promised would be the end results (Joshua 6:17). Note: God’s promise was not thwarted by Rahab’s lie.

Were the results of Rahab’s lie “good”? Certainly the spies received the result desired. BUT that result had already been promised by God. What might God have done if Rahab had just “spoken the truth in love” OR just refused to speak? How many more lives might have been changed that day?

I fear that we live in a time when, embracing cultures and tolerance over truth, we will soon find ourselves with dictionaries absent even the idea of morality. I fear that there will come a time when no one remains that sees the absurdity of absolute and definitive statements defending moral relativism.