Snippet: Buying into Lies in Our Hunger for Substance

Snip·pet | ˈsnipit | noun a small piece or brief extract.

Here’s a snippet from an article by theologian Trevin Wax:

“We long for the truth, as beggars hungry for something of substance, even while we despise the truth, as mini-tyrants who chafe at any notion there might be someone or something that exerts authority over us. Our longing for truth leads to the easy embrace of lies.”

That’s an absolutely brilliant correlation!

I think Wax would agree that the “lies” may be of the kind where a totally corrupt dictator or government deliberately spreads a lie in order to achieve nefarious ends, but it can also refer to untruths we hold to sincerely and share with others for their benefit.

I happen to belong to a worldwide subset of people (a tribe of sorts) who believe Jesus is the truth (John 14:6), and God communicates his truth to us through Scripture (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

And in my tribe, it’s common for us to talk about how people who don’t embrace Christ and his Word are easily deceived by lies embedded in our cultures or spread through various media or “secular” institutions (i.e., lies of the well-meaning and nefarious variety).

But can we (Christians) detect and talk about our own vulnerabilities on this front? In our hunger for truth, how often do we buy into well-meaning “lies” promoted by influential and oftentimes well-meaning people in our own tribe?

In my opinion, the lies we’re most vulnerable to are the ones where untruths we attached to truths, and because of the attachment (and who makes the attachment), they go unexamined.

And can we detect and talk about our vulnerability as Christians when well-meaning people in our own tribe pass on “lies” they sincerely believe are true but were hatched by people with nefarious intent?

Well, we can. But will we?

Photo by Taras Chernus on Unsplash