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God Lies?

Did you know that God sometimes lies?

I know that, if you are religious, grew up in church, or have read much of the Bible, the question above has probably set alarm bells ringing in your head, and rightly so, but hear me out. 

Over the course of my life, I have been trained in theology and hermeneutics, translation and interpretation, and logic and philosophy. I was in church from the day I was born, have memorized hundreds of verses, and started reading the Bible at age four. As such, I thought I had a pretty good grasp on “the truth.” That is, until I started walking with God more closely, at which point I had to throw out everything I thought I knew. 

To be clear, God doesn’t exactly “lie”, but he does think of the truth much differently than we think of it. Most people, including myself, tend to think of truth as “factual accuracy,” and that something is “true” if, and only if, it exactly describes reality. But a few years ago God began to teach me how he interacts with the world, and my definition of “the truth” changed dramatically. 

“Truth is not factual accuracy,” he told me, “but that which leads to life.” 

I began to learn that there’s a big difference between the literal, factual truth and the truth that the person to whom I was speaking needed to hear. This means that Person A may need to hear one truth, while Person B may need to hear the complete opposite truth, in order for them both to reach the same goal. God’s goal is to lead everyone into an abundant, wholesome, beautiful life, but no two people start from the same place, so if he gave everyone the same directions, it would lead them to disaster.

I learned that nearly every truth about how people are to live that God has revealed throughout history has been this type of “corrective teaching.” This includes the truth recorded in the Bible. The problem occurs when someone takes this corrective teaching and makes it a rule for everyone, everywhere, regardless of their personal situations, which has led to great harm being done by the people of God throughout history.

This does not mean that we should not learn from what God has taught other people but rather that 

  1. we need to take time to understand the context of the person who received the truth from God, in order to understand why God have them the truth he did, and
  2. we need to develop a personal, conversational relationship with God, ourselves, so that we can receive individualized instruction for our specific situations. 

“If people would simply come to me personally,” God lamented to me one day, “instead of relying solely on what others tell them to do, so much damage could be avoided.” This is why, if you study the history of the Isrealites in the Old Testament, God was constantly asking to be their personal leader, ruler, and guide, but they pushed him away and asked for a written law, a prophet, or a king to lead them instead. In the end, he gave them what they asked for, but it never led to life.

History is filled with examples of this conflict between rules and relationship. Religious systems of black and white rules have always been a product of broken human desires. God’s desire has always been for personal relationships, in the context of which he can lead people into a beautiful future. 

This is what truth means to God, and this type of relationship is his desire for you, but the choice is yours.

Author: Brett Benes – Friend of God, Husband of Tenay, Father of Elaya, Passionate about the Kingdom

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