RELIGION BANS ALL LIES AND WHY THAT IS FANATICAL

The Christians hold that the Bible is the word of God. It is as much the writings of God as it is man. To condemn it is to condemn God.
 
What is the biblical stance on lying? It plainly teaches nothing ever justifies deception (Revelation 14:15). God said all liars not some were doing wrong (Proverbs 12:22).

In the Bible, clever and harmless lies composed to withdraw souls from the danger of everlasting retribution are expressly proscribed (John 7:18;1 John 2:21,27). Romans 3:7,8 condemns people who lie to glorify God though it means making sure they will be saved by lying to them when one can get away with it. It says that we can’t do evil so that good may come. If it is wrong to save people from eternal damnation by means of lies which would be the best reason of all for doing it then it is wrong to tell them for anything less. When these prohibitions were written it was very easy to tell irrefutable lies for communications and documentation were dire. If anyone did find out that they were lied to it would not have affected their faith any more than the weaknesses of the clergy today do and the Church always used the excuse, “If men do bad things to promote the gospel that is not the gospel’s fault” (in fact it is the gospel’s fault when there is no evidence for the gospel for the gospel would then be bigoted claptrap). God wrote Paul’s letters (2 Peter 3:16; 1 Timothy 2:6).

Jesus said we must not take oaths but say yes when we mean yes and no when we mean no (Matthew 5:36,37). In other words, he is not saying that oaths are wrong but that they should not be needed. In other words again, we should always speak the truth. Even if lies are allowed under strict conditions an oath would be required of us before we could be believed. If people tell lies even for good reasons they are deadening trust in other people and forcing people to need to use oaths with the result that there will be much perjury. Thus it must be a very very serious sin to tell a lie of any kind. The consistent Catholic will say that it deserves Hell and will take a person there. You are allowed to kill but you are not allowed to lie which infers that lying is worse than killing. In other words, listening to God, who says lying is always bad and killing is not, is more important than human life or anything.

Peter told us to copy Jesus who didn’t lie to save himself from the cruelties of the Romans (1 Peter 2:21-23) even though he had the magical power to make it likely for his lies to be believed and do no harm. Jesus did no need to suffer and die on the cross at all which accentuates his disapproval of lying for good reasons further.

The Old Testament did not drop down from Heaven. It started off with five books and gradually evolved over centuries as more books were added and new revisions made. The first time the Bible condemns lies in general is to be found at Leviticus 19:11. Here it is, “You shall not … lie to one another”.  The Bible writings up to then do not undermine it. This means that the ban has to be taken literally and absolutely. There was no space left for claiming that some rules are obvious exceptions. God’s law is frequently absurd to our minds (1 Corinthians 1,2). It is not true what some crafty Christians say, that God approves of the lies or evasive half-truths told in Exodus 1:15 or 1 Samuel 16:2. There is no approval for lying given in either instance.

The Bible is clear that God never confuses anyone (1 Corinthians 14:33) and cannot lie (Titus 1:2). Paul asserts that the divine promises are sure so he cannot lie even to set up something of the greatest good.

The Bible claims to be the revelation of an honest God. This in itself is a prohibition against lying for if God can ever approve of it then we cannot rely on his word. He could be tricking us for one of his mysterious plans.

Lying is condemned because it is deception which proves that if it is indeed immoral then hiding or disguising or letting a person err is bad. It is a sign-language lie. It is your duty to pop a woman’s balloon if her husband is regarded by her as faithful when he is not. It is your duty to emerge from the shadows that hide you when a killer is looking for you to destroy you.

The Christian view of the texts that say God lied or did what would be sinful is as follows:
 
The Old Testament seems to be sure that God will tell lies (Ezekiel 14:7). God is the primary cause of all things for he is the creator. When I sin he is the primary cause of that sin for he makes all things exist and I am the secondary cause. But that does not mean he sins or that it is his fault – it depends on whether he has a good reason or not and we know he always has a good reason. When the Old Testament says that God lies or does evil it just means that God caused these things to happen not that he really did them or wanted them. Occasionally, the same thing happens in the New Testament where God is said to send upon some people a weakness to make them believe in rubbish (Romans 1:28; 2 Thessalonians 2:11). In 1 Samuel 16:2, Samuel is told by God to tell King Saul that he is going away to sacrifice a heifer to God when he is going to pick a new king. There was no lie in this. He just didn’t tell everything. Yet this verse is twisted by some who want it to sanction the use of an evasive reply that is meant to mislead. It isn’t.
 
The problem is the Bible never says it means this when it says God lies or sanctions sin. The extreme nastiness of the book would make it extremely improbable that it did. The book is perfectly capable of teaching that man should not lie but God can if he wants to.

Only once does God lie in the Bible in such a way that nobody can deny. He told Abraham that he wanted him to slaughter his son Isaac though he didn’t (Genesis 22). Believers ignore this for it contradicts the rest of the Bible which certainly looks down on lies that are not told for a serious reason. Never does the Bible admit that God lied so this is more a slip than anything else. You have to think a second before you can see that a lie was told and that is how God is accused of lying here. It is an accident.

A book that has a lying God in it that it claims for its author is not worth considering. To sacrifice all for what may be fiction is fanaticism. It is unreasonable.

The Bible expects us to die rather than to lie and then attributes lies to God. Its boast that God is never untruthful adds to its unreasonable ways. Even if lying is invariably immoral for some reason it is still fanatical for the Bible to forbid it simply because its opposition is down to the wrong reason: God. God is just a figment of blind faith.