From “Growing in the character of a disciple”: Chapter 9 – What is ‘the love of the truth’ and why does truth matter so much to God?
We don’t often think in terms of a Christian hating anything. But there are actually some things that we have a duty to hate. One of those is falsehood. Most of us are far too laid back and casual about this. We might say that we regard falsehood and falseness as wrong. But many of us don’t feel very strongly about it. It doesn’t bother us very much and we don’t feel motivated to do anything about stopping it. But we should be bothered and it should concern us very strongly indeed. In fact, like the Psalmist, we should hate it.:
I hate and abhor falsehood,
Psalm 119:163 (RSV)
but I love thy law.
We are supposed to hate all falsehood, wherever we come across it. We are to hate lies, deviousness and manipulation. We are especially to hate the compromising and misrepresenting of God’s Word, the Bible and also dishonest preaching. But above all, we are to hate falsehood when we see it in ourselves.
All of us have hearts which lie. We even lie to ourselves. In fact, probably most of the lies we tell are told to ourselves. Therefore we are to hate all kinds of falsehood, deceit, evasiveness, insincerity, manipulation and hypocrisy. We need to confront it zealously, especially within ourselves, and to expose it all and root it out without compromise. And we must not be too easily satisfied that we have completed the job.
