Living the Truth or Living the Lie

If “We the People” are who we say we are now, then we ought to live up to the virtues of liberty, courage, integrity, and truth. The vice of lying does not belong to “a moral and religious people.” 

Like many Americans, I am a Christian and take my guidance from God as I understand Him.

When Jesus said this, one of the officials nearby slapped him in the face. “Is this the way you answer the high priest?” he demanded. “If I said something wrong,” Jesus replied, “testify as to what is wrong. But if I spoke the truth, why did you strike me?”  (John 18:22-23)

“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.
Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
“What is truth?” retorted Pilate. (John 18:37-38)

This essay is about truth and the American contemporary human condition, lying or being subjected to lies; of which many of us are well-versed, and yet unaware of truth buried in our history by centuries of revision. Half-truths also are empty cups; neither half-full nor half-empty. Or as God revealed to John in Revelation 3:15-16:

I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.

The concept of lying itself doesn’t require “mansplaining” from someone who identifies as male based on a biological truth. Recognizing lies and liars are way more complicated, since we rationalize away that character flaw in ourselves and our idols. 

And what idolatry has consumed much of our energy? Our love of money. God’s invitation of love for the participation in the creation of wealth goes unnoticed when we chase after an accumulation of material possessions, while overlooking the misrepresentation of real wealth in the form of fiat money, the consequences of consumption and spending only, the lack of capital investment, and the lack of spiritual well-being: wrongly assuming that science has proven we exist only in a materialistic world, with no supernatural dimensions.

Prayers of truth are necessary for for those living the lie and hiding from reality in their basement or presidential bunker. Some following content is unimaginably disturbing to the point of depravity and hellish evil; but just looking away, as many are inclined, will not stop the downward spiral into the abyss for our society. 

And yes, you can fill in the blanks with “your truth” and stop reading. Full stop! Or give truth a chance, given the chaos and disorder of life in America and the world, since John Lennon’s call for peace and his [imagine]ation and vision for the world didn’t do the trick.

Truth is an upstream, not a mainstream path today for most people. Truth is certainly the path necessary to achieve order in nature here on Earth. Nature can be random and dangerous, and yet our ordered path through periodic chaos to an eternal life after this one requires it. If culture does not ring true, neither will society or its political leadership.

“Politics is downstream from culture and not the other way around.” (Timothy S. Goeglein)

We witnessed our country reaching a milestone on July 4, 1976, two hundred years after the birth of our nation and the memorialized words in the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

It was also the year I graduated from college. I didn’t learn much as a graduate from a state college. Rather, my knowledge of truth was distilled over years from my private grade school and high school experience, Austrian School Economics, my father’s perspective, my working life after school, and a recent in-depth study motivated by my involvement with Convention of States, a life long immersion in Western civilization, and a on-going study of my Christian faith. 

Along the American timeline, there were many warnings — Biblical, economic, political, and societal going as far back as our Founding: from the advice of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, up to George Orwell’s 1984, CS Lewis’ many writings, economist Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, Paul Harvey’s once famous audio essay If I were the Devil, and countless other notable accomplishments of notable people.

From our independent beginning, unique in all of history because it recognized the dignity and sovereignty of the individual, Benjamin Franklin answered a woman inquiring about the nature of the new US government as he exited the Constitutional Convention of 1787. He said, “A republic, if you can keep it.” 

And John Adams added another important warning, “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Legacy media organizations and Big-Tech-Media algorithms silence these voices. There is an orchestrated effort to censor and cancel past and present people who question the “popular” narrative. Totalitarianism always starts with a verbal and educational attack on a free culture and market economy by those who want a culturally sterile command-and-control economy — something Karl Marx envisioned and the Soviets made a real living hell on Earth. 20th and 21st century history. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. 

The predominant promoted culture now wants you to believe that there is nothing wrong with the government and media propaganda advancing an agenda that is contrary to the good life we once knew. Instead our children are exposed to (1) critical race theory, (2) diversity based only on skin color, (3) perverse sexual behavior not appropriate for children or adults, and (4) an ideology of transsexual change at an age when reason is not yet developed. At the same time, our children are robbed of a standard of basic skills and knowledge necessary for becoming well-adjusted adults. Are we raising children as people able to meet the challenges of life and loss, while still reaching for success and excellence?

Children are told that they are fine just the way they are. No. Normally they are hungry to learn about themselves and the world around them. And even if it were the case that the mental condition of youth today is reasonable and they are fine the way they are; and even if we consider the imposed ideas that sex is fluid and the increase in youth suicide is due to a lack of access to sex transitioning for impressionable young minds; then why do some “adults” feel it necessary to impulsively and thoughtlessly mutilate the physical nature of biologically defined boys and girls if they are fine physically? Which condition is easily reversible as boys and girls mature, whereby doctors first do no harm?

Sadly, the agenda of dumbing-down society in both public and private education has been in operation for a good number of generations. There are currently generations of mature “adults” in chronological respect only. 

Troubling are the human weaknesses that were evident in the reaction to a manufactured fear brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. True, the virus was dangerous, but the dangers of the virus to mental and physical health were greatly compounded by an institutional impulse disproportionate to the viral threat. That threat could have been managed much better with lower death rates if government health agencies had stood-down and medical institutions had never evolved into the bureaucracies that intentionally provide sickness care and discourage prevention and good lifestyle choices.

And in all of this, where is God? He’s not in the public schools. He’s not in the universities. Our churches are apologetic in the face of this heretical “new age Gaia” culture. Our parochial schools tell parents that all views are presented with equal credence to our children. Many of our “healthcare” institutions are named after saints, but the business models of the administrators and regulatory burdens of big government outweigh the needs of patients and ignore the inherent healing properties of the human body, alternative noninvasive or less invasive therapies, and prayer. 

God is rarely mentioned in the media, other than pejoratively. Our government and big corporate institutions never invoke his name or guidance. Some have come to believe in themselves as gods or our idols, or simply not in the Author that created the universe, everyone, and everything in it.

Our godless virtual replacement culture, as proposed by Friedrich Nietzsche, will not fill the void our “experts” and “leaders” have adopted and forced upon their subjects in the name of “the greater good.”

The undercurrent of lies throughout time has dehumanized and desensitized society; accumulating lies to an overt cacophony of evil with the explosive growth of child sex trafficking. It is the absolute corruption of humanity, whereby absolute economic and political power corrupts absolutely.

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.” (Lord John Dalberg-Acton)

You, the reader, ought not turn a blind eye from our reality.  Even the famous, aware, and well-educated are affected profoundly by our society’s errant ways.

If you have read up to here and have stomached the unthinkable, take courage in knowing there are many organizations and like-minded people today living the truth, living the faith, and fighting against evil. Humility is a virtue. Meekness is quiet courage.  Human freedom is sacred.

“Duty is ours; results are God’s.” – John Quincy Adams