Half-Truths, Total Lies, and the True Truth

In the face of cultural power constantly trying to persuade us, Christians must believe the whole truth.

Those who hold to historic, biblical Christian doctrine and ethics find ourselves increasingly marginalized in our culture. We’re increasingly at the mercy of cultural power that does not believe what we believe. This cultural power can be coercive (overtly forcing our hand), but it is more often persuasive (subtly trying to change our minds). This persuasive power of our culture is the most effective kind, tempting us to believe things that ring true in our cultural story.

Cultural power as both coercive and persuasive shows up in Scripture, for example, when the royal spokesman for the Assyrian empire shouted to the people of Israel (2 Kings 18). Assyria had already toppled Israel’s northern kingdom capitaled in Samaria, and now Jerusalem was under siege.

“Don’t listen to Hezekiah, for this is what the king of Assyria says: ‘Make peace with me and surrender to me. Then each of you may eat from his own vine and his own fig tree, and each may drink water from his own cistern until I come and take you away to a land like your own land—a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey—so that you may live and not die. But don’t listen to Hezekiah when he misleads you, saying, “The LORD will rescue us.” Has any of the gods of the nations ever rescued his land from the power of the king of Assyria? ’” (2 Kings 18:31-33)

This speech is an attempt to coerce, because the enemy’s army stands at the gates, but it also aims to persuade, sounding tones of eschatological and messianic promises from Yahweh himself. The promise of one’s “own vine and fig tree and cistern” echoes backward in the book of the Kings and forward to the voices of the prophets. In the most prosperous period in the history of the people of God, under Solomon, this was the story:

Throughout Solomon’s reign, Judah and Israel lived in safety from Dan to Beer-sheba, each person under his own vine and his own fig tree. (1 Kings 4:25)

Material prosperity and property bubble up in Israel, and the Assyrian king’s persuasive aim was this: “You can go back to the good old days.” The Assyrian king tries to substitute himself for Yahweh and Yahweh’s Messiah here, turning the faith of the people away from the word of the Lord. As the Assyrian voice has said earlier in the text: “Do you think that mere words are strategy and strength for war?” (2 Kings 18:20). The answer is, “Yes, when they are the words of Yahweh, the triune God.”

The culture aims to coerce but it also tries to persuade us away from the word of the Lord, in ways that are half-true and so seemingly believable. It can use themes in ways that rhyme with holy writ, but are even more dangerous for any close resemblance, as I’ve mentioned before. Half a truth is a full-throated lie, and we can be tempted by these tones.

Half-Truths, Fully False

We are tempted with the mantra of individualism, “It’s time for me.” We’re taught that self-care is the most important thing we can do. Individualism rings half-true, because God hand-makes every individual in his own image, with intrinsic dignity and incalculable value. But if we total the half-truth of individualism, we find that it becomes fully false.

We are tempted with the mantra of materialism, “It’s time for now.” YOLO! they say: you only live once. All we have is the present. Materialism rings half-true, because the days are evil and the present matters to God and to each of us. Stuff is real and it matters, because God made it and gave it. But if we total the half-truth of materialism, we find that it becomes fully false.

We are tempted with the mantra of consumerism, “It’s time to buy.” We are the objects of endless marketing campaigns, trying to persuade us to purchase things and experiences. Consumerism rings half-true, because we do need to consume if we want to live. Every unconscious fleeting breath testifies that we consume the created world as God intended. But if we total the half-truth of consumerism, we find that it becomes fully false.

We are tempted with the mantra of politicalism, “It’s time to vote.” The talking heads, both liberal and conservative, tell us, “Everything rests on this election.” Politicalism rings half-true, because political engagement can be positively good as an act of obedience to the Lord as we give Caesar what Caesar is due. This can take conservative or liberal forms. For example, in the ever-present tensions around race and the ethics of the sexual revolution, we hear the left wanting us to conflate racial justice and LGBT+ issues, while the right wants us to ignore racial injustice while promising sexual traditionalism or at least religious liberty. We hear one side that rhymes with the truth, and we can be persuaded to buy the whole bag. But if we total the half-truths of politicism, we find that they become fully false.

We are tempted with the mantra of family-ism, “It’s time for us.” Nothing is more important than family. Blood is thicker than water. Focus on your family, because it’s what really matters. Family-ism rings half-true, because God created the family as the first institution of creation and someone who doesn’t provide for their own household is worse than an unbeliever. But if we total the half-truth of family-ism, we find that it becomes fully false.

Common Sense Slogans

At various times and in various ways the people of God have been persuaded by these sorts mantras as they have taken the form of sorts of “common sense” slogans. For example, hundreds of years after Hezekiah’s confrontation Assyrian siege-works, we find Darius reigning as the king of Persia. The people of God should know by this point that Yahweh is the King of the universe. Egypt, Assyria, Babylon have all fallen, yet Yahweh still reigns. After Yahweh had returned his people to the land, they had one job given to them: rebuild the temple. The rebuilding, though, had fizzled, a failure the people justified with a catchy, common sense slogan that had bubbled into the storyline. “The time has not yet come” (Haggai 2:1). In Hebrew the slogan rings and rhymes, making it stickier and more persuasive: “Lo et bo.” If someone asked, “Why is the temple just an unfinished construction site? Why aren’t we trying to rebuild it?” The answer was, “Lo et bo.”  It’s not time yet. In the Greek translation of the Old Testament (called the Septuagint) the word for time is the word kairos. This word does not denote chronological time, but an appointed time or season. They were saying, “It’s not the right season.”

All sorts of the most persuasive slogans and excuses ring and sing with a sort of “common sense” cultural resonance. We’re pre-bent to love these sorts of slogans. Usually a political candidate with the most sticky slogan wins the election. After all, every one of us can recite Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan to “Make America Great Again,” but most of us would be scratching our heads and using Google to remember Hillary Clinton’s. Slogans can capture a mood, a mantra, and a vision in one or a few words. The people in Judah were sloganeering with each other. Lo et bo. This slogan allowed them to convince each other that the unbuilt temple on the mountain above them wasn’t really a problem. It wasn’t a matter of their disobedience. It just wasn’t yet the right season to build. Lo et bo. It’s not time yet.

We can let this sort of sloganeering persuade us, too, and we believe to half-truths and full lies that sound like common sense. For example, parents often say, “As long as my kids are happy, then that’s enough.” This makes common sense, because it isn’t like a good parent wants their kids to be unhappy, yet it tells only half a truth. A vision of happy kids is half-true but that half that is a lie is deadly and dangerous.

The Whole Truth

Within earshot of the Assyrian siege-works and under the shadow ruins of the temple mount, the Lord thunders his whole truth in the mouth of the prophet. Hezekiah splays himself before the Lord in prayer, and the Lord raises up Isaiah to speak truth to Hezekiah about the limits of Assyrian power. The Lord startles rhe exiles who were using the Lord’s lumber to build their nice little houses with the voice of Haggai, and then Zechariah.

We need God’s truth in prophetic presence to wake us up from the hypnotic spells of the half-truths and slogans singing seemingly sweet songs into our souls. Just when we need them, God sends Isaiah or Haggai to tell us the truth, if we have ears to listen.

In my early 20s, I was working part-time, going to college full-time, but sometimes part-time if I dropped a class. My first, pony-tailed economics professor had turned me off from economics, so I was undeclared in my major. I was a Christian, but I was just sort of drifting, unsure and uninspired about life. I was believing lies about what mattered and what didn’t. Lo et bo, I might as well have been saying while the temple sat in ruins, or while the Assyrian scourge of apathy sieged my soul. Until the Lord spoke through his prophet, in this case my Dad, who loved me enough to sit me down and speak truth in love.

“Danny,” he said, “You have no passion in your life. You need to get a passion.”

He didn’t push me in any specific direction. He gave me the match, but didn’t force his vision for which candle I should light with it.

In that one conversation, I knew. Only one thing was worth lighting myself on fire for: God, and his purposes in the world. Things, from that conversation, changed forever for me. I began seeking God more fully, serving in ministry more intentionally, declaring a major and working hard in my university degree before attending seminary. I went to seminary, met a girl, fell in love, got married, graduated and have now been a pastor for over a decade.

Cultural half-truths and slogans aim to persuade us away from the words, ways, and works of God. As much as folks are rightly concerned about coercive cultural forces, I think such persuasive forces are more likely the place of the most deadly and dangerous cultural warfare.

May God continue to raise up his prophets to tell us the whole truth, and may he give us grace to listen.