Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire...

"Liar, liar, pants on fire..." So a while back I got into a debate with a friend as to the ending of this little rhyme. Should it be, "...Nose is longer than a telephone wire..." which is what I thought, or "...dangling from a telephone wire..." I found out I was wrong. It's "...dangling from a telephone wire," which is a paraphrase of a verse of a poem written in 1810. But I like "...nose is longer than a telephone wire," because it makes me think of Pinocchio.

Pinocchio was a wooden puppet, who was given life. There was one catch, his nose would grow every time he lied, and when he told the truth, it would shrink. Throughout his adventure, his nose grew and shrunk many times. Eventually he learned to be brave, TRUTHFUL, unselfish, and able to tell right and wrong, which turned him into a real boy.

Lying, is the telling of lies, or untruthfulness; falsehood. This is no where near who or what God is about. He is truth. He can't have any falsehood anywhere around Him. Psalm 31:5, and Isaiah 65:16 call Him the "God of Truth." And it seems like every third phrase out of Jesus' mouth is, "I tell you the truth...." Jesus even tells us that we must worship God in "Spirit and in truth (John 4:23)".

Lying is the easy way out. When we lie its because we don't think we can use truth in that situation. We are thinking about ourselves, and what's going to happen to us. We don't trust that the truth will be good enough. Even when we tell "little white lies" to protect someone feelings, we're doing it because we think they can't handle the truth. We are being false, and this is not what God wants.

Lying is yet another symptom of a selfish heart. All Jr. High students are welcome to join us tomorrow night as we look at a time when Abraham lied (yea he really did!), and continue looking at why lying is a symptom of a selfish heart.