Help, O Lord, for the godly are fast disappearing! The faithful have vanished from the earth! Neighbors lie to each other, speaking
with flattering lips and deceitful hearts. May the Lord cut off their
flattering lips and silence their boastful tongues. They say, “We will lie to our hearts’
content. Our lips are our own—who can
stop us?” The Lord replies,
“I have seen violence done to the helpless, and I have heard the groans of the
poor. Now I will rise up to rescue them,
as they have longed for me to do.” The Lord’s
promises are pure, like silver refined in a furnace, purified seven times over.
Therefore, Lord, we know
you will protect the oppressed, preserving them forever from this lying
generation, even though the wicked strut about, and evil is praised
throughout the land. Psalm 12:1-8
It's impossible to come to a conclusion that truth is hallowed in 21st
century culture. Rather, we would be forced
to admit (if honest) that truth is seen as optional, if lying brings you the
resuts you’re after. More than half of
school children admit to cheating on tests; the key word being admit. It doesn’t help that some teachers are actually
promoting test dishonesty. In Florida a cheating
on tests scandal was recently uncovered, where teachers were rigging the tests
to make sure more of their students pass.
The motivation is that teachers get bonuses ($25-$50 per student) for
passing grades.[1] While this is certainly not the standard, it
shades public perception of the integrity of teachers holding their careers to
a higher ethical standard. But it does
give one pause to recall James Russell Lowell’s famous quote: Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever
on the throne. Evil, as the Psalmist put it, is
praised throughout the land.
There are plenty of examples of the prevaricating nature of our culture’s moral
turpitude. Election campaigns are
battlegrounds no longer for presenting the genuine character of the candidates; they
are all about pandering to the polls, and tickling ears. It isn’t about presenting clearly an agenda of how the county will
benefit from the course of action an aspiring office-holder will enact. Rather, it’s a matter of hiding the true
agenda, and how it will keep the candidate’s party in power, and line the pockets
of those who got the candidate elected.
And if it takes a small white lie (or a big whopper) to get there, well,
integrity is a little over-rated, and besides, the end will justify how we got
there.
The Psalmist clearly states God’s agenda for that kind of forked-tongue, snakiness:
The Lord replies,
“I have seen violence done to the helpless, and I have heard the groans of the
poor. Now I will rise up to rescue them,
as they have longed for me to do.”
For You Today
It isn’t going far
out on a limb to say that the only way our nation’s young will get it, that
truth is important, is if they see it in the generation that’s raising them,
even when it hurts. No, make that, especially when it hurts! That’s the time the truth will
really set you free.[2]
There
are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library. To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some
of these:
Walk with Integrity and Truth, Whole Truth, Nothing BUT
the Truth
[1] Images: via Pixabay.com Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
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