4. If God is not a liar, then why does God lie?

Summary:

•	Religious scriptures declare that God detests lying and cannot lie, but the Holy Bible contains stories in which God appears to lie.  There are four possibilities: (1) God does not exist; (2) God exists and never lies, but means the Bible is false; (3) God exists and does lie; or (4) God exists and never lies, but the Bible must be interpreted differently. 

•	Storytelling shows that a lie within a story does not make either the author or an actor a liar; the lie serves the story’s purpose.

•	Many religions teach that life is a kind of Divine play, making the material Universe a temporary illusion that gives us the freedom to make choices as individuals. 

•	Lies fall into two categories: selfish lies, which harm others, and righteous lies, which are told for reasons of compassion to protect someone or comfort someone. 

•	Righteous lies can save lives, such as by protecting people from persecution, and righteous lies can comfort those whose minds can no longer process reality, such as people with dementia. 

•	God may tell righteous lies by withholding painful knowledge from us, allowing us to live in joy rather than dread, much like a placebo can genuinely improve a patient’s health through the power of belief. 

•	The Holy Bible’s Book of Job illustrates that a crisis of faith is often a crisis of understanding: Job suffered terribly without explanation, but ultimately he trusted that God’s reasons, although hidden, are good. 

•	If God could not tell even a righteous lie, then humans could perform some acts of love that God could not, but that would be absurd.

There are moments in life when God meets you where you are in your life, because God finds you.  There are other moments when God seems to be hidden, an illusion, non-existent.  That is when God wants you to find God.  Perhaps you were expecting a particular outcome, believing that God would make it happen—but the opposite happened.  You may feel deceived, betrayed, even lied to.  A lie, once exposed, can kill trust and destroy a person’s faith.

“Was I living a lie?  Is the existence of God a lie?  If God exists, why did God lie to me?”

You are not the first person to suffer a crisis of faith.

In the Holy Bible, Leviticus 19:11 proclaims: “Do not steal.  Do not lie.  Do not deceive one another.”  The book of Proverbs 6:17-19 says that God detests seven traits:

In the Christian New Testament, the Epistle to Titus 1:2 asserts that God “cannot lie.”  The Epistle to the Hebrews 6:18 declares that “it is impossible for God to lie.”  And according to the Gospel of John 8:44, Jesus called the devil a liar and also “the father of lies.”  For such reasons, there are people who believe that any lie is a sin. 

Yet there are passages in the Holy Bible that suggest that God does lie.  If the Bible is interpreted literally, then one of its most famous stories is centered on a lie.  It is the story of the forbidden fruit and the consequences of eating it.  (Genesis 2:15-24.)  God warned the first human couple, Adam and Eve, of what would happen if they disobeyed:

God said death would occur “on the day that you eat from it.”  The original Hebrew text uses the word בְּי֛וֹם —which means “on the day.”  It is not symbolic.  It is not a month, not a year, not a century.  It is an actual day, a measure of time our clocks would subdivide into 24 hours.

Later in the story, a talking serpent tells Eve that God lied.  To tempt her, the serpent says that eating the fruit would give the person a knowledge of good and evil and therefore the person would become like God.  So, Eve eats some of the fruit and so does Adam.  God’s warning never said the result would cause their banishment from the Garden of Eden and—after more than 900 years—only then they would experience physical death. 

Who lied?  If the story is interpreted literally, the serpent is accurate.  God confirms this after the fruit is eaten, remarking that Adam “has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.”  (Genesis 3:22.)  And on the same day when Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they did not die, at least not physically.  Either God lied about the consequences or else God was not entirely clear. 

Elsewhere in the Bible, both First Kings 22:20-22 and Second Chronicles 18:19-21 tell the same story almost word for word.  In that story, ancient Israel is ruled by King Ahab, a very unpopular ruler who consults psychics called “prophets.”  God, angry with Ahab, wants to entice him into attacking a Syrian city where Ahab will be killed in battle.  God asks a heavenly court for suggestions on how to achieve this.  Eventually, a spiritual assistant offers this:

Morally and legally, if a boss orders an assistant to murder someone, then both the boss and the assistant are guilty of murder.  Likewise, if a boss orders an assistant to lie, then both the boss and the assistant are guilty of lying.

Is God a liar or not?  There are four possibilities:

• • God does not exist, and therefore the Bible is false.

• • God does exist and never lies, and therefore the Bible is false.

• • God does exist but also lies, and therefore the Bible is false.

• • God does exist and the Bible is not false, but the Bible must be interpreted differently.

If the fourth possibility is true, then how can we to interpret the Bible to reconcile that God lies but is not a liar?  A lie—a genuine lie—is deliberate.  God is deliberate in every action.  God never makes a mistake.  So, when is a genuine lie not a lie? 

A genuine lie is not a lie when an actor tells it in a play.  The lie is part of the play the actor is performing in.  The lie is a factor in the story, deepening the story, furthering it.  But while the lie may affect the story’s characters, the actors know that the lie is not real.  The actor telling the lie is not considered a liar.  The actor is portraying a character, fulfilling a role in the story.

Likewise, the author of a fictional story is not considered a liar.  A fictional story is not real.  A character in the story might be a liar, even multiple characters might be liars, but the author of the story is not considered a liar.

Storytelling is one of the oldest activities humans do.  Thousands of years before theaters existed, plays developed from religious rituals.  The oldest known play is the Abydos Passion Play, which was performed in ancient Egypt approximately 4,500 years ago.  According to Egypt’s ancient religion, one of its Gods, Osiris, taught humans how to farm.  Egyptian art depicts Osiris as a pharaoh, a king of Egypt.  But his brother, Set (also spelled Seth), murdered Osiris and cut his corpse into pieces.  A sister of Osiris was an Egyptian Goddess named Isis, and also his wife.  With the help of another sister, Nephthys, Isis collected the pieces of his corpse and bundled them together, creating the first mummy.  This devotion by Isis was rewarded because Osiris was magically restored to life.  The Abydos Passion Play was a portrayal of the death and resurrection of Osiris.  Whenever the play was performed, the pharaoh at that time may have participated in the performance.

Such plays are performed by adults.  The playful games of children include pretending to be adults.  In their minds, the adult roles they pretend to be are almost real.  So, when they pretend, are they lying?  No, they are acting.

Most people know what acting is and they know what lying is within the context of acting.  What many people do not know, according to many religions, is that everyone is currently acting in the grand play we call life.  In the words of the English playwright William Shakespeare, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.  They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts.” (As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7.)  There could be more truth in those words than Shakespeare himself may have known.

If most religions are essentially correct about this topic, then the biggest deception created by God is the entire material Universe.  The Universe is wondrous.  It should be marveled at, enjoyed, respected, and studied to better understand its nature.  Nevertheless, most religions and countless NDEs warn us that this Universe is not all there is.  The belief that it is, that there is nothing else, is an illusion encouraged by God—and by ourselves whenever we assume that anything non-material cannot exist. 

The lie that materialism is everything encourages us to live our lives believing that we are separate from God and separate from each other, allowing us to make choices as individuals, allowing you to think your own thoughts within the privacy of your own mind, and to behave selfishly if you choose to.  It is an opportunity on Earth for your spirit—for your intentions—to behave without a complete knowledge of all that God knows.  It is a lie that creates a type of freedom.

Lies can be sorted into two categories.  The first category are selfish lies.  Telling a selfish lie might help the liar for a period of time but the lie harms other people.  Selfish lies are so destructive that several of the Ten Commandments are ways of prohibiting selfish lies.  The First Commandment prohibits worshiping any “god” more than worshiping God Almighty; the Second Commandment prohibits creating an idol for worshiping.  If you violate either commandment, then you are lying to yourself—because you are denying the unconditional love that God represents and making priorities for your life that are spiritually destructive, such as worshiping money or power.  The Third Commandment prohibits abusing the name of God, which includes claiming that God is on your side when you tell a selfish lie.  The Seventh Commandment prohibits adultery, which typically includes telling selfish lies to a spouse and other people.  The Eighth Commandment prohibits stealing, which typically includes telling selfish lies to victims of theft.  The Ninth Commandment prohibits being a false witness, which is the most destructive of selfish lies—lying that an innocent person is guilty of wrongdoing.  The Fourth Commandment requires honoring the Sabbath day, the Fifth Commandment requires honoring your father and mother, the Sixth Commandment prohibits murder, and the Tenth Commandment prohibits coveting the property of another person.  These four commandments do not directly prohibit selfish lies, but telling selfish lies can lead to violating these commandments.

There is another category of lies: lies that are not selfish.  These are called righteous lies because there are times when a person who is trustworthy feels a moral need to lie. 

Imagine a situation in which an innocent person is hiding from oppressors who intend to harm that person—and you know where the person is hiding.  Perhaps the person is hiding in your own home.  The oppressors arrive and ask you where the person is.  If you answer accurately, they will go there and harm the person.  If you answer with silence to avoid telling a lie, they will suspect that you know something—and they will treat your silence as a reason to search.  But if you answer with a convincing lie, such is that you don’t know where the person is, or that you saw the person running past your home and you point in a false direction, then the oppressors might believe you and leave.  And the person in hiding is saved, at least for now. 

Millions of people have faced this choice: to either lie to protect someone in hiding or to reveal where the person is, knowing that the person will be harmed.  Oppressors justify their brutal actions by citing religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, politics, or an unfair law.  During the Second World War and the Holocaust against the Jews, many Jews hid in the homes of non-Jews who lied to Nazi policemen in search of Jews—because the Nazis intended to murder all Jews, and did murder six million.  That is the most famous example of righteous lying, but there are many others.  Escaped slaves have hidden in the homes of people who chose to help, including by lying.  Women have hidden other women and lied to protect them when the woman in hiding is endangered by a very violent man, perhaps by her own husband.  Children have been hidden by their mothers for these same reasons.  Would you lie to save a life? 

Many cultures have elevated this to a sacred principle.  Christian churches and Buddhist monasteries have long provided sanctuary to persecuted people.  In many Islamic societies, a request for sanctuary requires a person to shelter and defend any stranger who asks, even an enemy.  One of the easiest ways to protect someone is to lie.

It might be argued that if God wanted to save a persecuted person in hiding, God would never need to lie.  But within this same category of righteous lies are some other forms. 

There are people, perhaps including someone you love, whose brain physically cannot comprehend reality due to an injury, or dementia, or illness.  The brains of such people may not be healthy enough to accept reasonable explanations of ordinary events, and so they struggle to understand.  They struggle to remember ordinary things they once knew.  Medical treatments may not cure them.  They may imagine that sinister forces are persecuting them when, in fact, nobody is persecuting them.  Fear may dominate their thoughts: fear of death, failure, delusions, not understanding what they used to know. 

In comparison to the reality you know, their minds live in a different reality created by their limited perception and their diminished ability for reasoning.  They do not believe in the reality that you know.  They cannot comprehend it—and do not trust it.  Their mental health will not be restored by telling them what your reality is.  Instead, contradicting them can further harm their mental state and even their physical health, causing them to feel anger, frustration, panic, or severe confusion.  If you need to interact with them, especially if you love them, then you must communicate with them within their reality, not within your reality.  To persuade them to behave in ways that are healthy (ways they may have forgotten), then you must talk to them with kindness and respect while pretending that their reality is your reality.  This is not selfish lying.  This is a form of righteous lying known as “entering their reality.”

Now consider that perhaps God must enter your reality to interact with you.  No matter how normal you are, or how logical, or how much you believe in science and rationality, your perception of reality may not be as accurate as you assume. 

You are not separate from the Universe.  An almost infinite number of variables affect material reality, sometimes causing events we call natural disasters or personal tragedies.  You may not expect that the behaviors of other people will disrupt your life, but they can.  God respects free will, no matter how terrible the consequences.  Sometimes those consequences will challenge your perception of what is true and what is false.  And that experience can cause a crisis of faith.

Sometimes, to learn a very important lesson, a person must experience a very painful surprise.  Is God supposed to prevent that surprise?  Or reduce its effects?  Is God supposed to warn you that a surprise is coming?  If God did, the surprise would not be very surprising.  Until the surprise occurs, are you supposed to anticipate it and then wait, wait, wait, for the inevitable?  Nervous, worrying, panicking?  God may not want you to be nervous, worrying, or panicking.  Perhaps God wants you to spend that time in joy.  Therefore, God enters your perception of reality and tells you some righteous lies, at least for a while.  Those righteous lies are not a betrayal but a way of encouraging your happiness until the bad times arrive.  There is no need to create more bad times by worrying until then.  

In the medical profession, a placebo is a pill that has no medicine inside it.  A placebo is not a real drug, but its lack of medicine doesn’t mean that it has no power to help a patient.  Sometimes a physician will lie by offering a patient a placebo while telling the patient that the pill is a powerful drug that will improve the patient’s health.  The patient believes this and swallows the pill—and oftentimes the patient’s health does improve.  The pill did nothing physical, but the patient believed in the healing power of the supposed drug, which caused the patient’s mind and body to respond as if the drug were genuine.  A placebo does not have this wonderful result in every case, but sometimes it does and this reveals the power of a lie—not a selfish lie, but a righteous lie.  A placebo and the lie it depends upon is not called a righteous lie, but the purpose is much the same. 

The health benefits of a spiritual faith have been compared to placebo pills.  For the human body, feeling joy and contentment are definitely healthier than feeling depression and stress.  A spiritual faith encourages joy and contentment.  It can encourage a belief in miracles.  But what happens when the miracle you were hoping for, or expected, fails to happen?  Consider the unreliable results of a placebo: after swallowing the pill, a multitude of variables must combine in a particular way to produce the desired result, but this does not always happen.  If the desired result does not happen, who is at fault?  The placebo pill is not considered at fault, and not the physician, and not the patient.  A disappointing result does not mean that placebo pills never encourage good results, or that faith is never beneficial.  It means only that good results are not assured.  Not every righteous lie will result in a miracle. 

The ways of God, including when God tells righteous lies, could depend on a multitude of reasons, perhaps more reasons than any human can ever know.  A crisis of faith confronts you with at least two possible explanations: either God does not exist, or maybe the ways of God are not as simple as you assumed.

One of the most important stories in the Holy Bible is the Book of Job, for it asks questions about God that people still ask today.  Whether or not the story is historically accurate is not very important.  The story is about a man named Job (pronounced Joeb) who has a very strong faith in God.  In the beginning, Job is very prosperous: he has seven sons and three daughters, owns thousands of sheep and camels, hundreds of oxen and donkeys, and many servants.  Job has everything that he could ever want, but he is also an honest man, humble, religiously devout, and he thanks God for everything he has.  Job is a good person.

God rules a heavenly court and is very pleased with Job’s faith.  The devil is not convinced, however.  The devil tells God that Job is faithful only because God has given Job so many blessings.  Take away those blessings and then Job would curse God, the devil predicts.  God is certain that Job’s faith is solid, but God invites the devil to test Job.  So, the devil does.

Tragedies strike Job.  His thousands of sheep and the servants tending them are killed by a massive wildfire.  Violent gangs steal Job’s thousands of camels; the servants tending them are massacred.  More thieves steal Job’s hundreds of oxen and donkeys; the servants tending them are massacred.  And while Job’s sons and daughters were enjoying a feast at the house of Job’s oldest brother, the house suddenly collapses upon them, killing them all. 

All of these tragedies strike on the same day. 

In response, Job performs the rituals of mourning and says a prayer, including these words: “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.”  (Job 1:21.)  He does not accuse God of wrongdoing.

Job has lost his children and his wealth.  Now Job loses his health.  The devil afflicts him with painful sores all over his body, from the soles of his feet to the top of his head.  Despite the excruciating pain, Job keeps his faith.  His wife asks him why he still bothers to keep his integrity; she tells him to curse God and die.  Job treats her words as foolish, asking her, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”  (Job 2:10.)  He does not sin.

Job is humble.  He does wonder if God is punishing him for something that he no longer remembers.  Job asks God, “If I have sinned, what have I done to You?  You, who see everything we do?  Why have You made me Your target?  Have I become a burden to you?”  (Job 7:20.)

God is silent. 

Job’s physical pain continues unrelieved.  He still believes in the wisdom and power of God, but this knowledge no longer comforts him.  Instead, it confuses him.  What has he done wrong?  Where is God’s forgiveness?  Where is God?

God is silent. 

Job’s torment becomes overwhelming.  He curses the day he was born.  “I loathe my very life,” he declares.  “Therefore, I will give free rein to my complaint and speak out in the bitterness of my soul.”  (Job 10:1.)  He demands to know if God enjoys abusing him.  “Does it please You to oppress me?  To spurn the work of Your hands, while You smile on the plans of the wicked?”  (Job 10:3)

God does not answer. 

Job then complains that God abuses not only him, God abuses the whole world.  Job says of God, “He makes nations great, and destroys them.  He enlarges nations, and disperses them.  He deprives the leaders of the Earth of their reason.  He makes them wander in a trackless waste.  They grope in darkness with no light.  He makes them stagger like drunkards.”  (Job 12:23-25.)

Friends of Job try to comfort him, but they also urge him to repent, believing that his tragedies must be a form of Divine punishment.  Job cries out to God, “How many wrongs and sins have I committed?  Show me my offense and my sin.  Why do you hide Your face and consider me Your enemy?”  (Job 13:23-24.)

God remains silent.  

Job feels betrayed.  What has his faith gained him?  “Have I not wept for those in trouble?  Has not my soul grieved for the poor?  Yet, when I hoped for good, evil came; when I looked for light, then came darkness.  The churning inside me never stops; days of suffering confront me.”  (Job 30:25.)

And then God speaks.

The question God asks is actually an answer disguised as a question.  It encourages Job to think about the answer, not merely to hear the answer.  The question reveals that God has Divine plans—but one of God’s creations, Job, is talking like he knows what those plans are and is even criticizing them, when in fact he knows nothing about them. 

God then asks Job another question, a question which God could ask you:

No human was present when God created the world.  God wants Job to consider that.  Job cannot know all of the reasons why God created the world, cannot know every Divine consideration, every variable.  God knows everything.  Job knows very little.  Job knows that he is suffering; but despite what Job imagined earlier, God is not mocking Job’s suffering.  And God never tells Job to stop caring for others.  (If Job were to stop caring, his faith would not be pure.)  But whatever Job knows is only a tiny part of the world that God knows. 

God tells Job of many wondrous creatures who inhabit the world, and of many wondrous places, including in the depths of the seas.  God asks, how much does Job know about them?  Does Job know how to create them?  Does Job know how to keep the world functioning properly, everything from the largest thunderstorms to the births of the smallest birds?

Job is amazed by everything God says.  And Job is awed by the beauty of everything God reveals.  God does not reveal how everything fits into a Divine plan, but Job trusts God.  Job has received the answer that he desperately needed.  The answer is that his life and his experiences, the good and the bad, are all part of a Divine plan.  Not every reason is obvious.  Not all suffering is punishment.

Readers of this Biblical story know that Job was tormented by the devil in an attempt to prove that God is mistaken about Job’s faith.  God does not reveal this reason to Job, and perhaps additional reasons exist that the story never reveals.  Why did God create the devil?  Why did the devil assume that God, who knows everything, was mistaken about the faith of Job?  Was God testing Job, or was God teaching the devil?  Or both?  Or neither?  And why?  Although these questions are never asked, the story does answer them: God knows the reasons why because God knows everything.  You do not know the reasons why because you are not God.

Throughout the story, Job keeps his faith and never curses God, despite suffering so many tragedies.  Job knows that he is only a man, knows that he cannot know everything, knows that God is the Almighty Lord of all.  But when someone becomes desperate, as Job became, then that person’s faith can become desperate for some answers.  Anyone who has ever been angry with God can understand the anguish and bewilderment that Job expressed.

The Book of Job teaches that a crisis of faith is a lack of understanding.  When God’s reasons are hidden, feelings of desperation can combine with confusion, disappointment, fear, anger, betrayal.  Love and logic feel violated.  Never assume, however, that you know the perspective of God and know everything that God knows.  The knowledge that God’s ways and reasons are mysterious may not give you much comfort, especially during a crisis of faith, but this is still an explanation.  So, during the worst times of your experience, set aside your thoughts about theology or philosophy, at least temporarily, because what you need is to love others and to receive loving support from others.  Later, whenever you feel ready to reconsider your faith, again, then decide then.  You have the free will to choose and to change your mind. 

Job never accuses God of lying, but Job does believe that God is deceptive.  So deceptive that God destroys nations after making them great.  So deceptive that God deprives leaders of their reason, leaving them to “grope in darkness with no light.”  All of this without any explanation from God.

From our human perspective, a righteous lie is still a lie.  There is also a temptation to assume that a selfish lie can be transformed into a righteous lie, especially when somebody else can benefit, not only the liar.  But the more a person lies, the easier lying becomes—and that means a person’s moral conscience can gradually rot away.  Telling a righteous lie can be morally dangerous, and even more dangerous when it becomes a habit.  God knows the difference between a selfish lie and a righteous lie, and so God is never corrupted.  When people try to discern the difference, they can deceive themselves.

Nevertheless, a righteous lie can help explain why the ways of God sometimes look inconsistent.  And if life is a grand play authored by God, then God can lie without being a liar.  Arguments that God cannot tell a lie or would never tell one, not even a righteous lie, are usually accompanied by reminders that God is Holy, God is Truth, and God is Love.  Still, a righteous lie can save a life, particularly the life of an innocent person fleeing persecution.  A righteous lie can give comfort to an innocent person suffering a mental illness when the person’s brain cannot comprehend the truth. 

If people can tell righteous lies but God cannot, then people could perform some acts of love that God cannot.  That would mean that God is limited, even in matters of love.  But that is absurd.