A jeremiad

John Mark Reynolds:

.... A man who lived in worse times and who loved a messed up people said:

“Beware of your friends;
do not trust anyone in your clan.
For every one of them is a deceiver,
and every friend a slanderer.
Friend deceives friend,
and no one speaks the truth.
They have taught their tongues to lie;
they weary themselves with sinning.
You live in the midst of deception;
in their deceit they refuse to acknowledge me,”
declares the Lord.

Our friends are betraying us and members of our Christian family are telling us lies. We do not speak the truth and we slander those who try to tell us the truth. We live in the middle of deception and we like the lies, because they tell us what we wish to hear.

Here are some lies we pay to be told:

• Our problems are the fault of some other person.
• Our sins are not as serious as the sins of our neighbor, that wicked “other guy.”
• We don’t have to worry about sin, because God will not judge us if we just do not judge anyone else.
• We have raised up false intellectuals, apologists who lie, and a Christian media complex that sells us product we want and not what we need.

How do false friends lie to us? .... [more]