Lie To Me*

Lie To Me* is Fox’s brand new hit drama, now in it’s second season. The show is centered around Dr. Cal Lightman, a world-reknown face-reading expert. His expertise is reading “microexpressions,” the near instantaneous, involuntary expressions or gestures shown by a human when they are trying to conceal an emotion. They are the slight changes in the face that reflect in a split instant, what people are truly feeling inside. Microexpressions are the same whether you are in America, Africa, Germany, or Iraq. It is a universal truth test. The entire premise of the show is built around the idea that absolute truth is most accurately revealed from the inside out.

The typical human lies at least three times every ten minutes. I don’t mean the flat out, intentional lies. I mean all the tiny ones. What do we lie about? Usually, we lie about what is really going on inside of us. We would rather have the appearance of being ok than being real and vulnerable to people and to God.

I wish that at the moment I accepted Christ into my life and my sins were forgiven, that all of my flaws and weaknesses went away too. But they didn’t. The rest of my life is now a journey to become more like Christ. I have now been in this thing for 25+ years, and I can honestly say, that I haven’t grown 25 years in Christ. Many times, I repeat the same months over and over again.

The sad part is, for many people, this is where the lie comes in. We think that the amount of years we have been saved equals the amount of maturity we have in Christ. And this is simply not true.

The people of Judah are like those who remove landmarks…The people of Ephraim will also be crushed because of My judgment. Therefore, I will be to Ephraim like a moth and to Judah, like rottenness.
Hosea 5:10-12

God was fed up with Isreal when He said this to Hosea. But what does this mean? In order to really get this verse, some background is necessary.

Landmarks in the Old Testament served two purposes. They served as tokens of remembrance of something that God did in the past. Our nation has monuments. Same idea. Remember the past.

Landmarks also served as boundaries. Much like the Rio Grande is a boundary between the United States and Mexico, Old Testament landmarks were geographical boundaries. They were also moral boundaries. They were standards set for the people by which they were to live their life.

So what does that mean for us? As a Christian, I can look back on a time when God did something very real in my life. He came at an opportune time, He provided when there was no provision, etc. I can look at definite moments where God stepped in to my life. Those are my “landmarks.”

Along with that, I can also see times where God was trying to get my attention about an area in my life, and I was either too stubborn to change, or didn’t think it was THAT big of a deal. There were times when I let a little attitude slip past. I let a little negativity slip by unopposed. I let a thought stay a little too long in my mind. Everyone does it. It’s these things, if left unchecked, that cause us to move the landmark. We move the boundary.

And it often looks something like this. As we get older, we might watch a movie we wouldn’t have watched a few years ago. We justify it because we’re older now, and we can “handle it.” Maybe we listen to that popular song, even thought we know we shouldn’t have. Maybe we get a little too close to that guy or girl. Maybe we let our eyes look a little too long at the girl that walks by. And so we move the boundary. Inch by inch, and nothing happens.

What usually happens is that we get to the boundary, and take a tiny step past it, waiting for the giant “DO NOT DO THIS” emotion to hit us so we can turn around. But there is no such emotion.

The rest of the verse talks about moths and rottenness. Both moths and rottenness are things that destroy silently from the inside. If left unchecked, you don’t tend to notice rottenness until the thing is fully rotten. The more we push this envelope with God, the more we are lying to Him. We think we are doing fine, when in reality, we are rotting from the inside. But the Father heart of God says, “Don’t Lie To Me.”