![\"what](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/541\/2021\/09\/demolition-beliefs-dishonesty-christian-lying-for-jesus.jpg\")
<\/a>Dishonesty: The Thunderbolt That Hit Me.<\/h2>\n
Years ago, when I was a wee Pentecostal<\/a> lass in the 1990s, I noticed that my husband Biff had left his Crisis Pregnancy Center (CPC) manual in our apartment while he was off volunteering at the fake clinic. Usually, he kept the manual with him. He told me it was top secret and had to be guarded carefully. But this evening, he left it behind. Who knows why?<\/p>\n I was supposed to be studying, but I was bored and hard up for reading material. When I saw the manual, I couldn\u2019t resist. It didn\u2019t even occur to me that anything in its pages might challenge any of my beliefs.<\/p>\n After all: how could such a thing even be possible? The CPC was completely compatible with my beliefs, or so I thought. It was a hard-right religious organization that opposed human rights while pretending to care enormously about women in rough situations.<\/p>\n So I read the manual<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n When I opened it to the first page, I was a firm, faithful, zealous forced-birther.<\/p>\n By the last page, I was a shambles, a wreck: tearful, shaken, mortified, horrified, humiliated. It was wall-to-wall lies, mangled Bible verses, and emotional manipulation. Even I could spot them, as new to the lying-for-Jesus game as I was.<\/p>\n One thing kept running through my mind:<\/strong><\/p>\n Nothing true needs lies to prop itself up.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Soon after realizing that the entire forced-birther culture war was based upon lies, I realized that my entire religion was as well. And I deconverted from Christianity<\/span><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Back then, the standard advice for doubt for Christians was to go read the Bible. Study it. Allow its truths to flow through one\u2019s body, and thus strengthen one\u2019s faith.<\/p>\n Boy oh boy did I ever choose the wrong topic to study that fateful night:<\/p>\n Prayer<\/em><\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n I was already wobbling a bit because of a dramatic example<\/span><\/a> of prayer not bringing about a hoped-for miracle cure. So I hoped that by studying the Bible\u2019s assurances about prayer, I\u2019d be able to fortify myself enough to confront all the other stuff.<\/p>\n What actually happened:<\/p>\n I learned that the Bible makes all kinds of promises about prayer. Those promises are clear, emphatic, and completely testable. And prayer just doesn\u2019t work like that in reality. Thus, the Bible cannot be trusted about prayer.<\/strong><\/p>\n Hmm,<\/strong><\/em> I thought,<\/strong> what else can I not trust the Bible about?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n While I studied, I couldn\u2019t help but think about other examples of Christian dishonesty:<\/p>\n I\u2019m not even counting all the self-deception involved in the religion, just dishonesty toward other people. But there\u2019s a lot of that too. And I\u2019d seen all this stuff off and on, but had managed to compartmentalize it away<\/span><\/a> \u2014 to hand-wave it as just a few bad apples<\/span><\/a>. I didn\u2019t allow myself to see just how widespread dishonesty is.<\/p>\n Dishonesty is not only built into Christianity from the start, but it utterly permeates the religion. I discovered to my detriment that the more fervent and zealous the group, the more dishonest its members must be \u2014 to themselves and others \u2014 to maintain that facade.<\/p>\n It dizzied me, back then, just to imagine all these people in all these churches just lying to each other nonstop, and everyone convinced that everyone else was telling the truth.<\/strong><\/p>\n And what makes this situation so bizarre is that Christians universally imagine that their god values truth and honesty while condemning lies and dishonesty<\/em>.<\/p>\n From Got Questions<\/em><\/span><\/a>, we see this:<\/p>\n Honesty as a character quality is a sign of the Spirit\u2019s work in a person\u2019s soul. God cannot lie (Hebrews 6:18); therefore, His presence in a person gives rise to truthfulness. God\u2019s people are honest.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n A Church of Christ website<\/span><\/a> tells us:<\/p>\n If you lie, steal, cheat you damage your spirit and relationship with God and others. Being honest will enhance future opportunities and your ability to be guided by the Holy Spirit. Be honest everywhere, choose not to cheat in anyway.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Learn Religions<\/em><\/span><\/a> agrees:<\/p>\n Christ said that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. If Christ is Truth, then it follows that lying is moving away from Christ. Being honest is about following in God\u2019s footsteps, for He cannot lie. [citation needed]<\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n And\u00a0Bible Info<\/em><\/span><\/a> summarizes the topic in a way that should resonate greatly with Christians:<\/p>\n God values honesty most.\u00a0It\u2019s in the Bible<\/em>, Proverbs 21:3, TLB. \u201cGod is more pleased when we are just and fair than when we give Him gifts.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In fact, I found no Christians anywhere who thought that their god approved of dishonesty. They are united in condemning dishonesty and praising honesty. Heck, even the Christians who fantasize about being forced to lie to save lives don\u2019t entirely approve<\/span><\/a> of the idea.<\/p>\n And yet we find endless examples of dishonesty in Christianity, endless numbers of Christians who think nothing of spreading dishonesty<\/span><\/a> and living in dishonesty<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Every religion out there likes to think that its central ideas are supported by real-world evidence. It doesn\u2019t matter if it contains one god, no gods, or many thousands of gods and whatnot.<\/p>\n I know of very few religions that abstain entirely from making\u00a0any<\/em> claims about what their ideology can do in the real world. The smart ones keep to claims that can be easily supported.<\/p>\n But there are plenty of religions whose leaders aren\u2019t so smart. They make tons of claims about their ideology.<\/p>\n Christianity just happens to be one of the religions whose leaders make oodles of claims<\/span><\/a>. They make claims about their earliest history, their founder, their cosmology, what their ideology can do for followers, and what\u2019ll happen to those who accept or reject that ideology (in this world and an imaginary one that they claim people enter after death)<\/p>\n And, of course, they lie about what groups adopting their ideology are like and how they operate<\/span><\/a> versus groups that reject it<\/span><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n When I first deconverted, the fact that Christianity contains so much dishonesty bothered me enormously.<\/p>\n If Christians were simply honest about having no\u00a0<\/em>supporting evidence for their claims, I\u2019d probably cut them a lot more slack. As I said, no religion has that kind of evidence. And I\u2019ve met a lot of believers from other religions who were blissfully unconcerned about their beliefs being totes for realsies true.<\/p>\n Years later, Christians\u2019 dishonesty still bothers me. Of course. But I\u2019ve come to realize that it springs from a very pragmatic source.<\/p>\n Christians regard true claims as a stepping-stone to power over others. After all, a lot of their claims come with threats against those who reject their control-grabs, and their lies get told with an eye toward gaining power in their groups (or in general society). Without the prod of Hell<\/span><\/a> or goad of Heaven<\/span><\/a>, without their false promises of rebirth<\/span><\/a> and security<\/span><\/a>, they\u2019d make a lot fewer sales (and their retention rate would look even worse).<\/p>\n But they can\u2019t make true claims.<\/em> They lack the evidence needed to support their claims in an honest way.<\/p>\n So they just make up whatever they need.<\/p>\n What a religion\u2019s believers do with\u00a0having no evidence<\/em> matters more than them just not having evidence. Their choice about how to handle their lack of evidence speaks to their quality as a group and to the validity of their ideology. <\/strong><\/p>\n Christians as a whole, unfortunately, have chosen the pious fraud<\/span><\/a> route.<\/strong><\/p>\n NEXT UP:<\/strong> Many pious frauds insist that the ends justify the means. Tomorrow, we\u2019ll examine why that\u2019s a bad rationalization for dishonesty. See you then! <3<\/p>\n Come join us on\u00a0Facebook<\/u><\/a>,\u00a0Tumblr<\/u><\/a>,\u00a0and\u00a0Twitter<\/u><\/a>! <\/em> (Also\u00a0Instagram<\/u><\/a>, where I mostly post cat pictures, and Pinterest<\/u><\/a>, where I sometimes post vintage recipes from my mom\u2019s old recipe box.)<\/em> Also please check out our Graceful Atheist podcast interview<\/u><\/a>!\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n If\u00a0you like what you see, I gratefully welcome your support. <\/em> Please consider becoming one of my monthly patrons via\u00a0Patreon with Roll to Disbelieve<\/u><\/a>\u00a0for as little as $1\/month! <\/em><\/p>\n My\u00a0PayPal is captain_cassidy@yahoo.com<\/u><\/a>\u00a0(that\u2019s an underscore in there) for one-time tips. You can also support this blog at no extra cost to yourself by beginning your Amazon shopping trips with\u00a0my affiliate link<\/u><\/a>. And, of course, please like and share my posts on social media! <\/em><\/p>\n This blog exists because of readers\u2019 support! I appreciate every single bit of it. Thank you. <3<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Christians’ dishonesty around their lack of evidence matters way more than that lack of evidence itself. Today, let me show you why.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2237,"featured_media":48298,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4309,4842,7,8,11,12],"tags":[5695,2363,397,2762,538,6914,657,2596,861,1108],"class_list":["post-48287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christianitys-decline","category-current-events","category-guides","category-hypocrisy-2","category-religion-2","category-the-games-we-play","tag-audio-post-patreon","tag-biography","tag-evidence","tag-friendship-evangelism","tag-hypocrisy","tag-josephus-1st-century-jewish-historian","tag-lying-for-jesus","tag-post-truth-culture","tag-proof-yes-proof","tag-truth"],"yoast_head":"\nDishonesty is Built Into Christianity From the Ground Up.<\/h2>\n
Dishonesty: Rampant in Christianity.<\/h2>\n
\n
A God of Love and Truth.<\/h2>\n
Christianity: Once Again, Not Unique or Special.<\/h2>\n
Dishonesty Matters More Than Having No Evidence.<\/h2>\n
\nPlease Support What I Do!<\/em><\/h3>\n