Liar, Liar

I'm listening to Pastor Brian (Cavalry Chapel of Costa Mesa) go through a series covering the Sermon on the Mount. Its very good and is archived here:

http://backtobasicsradio.com/dynamic/archive.cfm?seriesID=1

This series is helping to better realize the higher standard that we Christians are called to. I hope to come back to the Sermon on the Mount often, and this particular series now and then, to use as good measuring stick to compare my walk with the Lord against.

One that I listened to today was "Jesus On Integrity". Its great, go listen to it (after you listen to the first 13). But I wanted to comment on one thing that I heard in the middle of it.

Some Bible commentators apparently totally rip on Rahab for lying. She's wicked. She's a Canaanite. This was a horrible thing she did. And so on. All I could think as I heard that is WHAT?!

Even the answer here from the GotQuestions.org website is a bit harsh:

http://www.gotquestions.org/right-to-lie.html

It says that despite the favorable outcome of the lie, nowhere does God condone these lies and that the Bible nowhere praises the lies themselves.

I'm shocked that anyone would come down on Rahab for her actions and I'm even more shocked that the normally solid Got Questions site answers the way it does.

Some points from the talk to consider:

1) No Bible writer comes down on Rahab for her actions. We'll take their words over the Bible commentators, because they were the inspired ones!

2) Rahab is include in the "hall of faith" in Hebrews 11. Her faith in the one true and living God is what prompted her to lie to the wicked and save the Israelite spies. James also commends her in his book as well.

I came across an article that disagrees with me. Apparently according to this article, I'm a "smooth talker" by trying to convince you that the praise of her faith also included a praise of her lying:

http://www.journal33.org/lovenbr/html/lienot.htm

I respectfully disagree. Its pretty easy to write against someone's actions not being able to be in their shoes, but exactly how does anyone think she could have demonstrated her faith and help the spies out without lying in this instance? Telling the truth about where the spies where located would have done the opposite and demonstrated a lack of faith. She demonstrated her faith by risking her own neck to deceive the soldiers.

People can talk all they want about situations they have never been in and make judgment calls, but the fact of the matter is that Rahab was put in between two absolutes and a choice had to be made. There is always a right choice, and, in this instance, keeping God's people from getting murdered was the right choice and her action was not wrong.

So, yes, there are situations when it is right to lie, but they are a rarity. Problems arise when people start thinking that those situations happen every day, justifying lying in cases where one is not actually between two moral absolutes.

Biblically we are called to act and speak with integrity. Our "yes" should be "yes" and our "no" should be "no". We can be people of integrity without being so rigid that we actually insist that we should never, ever, lie to save another person's life, and that it is sin if we do. Really there is a big difference between saying "I deny Christ" to save yourself and saying "no I'm not hiding any innocent people here" to likely put yourself at greater risk and save someone else!

Grace and Peace