Lying in Christianity

To find the Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies accus­ing Mus­lims of exem­pli­fy­ing lying is total­ly amus­ing, to say the least, as the doc­trine of taqiyyah is exclu­sive­ly a Shi’ite doc­trine which is held onto by a mere 8% — 10% out of the total 1.3 bil­lion Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion around the world, the major­i­ty of whom are over­whelm­ing­ly Sunni. 

A refu­ta­tion of the doc­trine of taqiyyah from the Sun­ni per­spec­tive is to be not­ed here.

More­over, there is ample evi­dence from the hadith tra­di­tions which invari­ably negates the mis­sion­ary claims that Islam per­mits lying.The Prophet Muham­mad is quot­ed to have said : ​“Let he who tru­ly believes in Allah and the Last Day speak good or be silent.” (Sahih al-Bukhari). More­over, he has specif­i­cal­ly cursed the per­son who lies to make peo­ple laugh, he said : ​“Woe be on one who speaks and lies in order to make peo­ple laugh, woe be on him.” (Abu Dawud). See also the tra­di­tions in Abu Dawud (5004)/Mus­nad Ahmad and Sahih al-Bukhari (vol. 8, no 118). All the mis­sion­ar­ies can do to include ortho­dox Mus­lims in their alle­ga­tions is their ten­den­cy to quote from The Reliance of the Trav­el­er (Umdat as-Salik), an unof­fi­cial and sub-stan­dard fiqh man­u­al, specif­i­cal­ly geared towards Egypt­ian soci­ety of Sufi per­sua­sion and trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish by an extrem­ist het­ero­dox Sufi. 

Sayyid Sabiq’s Fiqh as-Sun­nah is the author­i­ta­tive ortho­dox source cov­er­ing all four Sun­ni schools of thought and this work is avail­able online.There is no ammu­ni­tion for the bank­rupt mis­sion­ar­ies in such ortho­dox sources, so it is no won­der that they resort to het­ero­dox material.

Nev­er­the­less, we have decid­ed to play their game, and would like to ask : ​“What about lying in Chris­tian­i­ty?”

Paul of Tar­sus Jus­ti­fies Lying For Christ

The answer : it was Paul, the self-con­fessed ​“apos­tle” from Tar­sus, who was the first per­son to ratio­nalise his actions by hold­ing that there was no link between the peri­od in which Jesus^(P) had lived and the peri­od in which he him­self now lived. Times were chang­ing and con­di­tions that pre­vailed were such that the ethics of Jesus^(P) was out of date and could no longer be applied. It was with such a view that Paul took stock of the sit­u­a­tion which exist­ed then and taught what the Gen­tiles seem to require him to believe :

“All things are law­ful unto me, but I will not be brought under the pow­er of any.” (1 Corinthi­ans 6:12)

Dur­ing the min­istry of Jesus^(P), Saul (Paul) was a ded­i­cat­ed mem­ber of a pow­er­ful, exclu­sive Jew­ish sect called Phar­isees (Acts 26:5). Their pre­ten­sions to sanc­ti­ty had labeled them as hypocrites. 

When these over­bear­ing vain-glo­ri­ous Jews con­front­ed Jesus^(P), he called them :

“You are of your father the dev­il, and the lusts of your father you will do. He was a mur­der­er from the begin­ning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie he speaketh of his own : for he is a liar and the father of it.” (John 8:44)

Saul, a zeal­ous per­se­cu­tor of the devot­ed dis­ci­ples of Christ, became the first Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary and an apos­tle to the Gen­tiles after con­vert­ing him­self to Chris­tian­i­ty by a ​“vision”, which he claims he had, while on the road to Dam­as­cus. The mis­sion­ary changed his name from Saul to Paul and became the biggest con­trib­u­tor to the Books of the New Testament. 

From the above verse, Jesus^(P) like many of his pre­de­ces­sors con­demned lying, deceit and hypocrisy. Lying is con­demned sev­er­al times through­out the Bible, and deceit by its own nature is sin­ful and can only lead to haz­ardous consequences. 

What does Peter say in regards to guileThe Greek word is ​“dolos”, which means ​“bait” or ​“snare”, ​“deceit is ren­dered” (W.E. Vine, Vine’s Expos­i­to­ry Dic­tio­nary of Old & New Tes­ta­ment Words, Thomas Nel­son Pub­lish­ers (1997), under the word ​‘GUILE’, p. 515). See also Strong’s #1388 which defines dolos as ​“craft, deceit, guile, sub­til­i­ty” (p. 34)?

“For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that speak no guile.” (1 Peter 3:12)

The verse speaks for itself. One of the fac­tors that hin­der man’s suc­cess in this world and eter­nal life in the here­after, is the use of guile. 

But on his own admit­tance, what does Paul say ?

“But be it so, I did not bur­den you : nev­er­the­less being crafty, I caught you with guile.” (2 Corinthi­ans 12:16)

On his own admis­sion, Paul is say­ing that he uses decep­tion in his modus operan­di. In all the new ver­sions of the Bible, the more com­mon term of ​“deceit” is replaced instead. 

This state­ment is made long after his con­ver­sion to Chris­tian­i­ty, in the phase when he sup­posed to be blessed and right­eous, and most impor­tant­ly of all, being guid­ed by Christ. 

Paul was a rejec­tor of the Mosa­ic Law and the Jesus Eth­ic, but he also assert­ed that he was a law unto him­self. Many peo­ple, obvi­ous­ly, could not accept this. 

Thus Paul respond­ed with :

“For if the truth of God hath more abound­ed through my lie unto His Glo­ry ; why yet I am also judged a sin­ner ?” (Romans 3:7 – 8)

It can be ascer­tained from this state­ment that although Paul knew that he was lying, he felt that the means jus­ti­fied the end, but it is not under­stand­able how the truth would abound through a lie. Accord­ing to this rea­son­ing, if the man Jesus was equat­ed with God, then what objec­tions could a fol­low­er of Jesus have ?

Guile is cer­tain­ly decep­tion. Flat­tery is sim­ply rather shame­ful. And they lend them­selves nice­ly to each oth­er. But decep­tion — espe­cial­ly for the sake of pros­e­ly­tiz­ing — was start­ed by Paul and became the rai­son d’être of those who laid the foun­da­tion of the Euro­pean church. 

Lying In Chris­tian­i­ty : Final Notes

Thus, the mis­sion­ar­ies of today seem to have no qualms in uti­liz­ing it. Decep­tion is the name of the game, and this is obvi­ous when the mis­sion­ar­ies start sub­sti­tut­ing exclu­sive­ly Mus­lim phras­es such as insha’al­lah (God will­ing) for ​“Lord Jesus will­ing”, sub­hana Allah (Praise God) with ​“Praise Lord Jesus”, ​“Wa Allahu a’lam” (God knows best) with ​“Jesus knows best”, e.g. in their arti­cles which open­ly berate Islam. 

Anoth­er attempt at guile is the Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary activ­i­ty of ​“church-plant­i­ng” in Mus­lim nations where they open­ly state their desire to con­vert Mus­lims ​“by hook or by crook”.

Per­haps the mis­sion­ar­ies in their ​“pick-and-choose” reli­gion had suf­fered from amne­sia and for­got­ten the following : 

“Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputeth not iniq­ui­ty, and in whose spir­it there is no guile.” (Psalms 32:2)

And only God knows best !