Those who love their neighbors operate on a higher level. Universally, those who love their neighbors also love truth, and, usually, God. They are a different breed, loved by the God Who rejoices at their having chosen to obey His Operating Instructions in order to enter His Kingdom.
Opposed to them, those full of sin hate their neighbors and routinely lie to them, minimizing the great harm they lust to do to all they can.
It is true that “the wages of sin is death”, so it follows inescapably that those who choose sin, die. Often, the sinners’ death is earlier, but it is always followed by an eternity of receiving the pain they wished to inflict, or did inflict, on their neighbors.
This agony lasts for a very, very long time inflicted by those who hate their neighbors in perdition nearly as much as they hate the God Who would not tolerate them in His presence.
Similarly, truth and lies take human form.
Those who tell the truth do not need long memories. There is little inconsistency within them, except that which naturally occurs as they move farther from telling lies.
Lies, on the other hand, force a distortion of reality within the mind. A person who lies has a mental picture of the truth encoded within the memory particles of the brain. When a liar lies, he must pervert the very structure of his own mind. That takes a surprising amount of mental energy that can no longer be usefully employed. As a result, one’s thinking ability is increasingly impaired with every lie.
One reason that God’s program allows for liars to amass considerable political power is to let large numbers of people see the cumulative effects of lying upon a person. A liar with governmental authority can actually believe himself to be capable of changing the world to reflect the cherished lies, and most seek the political power to so alter reality. We see lies repeatedly writ large in the concentration camps of Cubas, Zimbabwes, and Jonestowns of every age.
Thus, a humble Saint, like Therese of Lisieux, who does little with a short life but grow closer to truth, charity, and the God who prefers both to lies and selfishness, outranks forever even the most accomplished liar.
But, what of lies that God “commissions”?
First Kings, 22;22, mentions a time that God’s will was accomplished by using a “lying spirit”. Does this square with the Operating Instruction “Thou shalt not bear false witness?” Judges 9;23, and First Samuel 16;14 mention Him sending spirits of discord and terror. Can we relate this with “Love your neighbor as yourself.”.
Simple justice requires that punishments fit crimes. How better to punish liars than with lies? How better to punish enemies of peace and harmony with the exact things they, themselves, wish to inflict?
Once, as a young man, I was given a plastic boomerang. The sun was setting beyond a vacant yard next to my house, and I threw my new boomerang as hard as I could into the sun, which was swollen, perched an inch or two above the horizon. Then, I realized that the whirling boomerang could be hurtling, with its sharp edges, back toward me, and I, temporarily blinded by the sun I should not have stared into, couldn’t see it. I dropped to the ground and covered my head. “Oh, God, don’t let it hit me!”, I unthinkingly and instinctively prayed.
Similarly, but on vastly larger scales, the justice of God is often programmed in such a way that the sinner must be “hoist by his own petard” to set an illuminating and instructional example for generations who follow.
