Rapid-Fire Lying

I can remember as a boy, my dad always had an eye out for antiques, but not just any type of antiques. He likes old handmade furniture, farm equipment and guns. He kept a long-barrel flintlock muzzleloader mounted on the mantel over our fireplace. On some Sundays he would say, "Let’s go out and shoot that old muzzleloader." So we would. It was very time consuming to load it. You had to first put a measured amount of gun powder in the barrel, then put a wad of cloth in the barrel to keep the powder from slipping and sealing the ball or bullet. Next you had to add the ball and then compress it down with a "damping" rod. It took about 15 minutes to do it (but in the Revolutionary War days, a soldier could do it in as few as 3 minutes). The flintlock was very inaccurate and only had an effective range of about 75 to 100 yards. When I joined the Marine Corps in ’54 I was trained on the MI919 Thompson light machine gun that had a rate of fire at 600 rounds per minute! That’s 1,800 rounds in the 3 minutes that it takes to load a musket. It started with one round for every 3 minutes and evolved to 1,800 rounds in the same 3 minutes.

 In 1987, Gary Hart was a candidate for President. One lie about an affair sent him packing into the unknown. Now lying is an acceptable practice for at least one political party. It goes on every day of the year. That’s what I call, "rapid-fire lying" — 600 lies per minute! Thousands per day, and this with no conscience!

Lying has always plagued the human race. Our first parents plunged us into the depths of depravity with believing a single lie. However, they just believed a lie. Now we propagate them and we convince ourselves that they are the truth! Well, how did this get to this point, at least in our political life? For Gary Hart it was one lie. And I was glad to see him go. But with Bill Clinton, it was Whitewater, Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, and Monica Lewinsky. I thought surely this would exclude him from public life. However, all it did was to enhance him! This tells you how Americans have declined morally in just one decade. It is a sad day for our republic. Lying has now become a fatal disease, as we saw with Kavanaugh and with Trump.

Is evil overcoming good? We as Christians know that only through the Gospel of truth, as it permeates our culture, can we possibly defend the truth and protect this great nation. Only with the Gospel can we jam the rapid-fire lying machine gun of evil. What will happen? Only if we all "Go ye therefore and teach all nations" and start with "Jerusalem" (your family), "Judea" (your community) and "Samaria" (your nation) "and to the uttermost" (Matthew 28:19; Acts 1:8). Let us get started and contribute to those that are "so doing."  "Vincit Omnia Veritas" — The truth conquers everything.

Please send comments and questions to coach@chapelfield.org

W.H. (Coach) Spanjer

Solo Christo gloria

Next Tuesday’s Blog: “Let’s Compare”