Is dishonesty a part of normal Christian life in your denomination? If you feel it is necessary to be dishonest just to fit in, maybe your denomination is like many, founded partly on distinguishing doctrines which are intrinsically false. The history of Western Christianity was fraught with political conflicts. Breaking from Rome was the first main factor in this. Truth got given lower priority as for many, life depended on coming up with good reasons to say they could do without Rome control. The printing press was novel and powerful. Bibles were printed with a doctrine of the Puritans that all essential doctrines must come from this Bible, this particular set of scriptures and no other. There needed to be control outside of Rome. Truth needed guarding, but that guarding had to be done by Puritans, not Rome. Civil War in England hardened this stance. Groups which broke away from English control later mainly took this doctrine with them. It was not actually a doctrine from scripture as there was no scripture which listed the canonical books of the Bible. So that very doctrine itself, the core of all Puritan doctrines, was flawed and had to come, not from scripture, but from traditions, some of which were Pharisee and not even Christian. Yet that was the law of England. This was a weakness in every breakaway group. Later some such groups such as Methodists relaxed this rule somewhat. Yet in the main the Puritan line always had major influence. The groups went to the USA. Not only entertainment artists were thinking along the lines “If we can make it there, we can make it anywhere”. Preachers and denominations were trying it too. From the start, USA was influenced greatly by the English Puritans, then later by Anglicans, Baptists, Methodists, Brethren, and so on. All carried a heavy influence of the sola scriptura doctrine of using the 66 book Bible and essential doctrines based only on this, except sola scriptura itself and the 66 book list. As people grow up in these and derivative churches, it becomes clear early on that you must be honest except in certain areas, such as insistence that the choice of books in the 66 book Bible is itself based on something set down in some way by God. It is picked up by these people that the fact it is not actually a list of books defined in scripture needs to be hushed. You obediently ask for proof from this set of books every time someone introduces a doctrine. You gloss over whether this is honest. The downside is growing up with a feeling that honesty is just too much of a luxury in church life. It raises questions but you obediently leave them hanging, unanswered. One question is this: Jesus made honesty number one priority in following him. Revelation 21:8 says all kinds of liars go into fires of the lake of fire eventually. Is church life something incompatible with following Jesus? Does following Jesus therefore get replaced with doctrines similar to the sola scriptura, supposedly based on scripture but just don’t look too hard at this? When God works in a believer, He does not comply with human rules. He instills true honesty. He makes lying an abomination to be removed entirely from the believer’s life. He persuades of faith that is not based on human skirting around the truth, but on truth itself. A truly born again person knows they cannot live a life of lying. Sin must go. They know that following true teachings of Christ is what keeps a believer in fellowship with God. Lose this and you lose Father and Son. Lies are Satan’s language. True followers speak truth as a first language, not a luxury low priority.
