Lies People Tell - Intro

I've been so impressed lately with the vast volume of lies that people tell that I feel I need to address some of them. You see, it seems like we who believe we need to contend for the faith (Jude 1:3) often find ourselves defending what turns out to be lies. In a large number of cases they are what is called "strawman arguments" where someone attributes to us beliefs we do not have and then explains why we're wrong. And we try to explain why we're not ... but we don't hold the thing we're defending. An example might be when anti-Reformed theology folks argue that Reformed theology doesn't believe that faith is necessary for salvation. "You Calvinists believe that God chooses whom He will save and God gives them faith, so faith isn't necessary." Well, yes, we believe God chooses whom He will save ... but that doesn't preclude the necessity of the chosen exercising their God-given faith. You see, it would be easy to end up trying to defend against the conclusion -- "faith isn't necessary" -- but the lie occurred in the transfer of claim to conclusion. The anti-Reformed folks will argue, "It's absolutely clear from Scripture that faith is necessary for salvation" and the Reformed folks would ... cheer in agreement ... except we end up trying to defend against this ... lie.

I'm obviously going to have to make this a series on the topic because the volume and scope of these lies is huge. The goal, however, is to make things easier for you. It's difficult at times to try to explain your position in terms of nuances, but when the attack is simply a lie, it becomes a lot easier. It's hard when you have to explain, "Well, that's close to what I believe, but it's not quite and here are the shades of meaning that you missed." It's much easier when you can simply say, "No, that's completely wrong information. Here's the truth." Unfortunately, some of these lies have been repeated so many times that they've become accepted as true without examination and then we end up stuck with a lie against which we need to defend. So I want to address those types of lies and see if we can step out, just a bit, from some of the false accusations that we've been told are true and we've been hard-pressed to defend against. I hope it will be a beneficial series for you. Keep your eyes peeled for future installments.