Lies – and Truth
Searching for truth among the lies
Lies and truth found their way into my sister’s mind when she was just a child. Before I was born, my father and his first wife lost a child to scarlet fever. Her name was Mary. She died the day after her third birthday in 1941. On the one year anniversary of Mary’s death, her mother died in childbirth at the age of 39.
My sister Katharine1 was the sibling next older than Mary, and they were as different as the sun and the moon. Small and petite like her mother with a passel of spunk, Mary was “cute”, while Katharine (she thought) was not. Mary looked like her mother, and Katharine did not. Who knows what kind of sibling rivalry or comradery the two girls would have claimed had Mary lived.
Sometime after her mother’s death, Katharine overheard an aunt talking about a conversation the aunts had about her mother’s hair. Standing near the casket, the aunts commented on the fact that she had few gray hair when she died.
The aunt remarked that Katharine’s father told them, “The only gray hair she had, she got after Mary died.”2
No one intended for Katharine to hear this statement or to understand it as she did. A mere six-year-old child, she blamed herself for her mother’s gray hair. She reasoned, had she died instead of Mary, the mourning would not have been so hard. Her mama’s hair would still be coal black, she thought, if she had died instead of her younger sister, Mary.
It was not until years later that Katharine shared with her namesake, “I always thought if I had died instead of Mary, it would not have been so hard on Mama”.
“Oh Katharine!” Aunt Kate said, “Your mother loved you every bit as much as she loved Mary. It would not have mattered which of her children died; she would have mourned the same.”
Just like that, the sentiments of less-than left my sister. What she heard that day she knew in her heart, but she failed to believe it as Truth. She learned to differentiate between lies and truth.
The lies we believe
When we choose to believe Lies, we place ourselves in bondage. Instead of going to another adult or searching for truth in scripture, we believe what we hear from others. Children believe other children as authorities, when they are not. Adults sometimes believe a minister who devalues them and, instead of looking for counsel from a “multitude“, they accept it as truth. Instead of searching scripture to see if what we are told is validated by God, we choose to accept their word as truth.
This is exactly what Satan wants. He plants lies into our heads, many times using others to do it. He feeds those lies to make certain we do not discover the truth. This puts us in bondage to ourselves and to others. We believe the lies they say about us, and their hold on us continues. We hang onto the shame put on us by others, instead of receiving forgiveness.
What lies do you believe about yourself simply because someone else said so? What twisted version of you – presented to others – makes you believe lies about yourself?
Our value is based, not on what others think of us, but on who we are in Jesus Christ. He came to bring redemption. He can take those lies and show you truth. Don’t believe the lies of Satan through others. Instead, believe in your value and worth as a redeemed soul in the Kingdom.
1 I am forever grateful to my sister Katharine for her powerful, positive influence in our lives, especially after the death of our father. You can read more about her by going to this link here.
2 Family Jaunt of Memories, Floyd J. Miller family, Lulu Online Printing, 2009, p. 167
Photo credits: pixabay.com
