Consequences of deceit and deception: When people lie, people die

OPINION:

Approximately 2,000 years ago, St. Paul warned first-century Christians of the dangers of lying. In fact, he admonished the church in Rome that the consequences of deceit can be deadly.

“Those who suppress the truth,” he said, “become futile in their thinking” and are “given over to a debased mind.” As a result, they are filled with “all manner of evil” such as “envy, strife, arrogance … and murder.” Paul then lowered the hammer on his argument: When people lie, people die. “The wages of sin” are unavoidable, he shouted, and first and foremost among those wages is “death.”

For two millenniums, these words have proved true. Time and time again throughout history, we see evidence of the correlation and causation between deception and death. Untold Jews, for example, died at the hands of Hitler’s lie of Aryan supremacy. Millions of Africans, likewise, died because of the racist lies that fueled the trans-Atlantic slave trade. And at least 100 million men, women and children have been killed in the last century alone because of the grand lies of Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Chavez and Lenin. It is an irrefutable lesson of Scripture and history: People die when people lie.

All of us would do well to remember this lesson as we reflect on our past and as we read the current news. Consider the following featured stories from this past week alone.  

In “Anesthetizing ourselves to death” (The Washington Times, Jan. 16), Seth Leibsohn writes that drug poisoning deaths in the United States have increased by over 2,000% over the past two decades. We now have over 106,000 people dying each year because of the progressive lie that recreational drug use is harmless.

“To sense the scale of this crisis,” Mr. Leibsohn says, “consider the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington. There are about 58,000 names on that wall, and it took some 16 years to amass those souls that constitute that long, dark [image]. At the rate we are now going, we are nearly doubling in death every year what that sad wall represents from over the course of 16 years.”

Then there’s Vijay Jayaraj’s column “‘Greens’ Ignore India’s Lethal Cold Spells” (published likewise here in The Washington Times on Jan. 12). In this column, Mr. Jayaraj states that “cold, which is often accompanied by disease, is a bigger killer than heat.”

He continues, “Every year, millions of Indians find themselves in the midst of record-breaking cold even as the mainstream media and others obsessively speak of catastrophic global warming.” Mr. Jayaraj then cites actual science (compared to the politicized data of the left), showing that “there has been a 1.6-fold increase in cold wave days in India in the last decade.” He then goes on to expose the lie of global warming alarmism by citing reams of unbiased scientific data proving that “extreme cold and moderate cold kill a lot more people than moderate or extreme heat, with 88% of temperature-related mortalities caused by cold rather than hot weather.”

In the “Battle beneath the battle: Democrats’ appalling vote against life on House floor” (again published by The Washington Times, Jan. 14), Robert Knight highlights that 210 congressional Democrats voted this month against the “Born Alive” bill. This is a piece of legislation that does nothing more than mandate medical care for babies who survive botched abortions. “That’s all but one House Democrat,” Mr. Knight says. “Let that sink in.” Indeed. All but one congressman of the party of President Biden just voted in favor of infanticide. Yes, as Mr. Knight says, just let that one “sink in.”

And lest you think it’s only writers for The Washington Times who are still sane, consider an article from the Western Standard titled “Alberta Transgender Wants MAiD [aka Medical Assistance In Dying] After Sexual Reassignment Surgery Goes Sour.”

This piece was written on Jan. 18 by Lee Harding. In this column, the author recounts the heart-wrenching story of a biological man named “Dutchess Lois” who, after having his body butchered by the lies of the LGBTQIA+ cabal, now says he wants to die by government-assisted suicide because he simply can’t live with the consequences.

“I [have] experienced,” Mr. Lois says, “a confusional migraine [lasting] 22 days. … I forgot which genitalia I had. … I [have been] in and out of the hospital. … I [have] tried to raise this concern with several doctors. I [am] so confused as to why I [don’t] have a penis anymore!!” Because “Dutchess Lois” knows the damage done to his body is irreversible, he now just wants to die.

Time and time again, history and Scripture prove what the Apostle Paul told the early Christians in Rome. When people lie, people die. The consequences of deceit and deception are unavoidable. The wages of sin are always death. Maybe as we consider the day’s headlines, we’d all do well to do as Robert Knight implies above; Go back and read the Bible and “let it sink in” a bit.

• Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host.