I dream of a world committed to the truth. No, that’s a lie. A world like that would mean that I would have to tell the truth and ever since Adam and Eve we humans have been addicted to lies. “The serpent tricked me.” “Eve made me do it.” “It’s your fault, God. You’re the one who created Eve.” No, the truth was that these three, the serpent, Adam, and Eve, conspired to replace God. Since then, the lies have kept on flowing.
Adam and Eve knew my dream world. There were no secrets between them. The Bible says they were “naked and not ashamed” (Genesis 2:25) but as soon as they ate the forbidden fruit, they ran for cover, hiding from God and each other. Since that day, we humans long to be known while trying hard to keep our secrets.
Jesus tells us not to swear oaths, but to “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.” (Matthew 5:37) Unfortunately, because we cannot trust anyone to keep their word, we must make contracts, or, as the Russian proverb says, “Trust but verify.” President Ronald Reagan often repeated this proverb while negotiating nuclear disarmament with the Russians. Three decades later, Secretary of State John Kerry said, “President Reagan’s old adage about ‘trust but verify’ … is in need of an update. And we have committed here to a standard that says, ‘verify and verify’.”1
Who can I trust? Only God. Who can you trust? I wish you could say me. Paul has an admonition for us, “Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.” (Ephesians 4:25 ESV)
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust,_but_verify