January 25, 2023
Episode #182
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Sometimes, a person of notoriety becomes revealed as a frequent liar. That individual’s reputation becomes significantly marred by that revelation. David and Karen Mains discuss how Jesus was a meticulous truth-teller and how Christians should follow Christ’s example.
Episode Transcript
David: Let me go to scripture, Karen, because truth telling is very important to Jesus. He repeated this phrase, “I tell you the truth.” Now, he would say, “I tell you the truth” and then he would say something such as, ‘…anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name’ because you belong to Christ “…will certainly not lose his reward.” You know how many of those I tell you the truth are?
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David: As of this podcast, George Santos, the new Republican in our nation’s House of Representatives, has yet to resign.
Karen: Now, Santos is the young man from New York who, in running for representative, told a series of whopping lies regarding his supposed credentials.
David: And we will talk about the situation in this visit.
Intro: Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.
David: Karen, Santos is certainly the most famous of all freshies, freshmen batch of congress persons. It’s like saying he graduated from schools such as NYU, New York University, when he never even attended and so on, just a whole series of these. When I think about George Santos, I wonder if he’s almost a pathological liar and maybe even saying that I wonder what pathological means.
Karen: Okay, well, a pathological liar is a psychiatric designation for people who lie all the time. And it’s interesting when you look it up, sometimes they know they’re lying, but very frequently they don’t know that they’re lying.
David: Yeah, he seems to admit this, but again, it’s not something he brings up. It’s only when he’s challenged.
Karen: Yeah, and you would need a diagnostic situation to even use the term pathological for him. But it’s easy to tag him with that because his resume was just filled with fabrications.
David: Yeah, I have an interesting story as I look back on my ministry and it relates to this, Karen. I had a man in our congregation when I was ministering in Chicago, this would have been many years ago. He came to the church, came up after the Sunday service, talk for a while and I thought I need to get to know this man. He seems to be quite accomplished. He was an organist and as I got to know him better, he and his wife actually took me to some of the large cathedrals and university settings.
Karen: In the city of Chicago.
David: In the city and talked about recitals he had given at these places. I was fascinated. Music’s not my field. But I listened to him, and he regaled me with all these things. Harry’s stories and a personality and a great sense of humor. And this went on for probably a period of a couple of months. In fact, I would say to different members of the church, I want you to get to know, I’m going to make up a name, Harry Marvel.
Karen: Okay, Harry Marvel.
David: Marvelous Harry, whatever. Because, man, he is really the accomplished person. However, as time went on, it was funny because I would notice that he would tell the same story to someone else, and it was different, a little bit different than when I heard it.
Karen: And we’d never heard him play.
David: So, he was in the suburban area to Chicago. He would drive in on Sundays, and I thought, I’m going to invite him to the small group in his area, and they have a piano in that house. And I’ll see if I can get into the play, and we’ll sing a couple of choruses or such. And certainly, he could play by ear, I would think. But I brought it up before, would you be open to doing it? “Oh, no, no,” he said. “You don’t understand, but you’re kind of insulting me, because my instrument is not the piano.”
I mean, there’s a great difference between pianos and organs. It’s either he went on or not. But I began to suspect that something’s going on here. He told me about a teacher, an advanced teacher at a given university who was helping him with certain areas where he could improve. I said, “Well, what’s his name?” So, I wrote it down, and I called that school, and I said, “Could I speak with him?” Well, I got his teacher on the line, and I said, “I’m interested in whether you think it would be good for Harry to do a recital for the congregation. Probably a couple hundred people would come to it.”
And there was a laughter on the other end of the line. I remember the gentleman saying to me, “He’s not advanced. In fact, he’s only had three lessons from me, and I’m not even sure he knows the scale yet.” And all of a sudden, my mind is, I can’t believe what I’m hearing.
So, I arranged a time at a restaurant. I still remember the restaurant in the city of Chicago. I said, “Will meet you. I just want to talk over a few things.”
So, he came out from the suburbs, and he met me at the restaurant, and then I began to unfold what I had learned. And he became quite angry. He said, “You don’t believe me. I thought we were friends” that kind of thing. I said, “We are friends. I believe that you’re beyond my being able to help you, but I will do my very best to find someone who can be of help. But this is a serious thing.”
He got up. He was very angry. He left me sitting in the restaurant. So, a couple days later I called his home and the landlord answered and he said, “No they’re not here anymore, they’ve moved. And the last couple days, real fast they seem to just wanted to get out of here. And they’ve moved somewhere east I’m not sure where.”
I never heard from him again but it was an incredible story. That’s the first occasion I had talking with somebody.
Karen: Who was just a liar.
David: Just an absolute liar. And seemed normal and seemed fascinating. But I’ve been duped.
Karen: Totally fiction. You know, I think that one of the things that I’ve been thinking about as the news media have sort of glommed on to George Santos is not so much dismay and distress about what he’s done as I have dismay and distress for him as a person.
David: This has got to be incredibly humiliating.
Karen: Absolutely. And the fact that he’s gotten this far and I’m sure there are other people who have challenged him in his journey about his tendency to lie. But the fact that he’s gotten this far and now there’s this public out-criming, his name has been in the news and he’s been featured on television news and…
David: Well, the late-night talk shows.
Karen: They’re making fun of him. What we really need to do with the pathological liars in our lives is have compassion for them instead of scorn.
David: Let me go to scripture, Karen, because truth telling is very important to Jesus. He repeated this phrase, “I tell you the truth.” Now, he would say, “I tell you the truth” and then he would say something such as, ‘…anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name’ because you belong to Christ “…will certainly not lose his reward.”
You know how many of those I tell you the truth are?
Karen: I have no idea.
David: This is not counting, Karen. “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” It had to be the exact thing that said, Jesus said, “I tell you the truth.”
Karen: Ok. How many?
David: In Matthew 30 times, in John 26 times, in Mark 14 times, and in Luke 9 times. It totals up to 79 times. So, I tell you the truth. So, this is something that’s very important to him.
Karen: Very important.
David: And there are all kinds of other verses that talk about the truth, but that’s just that given phrase. In my mind is something that says Jesus was a truth teller and he made it known that when I’m talking, you’re hearing the truth.
Now, I’m not sure that I can say that about myself. I am in a position where I was talking to somebody about Christ yesterday, but I never said I tell you the truth. But I was conscious because of doing this podcast that I wanted to represent Jesus adequately and that the truth was very important to him.
Karen: That reminds me that I have written a book.
David: You’ve written a couple books on that.
Karen: You Are What You Say is one and then the other is Medicine for Mouth Disease. And one of the ways we measure our maturity, how are we doing psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually is by listening to what our own tongue says.
David: Well, it’s listening to our own words, okay?
Karen: Listening to our own words and doing a survey, a self-survey of how many times we do tell lies. It’s an amazing thing and then I have some quotes that I’ve just captured out of reading.
David: Give me a couple of them and I’ll give you a key sentence for our visit, okay?
Karen: Okay. This is from Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew. “My tongue will tell the anger of my heart. My heart concealing it will break. Then you should say what you mean” the March Hare went on. This is Alice in Wonderland. “I do.” Alice hastily replied, “At least I mean what I say.” “That’s the same thing you know in The Hatter Sister.” “Not the same thing a bit.”
This one by Washington Irving. “A sharp tongue is the only edge tool that grows keener with constant use.” So, we really do need to do a careful look at the lies we tell that we don’t know that we’re telling. I mean, we don’t pay attention to this enough because it is a monitor, a thermometer really, of the status of our soul.
David: Nobody’s going to remember this like the quotes you just gave, but at least it summarizes what we’re attempting to say on this podcast. Those who want to be more like Jesus need to come to the realization that he was a meticulous truth teller.
Karen: So, I would say that we should use George Santos. Use him as a reminder that when we have uncontrolled lying in our lives. then we can become, I suppose, pathological or pointing toward pathologically.
David: I don’t think that’s typical in the church. I think that in the church, people get careless with the truth. And Jesus wasn’t careless with the truth. And to be one of His followers, you’re careful regarding the truth. So, you are known as a truth teller.
Karen: Right.
David: And I’m not sure the church is known as truth tellers. I’m not sure religious people in the media, like we used to be, and maybe with the podcast still might say we are, but we have to be very careful, and we are meticulous about telling the truth.
Karen: So, we are dependent upon Scripture to inform us. We’re dependent upon friends who love us to point out to us our flaws. We are dependent on the Holy Spirit to notify us in the means that He uses that we are taking truth telling for granted in our own lives.
David: We’re not doing that.
Karen: We’re not doing that.
David: Yeah, we’re saying that truth is going to be very important to us as well. The average person, tell me whether you think they are helped by this or kind of made to say, “Oh golly, you’re not a liar.”
Karen: I’m not a liar. Yeah. Whoops, coming a little too close there.
David: Like their Lord, Christ’s followers should be able to say, I tell you the truth. So, let’s look at Karen Mains. There are times in your life as you look back on it and you say, “The Lord made it very clear to me that I needed to work on this area.”
Karen: I have a huge one that happened when I was in high school.
David: So, you’re in high school.
Karen: I’m in high school.
David: It was a long time ago.
Karen: I think I was a senior in high school. Yes, it was a long time in high school. I was the oldest of three children, both my dad and mom worked. And so, I bore a lot of the responsibility for the home.
David: How much younger is Valerie?
Karen: My sister is six years younger and Craig is 10 years younger. And we’ve laughed about the fact that because mother worked and had a very responsible position with the mission organization. And dad worked at Moody Bible Institute. So, he was in the city. Then I sort of became a surrogate parent. They were the two young kids. It’s almost that way even now in our grown-up relationship.
David: You used that term.
Karen: Yeah. So, I had this one whopping experience in my life. I think the Holy Spirit cannot just or it can hit us over the head with a two by four. This is the two by four. I’m in high school. I’m the secretary of our student council. And in that position, I was responsible for ordering the graduation counts for my classmates. And I had been given the address and the contact information.
David: So, this is a pretty good size school.
Karen: Yeah, and something about that procrastination thing that had developed in me, I just put it off and I put it off and I put it off. I don’t know why I just didn’t do it. And our student advisor had asked me a couple of times if I’d ordered the gowns. The last time he asked me, I was standing with a classmate, Caroline was her name. And she was also on the student council and had been party to the fact that these gowns had not been ordered. And so, he asked me again, I lied. I said that I had.
And it was revealed at that moment that he had not been able to trust me. And so, Caroline had gone ahead and ordered the gowns anyway. And that’s a good thing that they did. So, that lie that I had been spouting became known. And I’m sure it went all the way through my council classmates. Now, David, I went to high school with a big red Bible challenged by my youth for Christ’s days.
David: So, the Bible…
Karen: On the top of my books. And I carried that Bible to school every single day of my four years on top of my books. And I could say it was a big red Bible and I had my name engraved on it, Karen Burton.
David: So, the one who carries the Bible told a whopper.
Karen: Told a whopper. I tell you.
David: Oh, it doesn’t sound like you.
Karen: But David, it was coming to truth moment. I mean that literally. And it was so dramatic for me that I began to be very, very careful about my tongue. But not only that, about that level of procrastination, that flaw in my character that I needed to take care of because it left me vulnerable to having to cover my tracks until lies about what I did or did not do.
David: Do you think other people have stories like this as well?
Karen: Oh, I think so.
David: It’s the process of becoming Christ like that.
Karen: Right, right.
David: We don’t realize how quick we are to try to cover our tracks. It’s a part of life. And the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, who comes and lives inside of us, tries to bring us to the place where we are Christ-like and being Christ-like includes always telling the truth. It’s being careful so that we don’t get into the bad habit, and we don’t become, not to even say pathological, but just people who…
Karen: It’s too easy. It’s too easy to tell a lie.
David: Yeah, it’s easy. It becomes a way of life and after a while doesn’t bother you as much as it used to.
Karen: So, I have a suggestion for people and that is that they just do a scriptural search. Take your concordance and say how often Jesus said, what was the phrase he said?
David: “I tell you the truth.”
Karen: I tell you the truth. Write it out yourself in a journal. I mean, just take time with this, and become familiar with how important truth-telling is to God; how important it was to Christ; and what a signature it is for Christians who call themselves Christ followers. You can’t be a good Christian and be a liar.
David: Is there a way here in that we can use the George Santel story to be of help to ourselves? I don’t think either of us are, oh, I don’t know. Maybe I am quick to criticize him. I don’t want to do that. I want to feel sorry for this person. I want this person to get help, but I also want this person to help me to examine my life. Go ahead.
Karen: Well, I think one of the things that we as Christians don’t do with nationally known figures, particularly when they fall, is to begin to intercede for them. And I’m going to, after this podcast, go and put George Santos name in my prayer journal. And begin to pray for him that the Lord will use this as an opportunity to teach Christians in our country, certainly Christians, to not scorn or denigrate those people who have such glaring errors in their life that the press brings to light. But that we will use that notoriety as a reminder to pray and intercede for them.
David: And we don’t end up being the person who looks for the speck in the other guy’s eye and doesn’t take care of your own eye.
Karen: The log in your own eye.
David: That’s the sense which Jesus says. Yeah, so let’s go back to that sentence one more time. Those who want to be more like Jesus need to come to the realization that he was a meticulous truth teller. So, you got your assignment?
Karen: Yes, I do.
David: Not from me, but from the Lord. I have my assignment and I’m going to be very careful as I listen to this story to try to say, okay. How does this relate not only to the country and the House of Representatives and so on? How does it relate to me? And am I the truth teller that Jesus wants me to be? Or do I sometimes step over the line and then act as though it never happened?
Karen: Is there someone in my life I don’t like and it’s easy for me to fudge my comments about that person, move them into the negative category. Am I doing that? You know, this is part of our life process. We don’t really know what their lives are like. We just don’t like them. We don’t know if the struggles they’re contending with in their present life or in the past where they were raised. But we have an obligation, I think, to reserve judgment and to begin to say to the Lord, “Is this someone you want me to intercede for?” And then if so, then to do that.
David: And Lord, help it not to be that the church is only the finger pointer, but the church, your church in this country is such that it looks at itself as well as looking at others. And that it becomes more and more Christ-like, which is to be people who speak the truth, who live the truth.
Karen: Who love the truth.
David: Who love the truth. Yeah. Well said. Thank you.
Outgo: You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review, and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2023 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois 60187.
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