Standing Up

To lie means both to tell a falsehood and to be on your back in a horizontal position. The two senses have more in common than we might think. When we lie to deceive, it is like we are lying down and trying to hide under the covers from the truth. We are too afraid to face the truth so we lie down and attempt to dream up more pleasant versions of reality. But the truth doesn't go away just because we decide to hide under the covers. When we are lying down we are vulnerable. We can't move or act or see what's coming. We give up any control over our situation. And if we lie down for long enough, our muscles will start to atrophy. We'll get weaker and sicker and waste away. Or, we can stand up. We can tell the truth. We can have the courage to face the reality of our situation and we may find that we are actually strong enough to bear it. "No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means — the only complete realist." (C.S. Lewis). We'll never know what we are truly made of until we stop lying - stop lying to ourselves and stop lying down and giving up - and instead stand up for the truth that we are Children of Almighty God, full of power and love and truth.