Baloney Sauce

Psalm 120:2 "Save me, O Lord, from lying lips and from deceitful tongues."

I am reminded of the words of Isaiah who confessed that he was 'a man of unclean lips from a people of unclean lips'. None of us completely escapes the temptations of lying and deceiving. We are all guilty of having distorted, misled, evaded, embellished, misspoken, withheld and doctored the truth. Just the sheer number of ways we can put it must be indicative of just how pervasive the practice of lying and deception must be. Why is it so hard anymore for us just to be honest and forthcoming about anything? Some of us fall in the broad category of occasionally not being totally truthful, others of us are just short of being pathological liars.

My dad had a term for all things untrue that he would use for impact purposes, back in the day when vulgar talk was not so common and lying was a character flaw and not an art form. "Baloney Sauce!!!", he used to say when he had caught me overstating or understating or not stating whatever was the real truth. The term still sends shockwaves of conscience through my bones. I wish we didn't have to be so graphic these days to make our points, but our tolerance for vulgarity is growing with our tolerance for baloney sauce. We are a people of unclean lips, Lord save us from our own lies.

I wonder if part of our difficulty of relating to Jesus comes from the fact that He is the truth and that fact is a little more than unnerving. Wouldn't it be exciting if for just one day or maybe we could only take an hour, a minute, or a moment of 'the truth being known'. Someday it will be. Everything will be revealed. Thank God not to each other and thank God for His grace when that happens. My encouragement for us today is that we ought to make some concerted efforts anew to stop the erosion of the truth.

Every arena around us is full of baloney sauce. Advertising is so dishonest and misleading, education can't accurately differentiate between fact and theory, politics couldn't possibly stoop any lower with its mudslinging and only the media itself is more suspect. Diogenes and Abraham Lincoln would be aghast at the lack of honesty in the world today. Why is it like this? What happened to common decency? George Washington at least could admit that he chopped down that cherry tree; we cannot even admit that we forgot to lock the door.

I think the biggest problem is that our barometer is broken. Without any moral absolutes or standards, we find it near impossible to gauge just what the truth or baloney sauce is at any one given time. Since the truth is what it is, why is it so evasive? In a 'value free' culture without firm foundations, we are slipping because there is nothing to hang onto. That is why it is so comforting to know that Jesus is the Truth. In a world that has seemingly lost its way, He is the Way. In a time when it seems like we are dying, He is the Life. You can see why He is also the Answer.

Therefore, we should all try this. Start small and eliminate all convenient lying and all deceitful gossiping. This baloney sauce is easily identifiable and blatant. You know the stuff. The stuff that we don't really need to exaggerate or understate or the stuff that we could fix by just not trying so hard to make ourselves look perfect or better than we are. Not only about ourselves but about others too. Why not just stop speaking unkindly about anybody unless it is to his or her face (and then please don't lie). You see my point. I don't think we try very hard in this area because it is just so common and prevalent to lie and deceive. Anyway, it is a start and I am going to make a new effort to set an even better example. Join me if you can or dare.

In His grace and without baloney sauce, Pastor Fred

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