Lies or Truth

I was reading a book this morning thta I got from the library by Anne Rice. It is called Christ the Lord - The Road to Cana. I realize it is fiction but it showed me from a different angle what Jesus must have went through during that time.

The part that really stood out was His exchange of words with the enemy in the wilderness. The enemy is tempting Jesus to worship him and trying to tell Him that he is the ruler of the world. Jesus responds with these words, "Oh, yes, you have them, your minions. I've seen them. And you have your followers, those poor cursed souls you squeeze in your anxious fist. You even have your shrines. But how paltry are your grudging triumphs in this vast, vital world of blowing wheat and shining sun! How tawdry your attempts to rush into the breach of every petty dissension, or raise your puny standard over every hideous squabble or tenuous web of avarice and deceit - pathetic your one true ppossession: your lies! Your abominable lies! And always, always you seek to drive men to despair, to convince them in your envy and greed that your archenemy, the Lord God is their enemy, that He is beyond their reach, beyond their pain, beyond their need. You lie! You have always lied! If you ruled this world you wouldn't offer to share a particle of it. You couldn't. There would be no world for you to share, because you would destroy it. You are yourself The Lie! and you are nothing other than that."

Satan tells him to stop and Jesus goes on to say. "It's I who've come to stop you! It's I who've come to reveal that your despair is a fraud! I'm here to tell one and all that you are no Ruler, and never were, that in the great scheme of things you are no more than a filthy brigand, a thief on the margins, a scavenger circling in impotent envy the camps of men and women! And I will destroy your Fabled Rule, as I destroy you - as I drive you out, stamp you out, blot you out - and not with hulking armies in baths of blood, not with the raging smoke and terror you so crave, not with swords and spears dripping with broken flesh. I will do it as you cannot imagine it - I will do it by family, by camp, by hamlet and village and town. I will do it at the banquet tables in the smallest rooms and greatest mansions of cities. I will do it heart by heart. I will do it soul by soul. Yes, the world is ready. Yes, the map is drawn. Yes, the Scripture goes forth in the common language of the world. Yes. And so I go on my way to do it, and you have struggled here once more - and forever in vain."

Someone said to me this week that trust and transparency are hard to beat and an action in which I clearly hit a home run. I considered that a great compliment as that is something that I strive for. I want to be known as someone that is real. It can be a very hard road to follow and it is extremely hard to do. We can't be real and transparent with others if we don't know who we are and so we have to look at ourselves with glasses of truth. It is in that process that the lies which I just wrote about, the lies of the enemy, that cloud those glasses. They shadow the truth changing the image of who we are into an image of what people want us to be. In reference to my previous blog about the artist and the canvas, it changes the whole picture and it no longer is an original because it has been altered.

So my question today is what lies have you been following that have altered the picture? What voices have you been listening to that have taken you off the course of transparency? It's a question I need to reflect on and ask myself. It's time to stand up and say you are a Liar and a time to declare that I will follow Truth. That is what puts us on the course of finding the "real me."