Political Lies

According to 2 Thessalonians 2, an evil political leader often gains power when the people come to believe a lie. This reminds us that one of the most dangerous things that political leaders can do is to encourage the people of their nation to believe lies.

I have noticed a disturbing tendency for political leaders in the west to say things about other nations for political benefit that they know to be untrue. Saying nasty things about nations that their people hate without any evidence (such as Iran, Russia and China) can be a good way to gain political support. The news media often make the situation worse by perpetuating the lies.

The most obvious example is the claim that Russia stole the 2016 presidential election. Those who made this claim offered no serious evidence, but politicians and the news media continued to repeat the lie. The Mueller investigation found no credible evidence of collusion, and the investigation of the inspector general exposed plenty of dishonest behaviour (lies) by the US security services, but the big political lie still persists.

I can think of many more examples of deliberate political lies. Blaming another nation for a problem is a great way to avoid taking responsibility for mistakes. That is serious enough, but even worse, when people with political authority in a nation spread a lie, this gives a spirit of deception a stronghold in the nation.

When successive political leaders use lies about other nations as an election tool, the deceiving spirit gets established as a government-spirit over the nation. Once this spirit has a stronghold over a nation, anything can happen, and it will not be good (see 1 Kings 22).

Unfortunately, too many Christians are blindly accepting the lies of their political leaders, which increases the power of the spirit of deception. That is scary.