Nothing I’ve ever seen blew my mind as did the Great Pyramid of Giza. At first glance, and from a distance, it looked like something out of science fiction (“ancient astronaut” aficionados believe that aliens created it, anyway). Up close, two things awed me: its antiquity (about 4,500 years, give or take a century or so); and its immensity (2,300,000 limestone and granite blocks, 2.5 tons or more apiece). The largest mansion in the USA, the Biltmore Estate, is 1/3rd the size of the Great Pyramid.
About 20,000-30,000 workers—without a single electric crane, or even a pneumatic drill—expended approximately 20 years to finish it. It’s hard to imagine the cost, in human terms, that went into this edifice, a tomb. The Biltmore, at least, was for the living; the Great Pyramid was for the dead.
And that’s because, in the ancient Egyptian religion, the soul of the dead began a long journey through the netherworld, and so preparations needed to be made, such as this pyramid (for Pharaoh Khufu), in order to ensure him a successful existence there. So much blood, sweat, toil, and tears—and for what? A lie.
The Great Pyramid dramatizes a harsh, stark reality: most of humanity has not only believed, and still does believe, lies, but has lived by, and still does live by, lies—oblivious, perhaps (though surely some had to harbor doubts), that these were lies. Worse, these lies were, and still are, about big things: who are we, how did we get here, why, and what happens after we die, the latter especially important because whatever does happen after is going to last a lot longer that whatever happened before (Pharoah Khufu himself has been dead 4,500 years and counting).
Believing in, and living by, lies does matter—even greatly. Which is why believing in, and living by, truth matters even more.
For centuries, millions in the Ancient Near East (Babylonians, Sumerians, Akkadians, Canaanites, etc.) believed in a pantheon of false gods (Anu, Enil, Baal, Tammuz, Marduk, Ishtar, etc.). Which means that for centuries these millions would pray to, worship, and offer sacrifices (including, at times, their own children) to what never existed to begin with. The Babylonians would also use priests who studied animal entrails, such as sheep livers, in order to discern the future. Imagine the ignorance of culture in which (for instance) the decision whether or not to send thousands into war was decided by a bacterial abscess on the lobe of a sheep liver? Or when the culture would cut out the beating hearts of Inca children in order to appease an average-sized G2V main-sequence star? Or when a Vestal Virgin would be buried alive (alive!) if she violated her vow of chastity to the Roman goddess Vesta—to whom?
As I was saying, how many millions for how many millennia believed in, and lived by, lies?
Faith for Today?
How many do today, as well? With an estimated 4,200 different “religions”—everything from offshoot Mormons in the American West who practice polygamy, to Lubavitcher Jews in Brooklyn, who believe that the late Menachem Schneerson is Mashiach[i]—and with most of these religions teaching things that contradict the others, it’s hard to imagine all the lies believed, and lived out, among the world’s fermenting billions. It’s an uncomfortable thought, yes, but how do you logically avoid it?
The main religious groups are Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism. This doesn’t count the millions in folk religions or in animism, nor the estimated 1.2 billion nonreligious, secular, atheist/agnostic believers. Followers in each of these systems believe what cannot be correct unless what the follower in the others believe are wrong. If, for instance, the atheists are correct, then for all human history the vast majority of humanity has believed in, and lived by, lies.
Let’s assume, as Seventh-day Adventists, that Christianity is true, that Jesus is the Creator and Redeemer, and that “there is none other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). That is, if the Christian faith, with its absolute claims about Jesus, is the truth (or, as Karl Barth has written, “The Christ message is . . . not one truth among others; it is the truth”)[ii]—then all others belief systems that ignore or openly reject Jesus’ death as the atoning sacrifice for all humanity, which is pretty much all of them—must by default be false, or (to be blunt) based on lies.
After all, from the Christian perspective the Buddhist Eightfold Path to Salvation, which comes from certain disciplines, and involves breaking free from a cycle of births and rebirths, cannot be true, especially because it is based solely on human works. Also, from that same (Christian) perspective, what does one do with the 33 different categories of gods in Hinduism, or with the belief, held by most faiths, in an immortal soul?
Within Christianity?
Let’s narrow this logic down within Christianity itself, with thousands of denominations often believing “truths” that make other “truths” lies. If the millions in Christianity who believe in the secret rapture are correct, then the millions who reject it believe a lie (and vice versa). Meanwhile, believing that God seeks the salvation of everyone, makes a lie (an egregious one at that) out of the Calvinist dogma that God has predestined millions, perhaps billions, not only to be lost but to have their immortal souls burn in hell for eternity.
Belief in the immortal soul’s immediate ascent to heaven, or descent to purgatory or hell, at death, if false (as we teach), means that billions of Christians (the vast majority, in fact) believe in, and live by, a lie—a big, ugly lie, too. Come on, hundreds of millions of Roman Catholics, for instance, think that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, or that praying for the dead (especially during November), or that fasting and doing penance helps get their dead out of purgatory and into heaven. There’s no more truth to these beliefs than to Pharaoh Khufu’s journey into the netherworld. And how many Christians, of almost every stripe, believe these near-death experience books and movies about those who “die” but come back with stories of seeing disembodied dead loved ones blissfully floating in some heavenly ether? Meanwhile, imagine the anguish of those whose departed loved ones, they fear, are burning in hell, and forever, too?
I’m not judging the morals, the faith, the sincerity, or even the salvation of any of these people, Christian or whatever. The Bible teaches, yes, that “there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12), but picture a person rendered unconscious by smoke inhalation in a building on fire who later wakes up in a hospital, not knowing at first who had rescued him or her. Anyone in the first resurrection will be there only because of Jesus, whether they ever heard His name or not.
But, still, whenever final events do overwhelm us, lies about the state of the dead and the seventh-day Sabbath will make the masses sitting ducks for the mark of the beast and other deceptions by “the father of lies” (see John 8:44), the one who has fostered all these lies to begin with.
Believing in, and living by, lies does matter—even greatly. Which is why believing in, and living by, truth matters even more.
[i] Yiddish for Messiah.
[ii] Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline (London: SCM Press, 2011), p. 70; Hymns Ancient and Modern, Kindle Edition.
