Questions and Answers
Is lying forbidden or approved?
Rev speaks all of liars be cast into the lake of fire. Since the first set of scriptures do not say otherwise, we can dismiss this one. Proverbs speaks of lying as an abomination. Since the first set of scriptures do not say lying is not an abomination, we can dismiss this one. The verse in Ex is one of the Ten Commandments. It's not obvious to me that lying is approved of in the above situations. Concerning Rahab (Josh 2:4-6), James says, "the harlot was justified by works, when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way" (James 2:25). Her act of saving the lives of these men is what is approved of. The same goes for Ex 1, where the midwives refuse to kill the male infants which were birthed. As for 1 King 22:21-22, once again it is unclear if lying is truly approved of. According to one Bible scholar: "The whole declaration of Micaiah...is a figurative and poetical description of a vision that he had seen. Putting aside its rhetorical drapery, the gist of the whole passage is that God for judicial purposes suffered Ahab to be fatally deceived." Another scholar says: "Because Ahab had abandoned the Lord his God and hardened his own heart, God allowed his ruin by the very instrument Ahab had sought to prostitute for his own purposes, namely, prophecy. God used the false declarations of the false prophets that Ahab was so enamored with as his instruments of judgment." Since it is unclear that God truly approves of lying in this case, the contradiction is not established.
