The world has always seemingly thrived on a good debate. One person wins, another loses—one point-of-view or truth reigns supreme while another cowers in the shadows from the humiliating defeat. Though one-on-one debates have been around since time began, that doesn’t mean the debates themselves are the best of things. That definitely doesn’t mean that the debates expose the truth of the matter under debate.

On the contrary, debates often hide a dubious deception — the truth is never even part of the argument. Truth is very often lost in performance, pride, or tradition, but we must dig for it ourselves. When two people or organizations come together to debate, to throw out arguments and criticism, the truth is usually far from a consideration. Winning and losing is the primary objective. Making everyone see that your side is right is the target goal. But in any honest and worthy debate, the truth must be the main objective—not opinion, personal preference, or perception.

The problem is that it is usually the perception that wins out in debates, not truth. Time has proven that to be true. If we look back at history, it’s not the truth that wins out, but the perception that does—perception of truth, perception of eloquence, perception of popularity, perception of opinion.

Most debates couldn’t care less about the truth because most debates aren’t between the truth and lies—they’re between two people. They’re between two arguments composed by two small, simple minds. Not by something so big as truth and something so deceptive as a lie.

So it doesn’t matter what the truth is because one person can have a better argument, a better perception of truth, a better comeback, and yet still be wrong. Perhaps the truth doesn’t fit in perfect perception of the tiny little mind of the one representing the truth. And that perception of the hearers, of the arguers will determine the winner, not the truth.

When Perception Wins Over Truth

This was on full display in the 1960 Presidential debate of John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon. It was the first Presidential debate to be televised and Nixon did horrible in front of the cameras. The overwhelming majority who watched the debate agreed that Kennedy won the debate hands down. However, those who listened to it on the radio gave the win to Nixon. The argument wasn’t about truth or better ideas. It was about perception.

And our perception is wrong if we come into any debate looking to win, defeat, or defend. The goal of any debate should always be the unveiling of truth. Unfortunately, that’s not how most people see it. It’s seen as the battleground to reign victorious in the arena of ideas—even if those ideas are faulty. And the audience has already chosen their side to root for, the one that comforts them in the warmth of their preconceived ideas of what truth should look like, should feel like, should be.

Most already have their opinion of the truth, built upon piles and piles of experience, a lifetime of teaching and indoctrination (which isn’t necessarily bad), conflated with a hard-set determination that they are right no matter how much opposing facts they are presented with.

So the idea of seeking for the truth is far from the minds and hearts of most people, simply because they already think they are right, raised to the heights of their haughty pride, they can’t even conceive of the idea that they might be wrong. They’re blinded to any other conflicting opinion that might dash their current worldview or sense of truth. Simply put, they can’t even believe that they are wrong.

The problem is that not everyone can be right and in turn, there’s a lot of people that are wrong. But of course that couldn’t be you or me. “It can’t be me who is wrong,” says the person who has never sat down, taken the time to search out the truth, simply accepting what they hear, what they were raised to believe, what sounds good.

During World War 2, Winston Churchill made a statement:

“In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”

Though he was talking about wartime and the need for deception and secrecy in military strategy, the idea is relevant in all matters of truth, especially absolute truth.

The truth is so precious that those who desire to keep it hidden from others will encircle it with a bodyguard of lies. This has been witnessed by those watching once powerful celebrities fall from their graces, seeing to what lengths they went to hide who they really were and what they did. It’s true with all kinds of evil, masquerading as good. And it’s true of religion, propagating lies, misdirection, and deception to keep people bound up in the doctrine of their lies.

Don’t misunderstand. Not all people in religions set out to deceive and spread lies. It’s the religion that does it, not the people. By ‘religion,’ I mean the systems of tradition or institutional dogma that replace God’s Word. The people are deceived just as much as anyone. And when they are presented with the truth, it is attacked as the most vile thing possible, because it threatens to unravel what they perceive as truth.

Why We Hold Onto Lies

Even when their deception has been clearly pointed out, their eyes have been opened, they may still hold onto those lies, like a security blanket, sucking on the bottle of demonic doctrines, hand fed by seducing spirits. Not because they love the lies, but because the truth of the truth seems so hard to embrace.

If they’re wrong, what does that mean for the life that they’ve lived? What does it mean for their friends and family who have embraced the lies? What will happen to them when they confess the new found truth to their community of non-believing believers—shame, abandonment, ridicule, outright rejection and hate?

That’s the kind of bodyguards lies place around the truth. Ones that have no feelings of compassion or love, just hard-hearted vengeance towards anyone trying to expose their misdeeds.

But that’s only if the truth is found, is accepted, is embraced. And that’s not an easy task.

The Mind’s Defense Against Truth

After all, the mind will fight so hard to reject the truth and hold onto the mindset that’s been in place since a person was a child. Psychologists have different ideas and terminology for these reactions to the exposing of lies. They give language to what Scripture has taught for centuries about the heart’s resistance to truth. Cognitive Dissonance is one—holding two conflicting beliefs. When they are challenged on the contradiction, instead of digging down and evaluating what the truth is, they’ll blindly follow which one suits them.

Or when shown flat out evidence that one’s beliefs are a fabrication, instead of accepting the truth, they double down, becoming more aggressive and holding onto their lies even more. This becomes the case so much when beliefs are tied so closely to one’s identity. And of course there’s the confirmation bias when the only information or perspective that is sought out is the one that confirms what a person already believes.

This is usually the case in debates. No matter how good one side did or how bad the other side did, “my” side always wins. Yet that can’t be the case, can it. Someone has to lose, right? Someone has to be wrong. Both sides can’t be true.

Yet, that’s how we perceive things, because we have dug in on our side that nothing possibly could be wrong with what we believe. But it can. And very possibly is, especially when we don’t take time to study it out for ourselves. Instead of fighting to win, we should be fighting together to find—what is the truth!

We don’t do that though. Instead of the end goal being a shared understanding, we must win. Instead of listening, questioning, and receiving mutual correction, we must crush the opposition. Instead of stepping back, taking time, researching and digging for the truth—we accept the knowledge held in a single person’s head. We would do much better if we researched, clarified, and revised to get closer to the truth, not our opinions.

Most debates usually end up entertaining instead of educating. Most are trying to win arguments instead of souls. The truth is far from their desires. Humility and the thought of being wrong has been long abandoned. Instead of uttering the earth-shattering phrase “I don’t know,” they stand up, chest out, in a loud boisterous voice declaring a political 2-step around their ignorance. Critical thinking is discouraged, buried under the exaltation of loyalty to your side. Audiences are entangled in well-performed monologues to the point that they never make it to a well-supported conclusion.

In today’s society, a well-delivered lie is easier to swallow than a simple truth. As Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman has said:

“People don’t believe facts—they believe the stories they tell themselves about the facts.”

A debate isn’t about who is right anymore, if it ever was. It’s about who sounds right. Audiences walk away from debates believing the most confident, charismatic speaker won, not the one with the best facts.

These issues are reserved for politics or the secular. They show up far too often in spiritual matters as well—where the stakes are much higher and the effects far more reaching. When the truth is uncomfortable, people don’t just resist it, they reject it with a vile determination, even when it’s biblical. This isn’t just something for outside the church walls, but grows and festers in the warmth of the pews inside the church.

But truth isn’t always found in charisma or eloquence. It’s not always captured in soundbites. Sometimes it’s found underneath the piles and piles of the most sweet sounding deception, so pleasing to the eyes and ears. And it takes courage, humility, and thoughtful examination to admit that you are wrong and embrace the truth.

But then again, sometimes it takes an outright rejecting of the lusts and degradation that one has been living and wrapped up in. Jesus said in John 3:19, “…men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” Sometimes it’s not a matter of evidence to convince, but a matter of inconvenience. Letting go of the things that have been so comfortable, so pleasing, so captivating all in exchange for…the unknown.

Sometimes it’s not a matter of evidence, but of sight. As it says in 2 Corinthians 4:4, “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers…” In this condition, it’s not a matter of facts and figures, but of a spiritual condition. It’s one that all the evidence in the world won’t help. It requires the power of the Holy Spirit.

And accepting Jesus as Lord doesn’t package all the deception away in a nice box to be dropped in the middle of the ocean. NO! In some ways it becomes stronger. Some of the most deeply embedded lies can be found in the walls of religion itself, fed by tradition, fear, and unquestionable loyalty to denominational instruction.

When the Church Becomes an Echo Chamber

And this is true of Christians as well. Some hold fast to the doctrines of denomination and tradition, letting the liberty of truth slip through their hands. Sometimes the man behind the pulpit holds more power than the Word of God. Of course, that may be because the one in the pew only knows, or refuses to know anything more than what is preached from the pulpit.

Specific doctrines are off limits because the perception of heresy, even though they may (or may not) be biblically accurate. They can’t even be mentioned, let alone given credible evidence for them. But again, those things are left unknown because they trust the man in the pulpit enough to reject the command of God to study His Word. Perhaps the commandments of men have been propagated, published and preached as the commandments of God (Matthew 15:9). But again, we wouldn’t know this because our study time is found during, and only during, a church service.

Of course, it’s not as if the man behind the pulpit is intentionally doing this. Again, he too may be deceived and innocently reciting what he believes to be true. Alternative viewpoints are not even given the breath to be spoken, even before the Christian. It’s ‘my doctrine or nothing.’ No open-mindedness is allowed, not by the denomination or leadership, but by the individual because that’s ‘just the way it is’ or some other faulty excuse. After all, if one line of belief is wrong, will everything else unravel as well?

But that doesn’t need to happen if we just stay inside the echo chamber of our denomination and never hear opposing viewpoints or conflicting doctrine. Perhaps that scripture doesn’t mean what we’ve been taught for years. But we’ll never know because the only teaching is the one that agrees with what grandma was taught, what my parents were taught, and what was taught me. And all were taught in the same sacred halls of our doctrinal silo.

But for some, it’s a matter of emotion—of shame and guilt of admitting that they might have been wrong—and they’re the leader, the teacher, the preacher. They might lose credibility, lose authority, lose it all. The division among those they know would be too much to bear. Unity must be retained, no matter the cost. “It’s not a salvation issue, so let’s not discuss it.”

The excuses are many; they’re broad. They cover a wide gamut of thought and reasons. But let it not be said of any of us that the reason we continued in our deception was because we were too lazy, too slothful to take the time and actually study for ourselves. Don’t let it be said that we didn’t see the value of taking the time, discomfort, and humility of studying to find the truth for ourselves.

The Call to Search the Scriptures

These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so. – Acts 17:11

The Christians in Berea were called more noble and fair-minded because of their attitude to accept the Word preached from a reliable source quickly, yet still search the scriptures to verify that Word—even when the preacher was the Apostle Paul. The great Apostle was not above being inspected and critiqued for the Word he preached, and neither shall those who preach and teach today.

For all of us who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus have a command to not just willingly accepting what has been taught, but to “test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world (1 John 4:1).”

Despite what many Christians may think, we are not called to read the Word of God, not at all. We are called to do more than that. 2 Timothy 2:15 says, “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”

The full meaning of that gets lost though. When you study this verse out, you find that we are to study out all scripture, in a very unique, non-casual manner. It’s a manner that takes time, effort, and diligence. Another way of saying it is:

“Make it your urgent priority and effort to stand approved before God—a tried and proven worker, who has no cause for shame, precisely and faithfully handling the message of God’s truth.”

It is a disciplined, intentional study of God’s Word, not passive reading to check off a box on our to do lists. That type of study warns against misinterpretation, rightly dividing—interpreting without deviation, with accuracy and integrity.

Throughout scripture, we’re warned against the slothful nature of reading the Word for not studying it for ourselves. 1 Thessalonians 5:21-22 tells us to test all things. Hebrews 5:13-14 tells us to move on from the milk of the Word and we do that by doing, using, and exercising it—not just hearing it. Proverbs 14:15 flat out tells us that the simple believes everything they hear, but the prudent (those who show thought and care) consider what is spoken.

The Word of God is filled with admonishments to intentionally studying what the Word of God says, and not just accept what is preached by any man, no matter who that man is. The Apostle Paul himself even warned the Galatians that anyone who preached something that was contradictory to what was preached (the Bible), let them be accursed (Galatians 1:8).

That means we have to know what the Word says in the first place.

Let us not sit back and accept what we have been taught our whole lives, just what agrees with what we know, but challenge what we know and every new thing that may run contrary to what we hear. A faithful, honest review of every new claim of truth that comes our way can only do one of two things: strengthen our own faith or open us up to the freedom that has long been hidden behind a bodyguard of lies.

Stay with the Word and the Spirit.