The Time In Which We Are Living:

God’s Wrath against Sin

(Jeremiah 6:10-21; Jeremiah 25:15-33; Jonah 1:4-10; Acts 27:13-26)

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.

Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

Romans 1:18-32

Scripture provided by the administrator of A Crooked Path and did not appear in the original article.

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Monday, February 16th, 2026

Why is there so much lying in politics today?

The political atmosphere is descending into a total absence of truth.

February 15, 2026

By J. Budziszewski

Reprinted from Blaze Media

Lying in politics has changed. Politicians used to lie in hopes of getting away with it. Now they don’t care. If you throw enough mud on the windshield, some of it will stick.

Case in point: Illinois Democrat Senator Dick Durbin’s use on the Senate floor of an obviously doctored image of immigration agents pointing a gun at the back of Alex Pretti’s head. One of the agents in the image is even missing a head. The picture is still circulating. Nothing dies on the internet.

If you want to provide an instance of a lie on the other side of the aisle, feel free. My point isn’t partisan.

Decades ago, one of my grad school teachers asked me, “Why do you think there is so much lying in politics today?” Too young for a real sense of history, I thought the question silly. Don’t people always think things were better in the old days?

But sometimes, some things do get worse. Truthfulness is taking it on the nose, and the virtue is even more endangered today than when my teacher quizzed me all those years ago. Ordinary people lie too, but the great masters of lying today are politicians — with this difference. A true master of a craft understands what he is doing. Habitual liars find it harder and harder to keep track of when they are lying and when they aren’t.

Some reasons for the increase in lying are pretty obvious. There are fewer consequences for lying. It is harder to bring them to bear. Honesty isn’t drilled into children as once it was. AI and social media have made it much easier not only to lie but also to organize in doing so.

Less obvious reasons involve advances in lying’s technique. Adolf Hitler promulgated the Big Lie: one so enormous that no one can believe you would tell such a whopper. Our version works not by size but by numbers: If you lie about everything, nobody can believe you would lie so much. Politicians who lie about everything also lie that everything their opponents say is a lie.

The sun is shining? There you go again. I’m lying? You’re just trying to distract attention.

New techniques of lying get a boost from new technologies for making elites irresponsible to those whom they supposedly serve. The political organization of deviance. The whetting of tribal hatreds. The cultivation of a permanent crisis. The development of addictive social media.

Beyond advances in techniques are changes in the motives for using them. We are in a slow-burning constitutional crisis. Older politicians lied mostly to cover up things like graft, but newer ones lie to cover up attempts to subvert the political system itself. Once someone has lied on a grand enough scale, he acquires a motive to lie even more grandly, just to keep from being exposed. With enough lying, the very act of exposing lies is discredited.

Lying could not make way so easily were it not for the fact that we are passing through a pandemic of lunacy, in which huge numbers of people, on both sides of the spectrum, hold beliefs that are not just loopy, but harmful and contagious. In a recent book, I detail 30 of these delusions, but for the moment, let me focus on two that are especially relevant to political lying.

One concerns the nature of right and wrong: Sometimes we just have to do the wrong thing. We think that to make things come out right, we may lie.

More and more of the things that pass under the name of making things better make them inexpressibly worse. We justify burning down neighborhoods “to advance racial justice.” We lie about political opponents “because they want to do bad things.” We give false testimony “because we just know” the accused person must deserve something bad. We unjustly penalize honest people “just to give others a chance.” We “solve the problem” of unwanted children by killing them all, telling ourselves that they aren’t really children unless we choose to believe that they are. We slaughter countless numbers so that no one will have a “poorer quality of life.”

We lie about all of it.

The other concerns the nature of reality: Things are whatever we say they are. It’s easy to be indifferent to the facts if you think saying something makes it true. One day in a university course I teach, we were discussing the nature of marriage. Some students were puzzled: How could marriage have a nature? As one said, “We can define things however we want.”

Many of their teachers would have agreed because “truth is whatever works.” Presumably, a belief “works” if it brings about what we desire. But a lie might easily do that, and by this pragmatist theory, a lie that works isn’t actually a lie. If you live in an echo chamber in which everyone says the same thing, it’s easier still to think it is true. And our echo chambers are very well organized.

There is only one real antidote to all these lies and delusions, without which no other reform can succeed: thinking clearly. The hard thing is that we may not want to think clearly. May God grant us the grace to start wanting to.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics.