Frederick Buechner wrote:

What makes lying an evil is not only that the world is deceived by it, but that we are dehumanized by it.*

Now think about the president and his sixty million supporters. Through his lying and their acceptance of it and endorsement of it are they dehumanizing the rest of us, dehumanizing to the point of being willing, in fact wanting, to eliminate the rest of us?

We are already seeing the dehumanizing of Blacks, Latinos and Muslims by the president’s lies. Are they being set up for elimination? That is what war does. We dehumanize the “other” in order to destroy that which we dehumanize. That is what happened in Germany in my lifetime. Jews were dehumanized so they could be “eliminated.”

Hitler lied
and the Nazis loved the lie
and millions died.

We can’t laugh off the president’s lies. Do not be deceived by them. The lies are evil and the logical consequence of evil is death.

We are given the gift of speech and with that gift we praise God and curse our neighbor.

Speak truth to lies before the devil stands at the door and knocks pretending to be Jesus.

*originally published in Beyond Words.