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0:20 Welcome back to the Daily Blade. 0:22 For the next two weeks, we're going to be pulling some biblical themes from Homer's The Odyssey. 0:26 Yesterday we looked at a princess who decided to care for Odysseus as opposed to running from him. 0:30 But today's lesson is going to be a little bit tougher to deal with, and that's because the hero of the story is actually the guy in the wrong. 0:36 So Odysseus and his men land on an island and wander into a cave belonging to a cyclops named Polyphemus or Polyphemus, who traps them inside a boulder with a boulder and starts eating the men two at a time. 0:50 Okay. 0:50 So cornered, Odysseus relies on his sharpest weapon, his mind. 0:56 So he gets Polyphemus drunk, and when the giant asks his name, Odysseus says, My name is no man. 1:04 And so in some translations it's nobody. 1:07 And that night, once Polyphemus is passed out, Odysseus and his men drive a sharpened stake into his one eye. 1:14 And so the giant wakes up screaming, and the other cyclopses, they actually come running, you know, shouting through the rocks, is someone attacking you? 1:21 And Polyphemus screams back, No man is killing me by force. 1:26 No man is killing me by fraud. 1:29 And so the other cyclopses, they hear that and they go back to dead to bed, right? 1:33 Because if no man is attacking him, then there's nothing to help with, right? 1:38 So for Odysseus, it's a brilliant lie. 1:41 But it's a lie nonetheless. 1:43 And it's a defining trait of Odysseus. 1:46 His Greek nickname is Polytropos, which means the man of many turns. 1:51 And so he always has another angle, right? 1:53 And so he lied to the Cyclops here, and later he even invents, you know, a whole fake biography and backstory to fool his own family. 2:01 And here's the, I guess, darkly funny part of all this. 2:04 In book 14 of the Odyssey, midway through telling a servant a made-up story about his life, Odysseus says without a shred of irony, I hate a man even as I hate Hellfire, who lets his poverty tempt him into lying. 2:18 I mean, this dude is literally in the middle of a lie, and then he says that line. 2:23 I mean, it's just astonishing, right? 2:24 No awareness. 2:26 Now, the temptation might be to let Odysseus off the hook because he's the hero in the story, right? 2:31 He's the protagonist of the epic, but we just can't let Odysseus off that hook. 2:35 I mean, you see, when we read the Bible, it doesn't allow us to grade deception on a curve based on how clever the deception was or how good the outcome turned out to be. 2:45 And so if we go to Exodus 20 very famously, this lists out the Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses. 2:51 And these Ten Commandments were not just carved into stone tablets, they were carved permanently into the moral architecture of the entire universe. 2:59 And this is what we see in Exodus 20, verse 16. 3:03 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. 3:06 So notice that there is no hedging in this commandment. 3:10 Like it doesn't say, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor unless you're trapped, or unless it's tactically brilliant for you to do it. 3:19 No, it's you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, period. 3:24 And Proverbs 12 22 applies here as well. 3:27 Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who act faithfully are as delight. 3:33 It's an abomination. 3:35 So this is the same word used for idol worship. 3:38 So God is not filing deception and lying under the category of understandable survival tactics. 3:44 He files it as a rebellion against God, who made telling the truth the foundation of trust between image bearers. 3:51 And look, I know some of you are already thinking about the hard cases and examples from scripture where deception led to what we see as positive things, right? 3:58 We have Rahab hiding the spies. 4:00 We have the midwives lying to Pharaoh to save the babies from slaughter, and there are other examples. 4:05 But notice the difference between those lies and many of the lies that Odysseus tells in the Odyssey. 4:11 The lies of Rahab and the midwives protected innocent lives from a murderous regime. 4:17 And even then, you know, Scripture treats them as exceptions. 4:20 Like it doesn't treat them as a green light for everybody for all time. 4:24 You know, Odysseus isn't protecting anyone when he lies to his own wife and servants for years after he's already safely returned home. 4:31 And this is a big key. 4:33 Odysseus lies because he became increasingly comfortable with lying. 4:39 It's just a default setting for him now. 4:41 And here's where this applies to all of us listening to this today. 4:45 Most of you aren't lying to, you know, a giant cyclops in order to escape, you know, a cave uneaten, right? 4:51 But I would bet a buffalo nickel that all of us have a no-man mode. 4:57 Right? 4:58 This is the version of ourselves that we deploy when the truth is inconvenient. 5:03 So we'll exaggerate a story about a hunt that we went on. 5:06 We'll feed our wife a half-truth about where the money went. 5:10 We'll give the predictable I'm fine answer to our small groups when we're quietly falling apart on the inside. 5:17 You see, the big danger of the lies that Odysseus tells is that they work. 5:22 The main danger is that those lies typically will work in the short term. 5:28 That's why they're tempting to begin with. 5:31 A man that has convinced himself that he only lies when it's strategically necessary is one more lie, one crisis away from becoming Odysseus or no man at full volume. 5:43 So brilliant and capable, but also completely untrustworthy. 5:48 So I want you to keep this question in mind this week. 5:51 When am I most tempted to shift into no man mode? 5:55 So I want you to identify the circumstances and the people that you tend to deceive because it will benefit you. 6:00 This could be your wife, your children, your business partners, the people in your Sunday school, the people at the gym, like whatever. 6:05 And I want you to dedicate yourself to telling the truth to these people, regardless of what it might cost you. 6:11 And before we close out, just keep this in mind. 6:13 Odysseus's lies worked because they were clever, but cleverness is not wisdom. 6:19 And Homer elucidates this in the Odyssey. 6:22 This trick that he pulls causes the Cyclops to pray to his father Poseidon for revenge against Odysseus. 6:28 And this turns Odysseus' trip home into a 20-year disaster zone. 6:33 And guys don't miss this. 6:35 The lie that saved Odysseus for one night cost him for the next two decades. 6:42 And that's usually how it works with the truth that you've been managing instead of telling, right? 6:47 Your lying might buy you an evening or two of peace and quiet, but could generate tremendous downstream consequences that you won't see coming until you're already out at sea wondering why everything keeps going wrong.