RIDIN' FOR THE BRAND



Oh, I did it again!  I found myself standing beside one of the leaders of our cowboy club who is extremely
high maintenance.  You know the kind, hard to take and even harder to avoid.  He usually manages to
drink his glass empty, but even when it is full it is half empty.  I should have known better than to ask a
question or make a comment about Trailhead, but I did and now I had to listen to his tirade about how
right he is and how wrong everyone else is.
As I listened I became increasingly uncomfortable.  I didn’t agree with him but good sense did prevail and
I managed to keep my mouth shut.  Rules are for people who are inclined to follow them.  Rule breakers
are problem makers.  The very existence of a rule does not necessarily mean that it is a bad thing.  In this
game of cowboy the rules put forth by SASS  attempt to add some semblance of order to the game.  This
particular cowboy is very vocal that the only right way is his way and he hates SASS.
I’m not sure why and I’m not even sure I want to know.  I have learned the hard way that to disagree with
him is to open myself up to become the brunt of his sarcastic tirade of the moment.  How bad it is
depends entirely upon the current degree of drunkenness.  Rules or no rules, he knows best.  The fact
that he is no longer a shooter but an – I’m not sure how you would describe his role in this game of
cowboy that we play.  He loves to walk about in costume wearing his guns and struggle to remain
upright.  The ‘good ole boy system’ keeps him in place, and I assume in place he will remain until God
intervenes.  I begin looking for some way to excuse myself.  That’s a nice way of saying I started to
attempt to invent a little white lie as an excuse to end this tirade.
Jesus taught us that we should let our “yes” be “yes” and our “no”, “no”. (Matt 5:37)  That translates into
being truthful, even when confronted by a drunk.  We are all very creative when it comes to our little
departures from the truth, especially our rationalizations that make it appear right for us to say what we
do.  Christians are very good at doing this sort of thing.  Especially when it is a situation that no one wants
to be caught in.  That didn’t make it any easier as my conscience begin to bother me.  To keep from
digging myself a deeper hole than I was already standing in, I simply said, “Excuse me” and walked
away.  He was still talking when I turned the corner.
Is there ever an acceptable excuse for lying?  As I walked along the firing line I overhead a conversation I
was not supposed to hear.  A regular attender at cowboy church let loose with a string of explicatives that
would never be appropriate in any environment.  I begin to wonder, which was the lie? The man I prayed
with in church earlier this morning or the man I was now witnessing on the firing line?  They looked the
same but sure didn’t sound the same.  Did the immediate problems he was experiencing with his guns
make the language any more acceptable than my attempting to cut short my unwanted conversation?
David Gushee  was right when he said that Christians must put away hair-splitting legalism, ingenious
rationalizations, and dubious casuistry.  If we want to follow Jesus, then we must retrain ourselves to put
away deceit, guile, duplicity, dissembling, misleading, exaggeration, and yes, outright lying.  Following
Jesus does take effort.
We must learn to dwell in truth, like “the God of truth” (Ps 31:5) and like Jesus, who is “full of grace and
truth” (Jn 1:14).  It is not just that God speaks the truth, but, also that He is true.  He is reliable in keeping
His covenant commitments.  One aspect of God’s being true is that His words are true.  The same
attribute should characterize us.
When we step to the firing line, every cowboy and cowgirl on our posse must know that “what you see is
what you get.”  The Cowboy Way is to “ride hard, shoot straight, and to tell the truth.”  We should be
reminding everyone around us that truth is not simply something that is believed or even spoken.  Our
faith is anchored in the One who is truth.  When we commit to follow Him, truth is a way of being, a place
as comfortable to us as the six-guns we wear.  Truth must be a commitment of each cowboy and cowgirl.  
This commitment is to be verified by our actions – beginning with the words that come out of our mouths.

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Single Action Shooting Society, Inc, 232585 La Palma Ave., Yorba Linda, California 92887
Gushee, David P. “The Truth About Deceit”. Christianity Today. March 2006. 68.

© Carl H. Lenz, 2007
The Truth About Lying