The Invention of Lying

In chapter 5, we're introduced to our main character Mark as he ventures to visit his mother who has been relegated to a nursing facility.  In this reality tho the nursing facility is entitled 'A Sad Place for Hopeless Old People' rather than a nursing home or assisted living facility.  Unfortunately we are to believe that a world devoid of untruths leaves no room for any sense of hope.  

2 Timothy 2:24-26

²⁴And the servant of the Lord must not be quarrelsome (fighting and contending). Instead, he must be kindly to everyone and mild-tempered [preserving the bond of peace]; he must be a skilled and suitable teacher, patient and forbearing and willing to suffer wrong.

    ²⁵He must correct his opponents with courtesy and gentleness, in the hope that God may grant that they will repent and come to know the Truth [that they will perceive and recognize and become accurately acquainted with and acknowledge it],

    ²⁶And that they may come to their senses [and] escape out of the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him, [henceforth] to do His [God's] will.

In chapter 13 Mark is overcome by what has produced a wildfire of interest in what he had to tell his dying mother in his attempts to comfort her before she passed.  Anna comes to his side and urges him to share the 'word', as the information he has will 'change mankind forever'.  If Mark's lie is so desperately needed to be shared in this skewed sense of reality, just think how urgent our need for sharing absolute truth in this one is.  

1 Corinthians 14:1-3

^1-3Go after a life of love as if your life depended on it—because it does. Give yourselves to the gifts God gives you. Most of all, try to proclaim his truth. If you praise him in the private language of tongues, God understands you but no one else does, for you are sharing intimacies just between you and him. But when you proclaim his truth in everyday speech, you're letting others in on the truth so that they can grow and be strong and experience his presence with you.

In chapter 16 we find Mark and Anna on a park bench sharing perspectives on the people they see and each other.  In a very ironic twist we see just how deep depravity runs in this reality and in many ways parallels our own in that Anna is able to see so much more in Mark, but is ultimately unable to overcome the way the world is.  It is only through God's ability to regenerate us as people through the renewing of our minds that will ever lead to any sense of hope in our existence to come and His existence in the here and now.  

Titus 3:4-6

⁴But when the goodness and loving-kindness of God our Savior to man [as man] appeared,

    ⁵He saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but because of His own pity and mercy, by [the] cleansing [bath] of the new birth (regeneration) and renewing of the Holy Spirit,

    ⁶Which He poured out [so] richly upon us through Jesus Christ our Savior.