The Phenomenon Lying

Someone I'd wanted to consider as family has made the final push away. It hurts, because not only had I confronted him about his lying, but after admitting to his wrong and expressing that he will try to be honest in the future, he almost immediately dives headlong back into deceit. It seems that he absolutely hates me and anyone like me; for what reason? I will never know for sure, but I can venture to guess.

What he wants is so severely in conflict with what myself and my own seek to have. I won't claim to know what it is that he wants, but I'll say that, for me, I have always desired to daily experience the deepest, truest love and live in the light of the starkest truth. These I have found only in Jesus Christ. Were this guy looking for anything close to truth or beauty or goodness, I do not doubt that he should be a much different sort of person.

As it is, he is looking for none of the above. What can I do, but stare on at him? He is driving himself into misery with all these lies, and while I can't help but ache at heart for what kind of life he's headed towards I cannot lift a hand to help him. There is nothing I can defend him in, and it's with an almost certainty that I say he'd probably slap my hand away anyway. He is angry, vengeful even. A real, living gollum.

Being someone who's grown up in church all my life, I've never encountered a person like him. I've been annoyed, frustrated or spiteful of certain types of people, but in the end I have to concede that they have their good and admirable qualities and, in some cases, their genuine faith. I am so amazed by this one person's utter and total lack of regard for anything good that I'm driven beyond any sort of particular feeling or word. I've always believed in goodness, even when circumstances didn't allow for very much evidence of it (church splits, murder, broken families, drug abuse, physical abuse) and yet here is a person that is suspicious of the integrity of goodness.

I'm confused, light-headed. It's disheartening, and distressing because of the fact that I can do nothing to interfere or intercede. Here is a situation in which I can not step in and be right to do so. It is puzzling, but the right thing to do in this situation appears to be letting him suffer the consequences of his actions.

What can be done? Can such a hard heart be changed? Can a nation of such hard hearts be transformed?

Not by man's effort alone. Only as the Spirit allows.