The penalty for duplicity

The sequence I will be following for a while will be use three sources: (1) Reflection on a secular quotation from a Christian worldview (2) Insight from the book of Acts (3) Psalm in meter or the application of a Proverb)

One thing is for sure, and that is that God was serious when he established his church. Jesus told his disciples that not even the “powers of hell” could stop it (Matt. 16:18). The story of Ananias and Sapphira demonstrates that resolve so dramatically. You’ll remember that the couple sold some property and brought the money to the apostles, but secretly kept back some. Since the assumption was that they have given the amount of the sale for the benefit of the needy, Peter faced them with the charge of lying. Exposed for his duplicity, Ananias dropped dead on the spot (Acts 5: 5). A few hours later Sapphira repeated the lie and joined her husband. God’s penalty for not telling the truth created a ground swell of fear in the group of believers. It sent the message that God expects the truth from those who claim to belong to him.
       The account emphasizes several important points worth keeping in mind. One is that God rejects all our attempts to present ourselves as someone other than the one that, in fact, we really are. The word is “duplicity,” a form of deceitfulness, double-dealing. In our story today, the couple was trying to gain favor with the group by selling and giving the proceeds to the needy, while at the same time keeping some for themselves. It was duplicitous because the same act said one thing to the church, but something else to the couple. It appears that God desires absolute clarity in the lives of those who claim to be members of his family. 
       For me, this brings up the question of adjusting one’s presentation for the “benefit” of different audiences. Just how far, if at all, does one go in the desire to make something more palpable for another? The desire to not upset another with, say, the seriousness of some misdemeanor, often elicits a well-intentioned misrepresentation of the issue. If a father is terribly injured in a car accident, the young child doesn’t need a detailed account of how much blood was left on the street. I believe we can all agree on how that should be told to the child. But there are an untold number of situations where the truth is compromised for personal gain. My sense is that all too often we craft our story in such a way that we come out ahead. That shouldn’t surprise us, because we know that Satan has the art of misrepresentation down to tee. He works full time at it. He is cunning and has been encouraging misrepresentation from the beginning. In the Garden he suggested to Eve that perhaps God was acting on his own behalf when he said, “Don’t eat of that one tree over there.”
       What Ananias and Sapphira did turned out to be a test of whether God was really serious with his call for truthfulness. They found out that it was, and that should speak to us as to how we are to relate to one another.  Remember when Jesus told his audience, “All you need say is ‘Yes’ if you mean yes, ‘No’ is you mean no; anything more than this comes from the Evil One” (Matt. 5:37 NJB).