At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
“An hypocrite with his mouth destroyeth his neighbour: But through knowledge shall the just be delivered” (Proverbs 11:9).
A hypocrite is someone who is two-faced. In this proverb, he destroys his neighbor, and the implication seems plain that he does it by presenting one face to his neighbor, and the other face to others outside. He tells the outsiders, for example, just part of the story, withholding key information.
The hypocrite is the one who puts this operation into motion. The fool is the one who passes that information on to the world of the Internet. This person is not a hypocrite, but his folly consists in the fact that he believes hypocrites. But it is not only a sin to tell lies, it is a sin to believe them, and this sin is compounded when a person believes them and passes them on.
Sometimes among those neighbors who get destroyed, certain just ones might be found. The same proverb tells us that they will be delivered “through knowledge.” Through knowledge of what? Well, it would appear that this is referring to knowledge of the situation that the hypocrite is lying about, and which the gullible ones are passing around as gospel truth.
As one who has been misrepresented in online controversies multiple times, I speak with a certain measure of authority here. Virtually every story can be told in such a way as to condemn the protagonist, and all that needs to happen is for certain key details to be left out. So it turns out that the best answer to lies and shades of truth would be something like “nothing but the truth, the whole truth, so help me God.”
