Don't You Ever Lie to Me Again

You are culpable for the words you speak.
Even if you don't know the words are a lie.
Even if you're just being a parrot.
Even if you think I shouldn't take your words so seriously.

It's your responsibility to know the veracity of what you're saying. 

And of course I'm going to take you seriously, you've been telling me this whole time that you have the infallible truth sorted out, you have the mystery of God written down to a science of certitude. You have maps and charts laying out the path, you have a perfect compass.

Of course I was going to take you seriously. 

Until every brick in the wall crumbled, because I met other people.

People who weren't incarnate straw men fallacies,
People spouting complicated ideas, not platitudes.
People living complicated lives.

Flesh and blood beings who are bearing the image of God as perfectly and imperfectly as
YOU. 

You can backtrack now and say you didn't mean any of it as a gross generalization, but you didn't just paint with a broad brush:
You painted with the wrong colors.
Painting people who dared to disagree with you or live differently than you as caricatures, and yourself as the manifestation of truth.
(And we both know there's only one Body whose ever been that).

I don't trust one word that comes from your mouth.
If you ever try to lie to me again
I will bring down the full fury of whips against the table of a merchant
selling atonement
for the one-time low price
of everything I have
while his fingers are crossed behind his back. 

But a tiny spark can set a great forest on fire.
And the tongue is a flame of fire.
It is a whole world of wickedness, corrupting your entire body. It can set your whole life on fire, for it is set on fire by hell itself.
-St. James