The Invention of Lying

I'm not the biggest fan of Ricky Gervais I'll be honest. Seems like every character he plays is the same, and his jokes never really tickle me. So I was not especially hopeful at the release of this film.

The film in question is set in a world where lies do not exist. Everything is truthful. Therefore, everything is depressive. No-one is happy as far as this viewer could make out. When the first lie is coined however, the luck turns. Down-on-his-luck Mark (Gervais) invents the first lie, and suddenly he is a success, at his job, with his money. Not his love life as of yet.

What I did not expect in the film comes around one hour in. As Mark sits at the bedside of his dying mother, to supposedly comfort her fears of nothing in the afterlife, he invents a place of paradise, where all live happily ever after.

The twist of this of course is that apart from Mark, lies do not exist, and so the world soon catches on to what Mark has said, and demand to know more. And therefore, in a scene that most obviously parodies a scene that keen-Bible readers will recognise, Gervais' character stands before a crowd, with 10 directives on two folded pizza boxes, and he tells the world of the 'Man in the Sky', who not only averts disasters, but also causes them, and it is he who decides who lives and dies, and to get into this paradise, you must avoid doing three acts of wrongdoing (which only extends to extremes such as murder and rape, swearing and things do not count). Do one or two and you are all right, do three, and you face eternal punishment.

A whole religion is built around this idea, and Gervais' lies make his character rich and famous. Lies apparently, are a recipe for success, while just the truth depresses people. The fabrication and speculation of joy is merely an antidote to the depressing nature of truth. That is what this film promotes.

All the way through viewing this film, I found the plot an intriguing insight into the dominant secular ideology of the world. Truth is bad, lies soften you up and give you a good time before the inevitable, ignorance is bliss, so they say.

I wonder what you make of this?

As the film went on, my mind recalled the words of Jesus, as recorded in John's gospel, chapter eight, verse thirty two: "...you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

This comes at the end of Jesus speaking to some believers and telling them that if they trust in His word (the Bible), they will know the truth, and that truth will set them free.

It's interesting, the idea that the truth just depresses people, and that things like the Bible are lies to make people feel better. When in fact, when we see the truth of what the Bible says about the world, that we are fallen people in need of God's help, and that He has provided that help in Jesus' death on the cross, and we need ti trust in that help to be set free, we are indeed set free. That's the truth, and it is far from depressing. Truth frees us, and it is the gospel that is the truth that will truly set us free...