WHY PEOPLE BELEIVE LIES
The essential task of spiritual warfare is to change hearts and minds of Christian Nationalists by guiding them through the process of rejecting lies they believe in favor of truth. This is a sound principle except for one fact: Most people find it easier to believe a lie than face the truth. 

Robert Lynd; Irish essayist put it this way:

“It is easier to believe a lie that one has heard a thousand times than to believe a fact that one has never heard before.”

And Hilda Van Stockum, in her book The Borrowed House wrote this about lies and truth. 

“It is much easier to believe lies than the truth.”

“Why?” asked Janna.

“Because lies are manufactured to satisfy the emotions.

A mother would rather believe her pretty girl lazy than accept the fact that she’s a dumb cluck. Germans would rather believe they were stabbed in the back than that they lost a fair fight. And anyone would rather blame someone else for his misfortunes.

The truth is hard. Don’t fool with it unless you realize that.”

A deeper look at the power of lies is the topic of the NPR podcast‘ “Useful Delusions’ Examines How Beliefs Can Be Powerful In Positive And Negative Ways” with the Shankar Vedantam, the author of Useful Delusions.

And many literary icons have recorded their own notable views on lies and truth found in this link.

PsychCentral makes a more scientific analysis of lies and truth that is summarized in this excerpt:

Misinformation is especially likely to stick when it conforms to our pre-existing political, religious, or social point of view, according to the researchers. Because of this, ideology and personal worldviews can be especially difficult obstacles to overcome. This means that if you believe something for political or religious reasons, it’s far harder to change a person’s mind and have them understand a fact that differs from that person’s opinion.

See Why Do We Believe Lies Even After They Are Proven Wrong? for the entire article in PsychCentral.

Christian Nationalism is based on religious beliefs that are represented as absolute truths, but which are in fact distortions  and wrong interpretations (i.e., lies) of the literal words of the bible. They have also distorted or misrepresented aspects of American history to reinforce their religious beliefs and doctrines about dominionism.

Because truth is the only antidote for lies, truth is the only way to confront Christian Nationalism successfully. That sounds simple enough in principle, but in practice sharing truth successfully is tricky business. Sharing truth is not just a matter setting someone straight in a conversation, posting it on social media, or of floating it out there in the universe hoping that unbelievers will spontaneously grab hold of it. If mere access to truth was all that was needed, the world would be a better place and there would be no need to confront something called Christian Nationalism.

What most aspiring truth-tellers don’t understand is that there are very good reasons why people believe lies. Here are a few examples of those reasons:

• • People whom they trusted taught them that those lies are truth.
  • When they accept that what they were taught were lies, and not truth, they are forced to accept that their teachers were liars.
  • Friends, neighbors and relatives they trust also believe those lies to be truth.
  • Rejecting those lies would cause serious problems in relationships with people they otherwise trust and care about.
  • Belief in lies, or at least pretending to believe them, provides personal benefits of one kind or another. Therefore, it may be impossible for some people to reject those lies in favor of newly discovered truth. See this link for an interview with the author of the book Useful Delusions.
  • It is very hard for anyone to reject lies they have believed, or pretended to believe, because they would have to admit to friends, neighbors and relatives that have changed their beliefs.
  • Pride inhibits people from admitting that they have believed and shared lies.
  • Fear of being humiliated inhibits people from acknowledging truth that conflicts with lies they have believed.
  • Because most people readily share their beliefs with others, those who change their beliefs may be plagued by guilt over the fact that the beliefs they share were lies — not truth.
  • People whose beliefs are challenged aggressively, and without sensitivity, are more likely to double down on their beliefs rather than change their minds or hearts.
  • Because Christian Nationalism is inextricably tied to religion, rejection of Christian Nationalist lies equates with rejection of religious beliefs which people tend to hold onto very tightly.

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What we learn from these very real problems with rejection of lies and acceptance of truth is this:

Intellectual truth, as powerful and virtuous as it may be, may not be adequate to convince anyone to reject lies to which they are strongly attached.

And the corollary to this problem is this:

Change of minds will not occur unless there is also a change of heart that offsets the problems that cause people to keep believing, or pretending to believe, lies to which they are strongly attached.

The tricky part of changing hearts and minds is negotiating these very human issues in ways that do good without doing harm. Doing harm happens when we incite people to double down on their beliefs. Doing good happens when we do the following:

• • Accept Christian Nationalists as normal people who are different from you only in the sense that, for their own unique reasons, they believe lies taught to them by people whom they trust.
  • Accept that Christian Nationalists are not weird, ignorant, uneducated, backward, power hungry people.
  • Accept that success in sharing truth depends on skill at building trust that will open them up to accepting that they have been deceived by lies propagated by political/religious leaders
  • Practice grace and sensitivity that recognizes that Christian Nationalists are real people with human needs that must be accommodated if we hope to be successful when we share truth with them.