Loopholes to God's words

As a kid, I was taught that lying is bad...just like every other kid. So instead of flat out lying, I would bend the truth or even leave out parts of it. I can't be considered a liar if I didn't make anything up right?

Then I came to Christ and I was taught that lying is a sin and it makes God unhappy. I was set on avoiding situations in which I needed to lie. I must say though situations do come up where I can't be completely honest so I did the same thing as I did as a kid, I bend the truth or just leave out some parts.

But as I started learning more about who God is and maturing more myself, I began to realize that even though my words technically aren't lies, my heart was full of deceit. When I bend the truth or even when I decide to leave out certain parts of them, my desire is to deceive the person whom I'm speaking to and God sees that. There's no way to hide our heart's intentions from God, he sees beyond the surface.

There was this one discussion I sat through and we were asked what would we do if someone came in demanding all christians to stand up and step on the bible; if we didn't, then we'd be killed. One guy said "I don't know..the bible is just a book; its not a symbol of God that we worship" (something around those lines). It's true, the bible is just a book; we don't worship it. Other religions have statues and animals and other things which are sacred to them and they worship them but we have a direct relationship with our God and by no means do we ever worship the bible in his place. (Don't get me wrong, the bible is definitely an important book, I'm just saying its not interchangeable with God himself) However, in that situation what is the real intention for stepping on the bible? Is it not because of our fear of death?

So many times I feel people try to find loopholes to God's words. He tells us not to lie so we circle around different things to avoid actually lying. He tells us not to steal and we come up with a million reasons why downloading music is right. He tells us to love others and we can come up with thousands of justifications for being unloving. Yeah the words that come out of our mouth sounds right and I guess it can justify things...but God sees the heart. He sees how we're trying to deceive, he sees our lack of faith in him, our willingness to betray him once things go wrong.

By no means am I trying to condemn anyone, I guess my point is that there are no loopholes to the bible. God tells it to you straight what he wants, he wants us to let go of our past selves and be reborn in him..reflecting who Christ is. There's no way for us to look into God's words and try to find a way to continue living the lives that we led prior to accepting Christ...it just doesn't exist.

He said to them, "You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts" - Luke 16:15