Will Duffy's sermon on deception
On August 6, 2023 Will Duffy, pastor & future creator of TFE, preached a sermon at his church on the topic of lying and deception.
As part of their desperate campaign to discredit TFE, flerfs found and cherry-picked a quote from this sermon:
After carefully looking at both sides of the debate, and after taking a very deep dive into everything I could possibly find in Scripture regarding lying and deception, I have come to the conclusion that neither lying nor deception are inherently immoral. If that wasn’t clear: sometimes a lie or deceit are not only necessary, but they are the right thing to do.[1]
Context
A full half-hour of context building up to this statement shows the enormous importance of the words “inherently” and “sometimes.” The entire sermon topic centered on exceptional cases of danger or conflict where innocent life is at stake, like the Hebrew midwives in Exodus 1:19 or Rahab in Joshua 2:5.
Duffy’s clear purpose was to explain a general and nuanced doctrine accounting for all situations in life, including rare ones—certainly not to excuse stereotypical deception for selfish or unjust purposes that breaks the Ninth Commandment “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”[2]
Flerf slander
Flat earthers hear this quote with their usual phobia of nuance, and instantly internalize it as “Will Duffy believes lying is okay.”[3] They then repeat this lie to maliciously discredit him, casting themselves as defenders of honesty—and they see no irony in this at all.
In addition to ignoring his context, they often misquote Duffy by actually omitting the word “inherently:”
Livestream with Joe Hanvey
On January 8, 2025 Will Duffy invited Joseph Hanvey onto a YouTube livestream, where Duffy confronted Hanvey for lying about his length of time being a flerf.
It began with this exchange:[4]
Hanvey: Yeah but you don’t think lying and deceiving is wrong, so it’s kinda funny.
Duffy: What makes you say that?
Hanvey: Your sermons.
Duffy: And did you listen to them, or did you only hear like a small clip?
Hanvey: Your summary is enough to know, bud.
…
Duffy: You did misrepresent me. I’ve never said “It’s perfectly fine to lie” or “It’s good to lie.” … For anybody that wants to actually go listen to what I said, my position is that it’s almost always wrong to lie and to deceive but there are rare exceptions where it’s okay and morally permissible.