There’s more than one layer to the 11-count indictment for wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering that a federal grand jury issued Tuesday against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Underneath the political drama lies a simpler, more biblical interpretation to unearth. In essence, the SPLC lies, and it has used its lies to enrich itself at the expense of both innocent third parties and the country as a whole.

Political thespians will choose to read the situation in terms of political drama alone. Here is yet another episode in the second Trump administration’s campaign of political retribution. The twist is, this time the Trump administration’s target is an unsympathetic adversary who richly deserves every spoonful of calumny heaped upon it. Let the spigots’ unsolicited opinions spew forth!

If we only manage to hold our heads above the torrent of outrage sloshing odorously through the airwaves, then we shall be so much filthier but none the wiser. Let us then salvage what facts we can and extricate them from the flood of political opinion, that we may better examine them in the purer light of God’s Word.

“The story here is that the SPLC, which bills itself as an organization aimed at rooting out racism, was actually secretly bankrolling major figures in racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, the National Socialist (i.e., Nazi) Party of America, and a member of the leadership group that planned the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va.,” National Review’s Dan McLaughlin summarized concisely.

“The indictment details just shy of $2 million in transfers to those figures over the past twelve years,” McLaughlin added. “Given the small and marginal nature of these groups, the obvious conclusion is that the SPLC found that demand for racism outstripped the supply, so it had to spread cash around to keep talking up these fringe groups.” Furthermore, “this wasn’t just a matter of paying the small fish in these groups to rat out the big ones. The SPLC was allegedly bankrolling the leaders.”

Thus, while the SPLC was “holding itself out to be promoting justice,” said Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh on “This Week on Capitol Hill,” “what they were really doing was deceiving the American people, deceiving their donors, and deceiving financial institutions, all to promote … fake racism throughout the country.”

Two facts offer the clearest evidence that the SPLC realized what they were doing was wrong. First, they funneled payments to their “informants” through shell corporations that existed only on paper. Second, when caught, SPLC’s Interim President and CEO Brian Fair announced, “We no longer work with paid informants.”

Of course, no conservative with previous experience of the SPLC’s malevolence was surprised by the revelation that an organization that habitually smears mainstream conservative organizations as hate groups is willing to lie.

Where the indictment broke new ground was in exposing the unseen double-face of the SPLC — with one half condemning “hate” while the other half bankrolled it. “For years, the SPLC has used its platform to label and target organizations with whom it disagrees, often blurring the line between legitimate concern and ideological attack,” exclaimed Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “That kind of reckless characterization doesn’t just damage reputations, it has put lives at risk.” In 2012, a gunman inspired by the SPLC “hate map” opened fire at FRC headquarters in Washington, D.C., an incident for which the SPLC has never apologized nor been held accountable.

Thus, Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) spoke for most when she said on “Washington Watch,” “I have known for a long time that SPLC was a fraud, but I never had the understanding that they were the ones that were creating their own straw men so that they could knock them down.”

Those are the facts. Now, before we catch cholera, let us haul them out of the political muck to assess these actions in the clarifying light of God’s Word.

The question that presents itself to our minds most forcefully is: why would anyone do something like this? The Bible’s book of wisdom offers an answer: “Whoever hates disguises himself with his lips and harbors deceit in his heart” (Proverbs 26:24). However, this only leads to further questions. How is hatred connected to deceit? And, if the SPLC harbored hatred, who was the object?

Perkins attempted to answer those questions by describing how the SPLC has changed from being a civil rights organization targeting racists to a left-wing organization targeting conservatives. “They were creating these groups and propping them up so that they could raise more money — but there seems to be more to that,” Perkins suggested. “They were raising these groups up, elevating them, making the threat look great, and then taking conservative organizations and putting them alongside them. And then the corporate America actually took this labeling that the Southern Poverty Law Center had and began to deplatform, ‘cancel,’ other conservative organizations.”

Thus, by presenting a false front as an “anti-hate” group, the SPLC managed to harmfully smear the groups it hated — anyone who dared to stand for conservative principles. The irony is too apparent to miss: the organization that popularized the “hate” label also harbored what they condemned.

What were the consequences of the SPLC’s lies? Once again, Proverbs provides an answer, “deceit is in the heart of those who devise evil” (Proverbs 12:20). It’s hard to describe what the SPLC did as anything other than “devising evil.” Even the SPLC publicly condemned the fringe extremist organizations whose leaders they secretly bankrolled.

This duplicitous behavior was “predatory,” said Singh. “They were actually propping all this up by paying these sources to go out and incite racial acts, all while holding themselves out to be the arbiter of who is right and wrong in the public speech space.”

For the SPLC to hold itself out as a moral arbiter, despite the corruption it knew within, suggests that it suffered from delusions of invincibility, like the wicked oppressor in Psalm 10. “As for all his foes, he puffs at them. He says in his heart, ‘I shall not be moved; throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity.’ His mouth is filled with cursing and deceit and oppression; under his tongue are mischief and iniquity” (Psalm 10:5-7).

From within this delusion of invincibility, the SPLC plotted to fraudulently destroy its political opponents. “Your tongue plots destruction, like a sharp razor, you worker of deceit” (Psalm 52:2).

Sadly, the SPLC’s deceitful schemes caused harm not only to its political opponents but to the nation as a whole. “They have done such lasting and horrific damage to race relations,” Hageman exclaimed. “They have torn us asunder with false allegations of racism and hatred and danger.”

It’s too early to say what might result from the federal indictment — what new evidence may emerge, what charges may be added or dropped. But it is clear that the SPLC’s public credibility has suffered a major blow from the exposure of its cynical fundraising ploys.

Such eventual accountability for the SPLC tastes like yet another proverb, “Bread gained by deceit is sweet to a man, but afterward his mouth will be full of gravel” (Proverbs 20:17). The reason is that, ultimately, the true arbiter of right and wrong, truth and falsehood holds court not in any human jurisdiction but in heaven. To the ultimate Judge, David prayed, “You destroy those who speak lies; the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man” (Psalm 5:6).

However, not everyone has learned the same lessons from the SPLC’s exposure. Those who prefer to float in the bilge water of politics never gain the perspective necessary to compare its practice to biblical wisdom. As a result, “I’m seeing organizations out there still defending this group,” said Hageman, when “everybody should be running from SPLC right now.”

As just one media example, USA Today claimed that the SPLC was only employing informants in “a tactic federal agencies have used for decades.” But “it wasn’t somebody who was an informant [in an extremist group]; it was people leading it,” Perkins countered. “Many of these organizations have been dead, and [the SPLC] resurrected them with their funds.”

For such indefensible behavior, the SPLC now must publicly answer.

This moment provides relief for those who found themselves innocent targets of the SPLC’s malicious hate. These unfairly smeared groups can now declare, “Let not those rejoice over me who are wrongfully my foes, and let not those wink the eye who hate me without cause. For they do not speak peace, but against those who are quiet in the land they devise words of deceit” (Psalm 35:19-20).

Perhaps human justice will hold the SPLC accountable. In any event, God certainly will.