Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Fooling Hitler: Why Lying Is Sometimes a Good Thing

I'm sure you've seen the movie, "The Diary of Anne Frank," as well as a host of other movies ("Defiance," "The Hiding Place," etc.) where a group of Jewish people are hidden from Nazi soldiers by some hospitable individual or family who is trying to save their lives. Nazi soldiers would come to the house or apartment and search for any Jewish people that may have been there in order to cart them away to their certain torture and death. They would always ask the individual or family whether they were boarding any Jews. The individual and family, of course, would say, No.

I used to ask a question based upon this scenario, because for a long time, I believed that this set up a moral conundrum: If lying is of the devil, as he is the father of all lies, then is it ever right to lie? The answer of whatever person or group I was asking would usually be, No. The second question led me to ask, What if you lived in Nazi Germany and were hiding Jewish people? Would it be morally acceptable to lie? In other words, would the lie, which is always wrong, somehow become right simply because you were trying to save a life? We would usually conclude that it was wrong, but that perhaps because of the intent to save a life, God would have mercy for us not finding a better solution to the problem.

But what is interesting is that, as I taught through the Deuteronomistic History, I began to discover that I had misunderstood a couple of important things. The first one was that lying in the Bible has to do with doing harm to an innocent individual. It does not simply mean "to trick someone." We usually define lying as that which paints a picture to someone that is not true, but this is not what the Bible means by the term. Lying in the Bible is meant to destroy the innocent. That's why the original command is, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor" (Exod 20:16; Deut 5:20). In other words, it is deception perpetrated against one's fellow man in good standing in the community. It has nothing to do with what you say to wicked men. The New Testament citations and references to lying then are qualified by the original command in its Old Testament context.

I began to see, as we worked through Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings, that God tells his people to distort reality to either destroy or escape from the wicked. The Israelites are told (by God) to trick the inhabitants of Ai to come out of their walled fortress so that the Israelites can then destroy them (Josh 8:1-7). Jael tells Sisera to come into her tent to be safe and then puts a tent peg through his skull (Jud 5:17-21) and this act is praised, not condemned (6:24-27). God tells Samuel to tell a half truth to Saul as to why he is going to Bethlehem (1 Sam 16:1-5). Michal saves David's life by tricking his messengers with a household idol, and then saves her own life by lying and telling Saul that David threatened to kill her if she did not let him go (1 Sam 19:11-17). David fools the king of Achish into believing that he is insane, since the ancients believed that if you harm someone who is not right in their minds, you will incur the wrath of the gods who protect them (1 Sam 21:10-15). God Himself tells a spirit to go be a lying spirit in the mouths of the prophets of Baal, so that Ahab goes up to war and is killed (1 Kgs 22:19-23). Even in the New Testament, God is said to be the one who sends a deluding influence (lit. "God will send a [supernatural] work so that they believe what is a lie"). All of this seems to be through intermediaries, but the point is that God is the one who tells His people (or spirits) to do this.

I then realized that this is all connected to the meta-ethic of the Scripture that I've discussed many times before: what preserves covenant human life is good, and what works against covenant human life and preservation is evil. I say "covenant" human life in order to make the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, but in reality, as we've discussed before, it is the preservation of true humanity against false humanity that is at stake. Lying is a warfare tactic. It works to preserve the righteous and to end the wicked. It's only when that warfare tactic is turned against the righteous that it becomes evil, as it works against the preservation of true humanity, which is why it is evil.

So telling your wife that she doesn't look pretty in a dress because you don't want to sin is misguided. That has nothing to do with the sin of lying in the Bible. You may want to be honest for other reasons (you don't want her to be embarrassed in public, she really wants to know your opinion to make a decision on what to wear, etc.), but this has nothing to do with the biblical ethic of lying. Lying in the Bible is bearing false witness so that the innocent, true humanity, is not destroyed (of course they are innocent because Christ has made them so, not because they are innocent inherently). My point is simply that when the Nazis come knocking at your door, to not lie is to sin. There is no conundrum. There is no moral dilemma. There is only the preservation of true humanity against false humanity. There is only the ethic of creation and that which flows with creation and that which flows against it, that which works toward a human-filled earth and that which works toward a human-less world (in terms of true humanity, i.e., those who have taken upon the role of the image of God as agents of life). Hence, you should lie your butt off when you need to preserve your or someone else's innocent life from being snuffed out. Tickle the ears of the murderer. But bearing false witness to destroy the innocent or preserve the guilty/wicked is a great evil indeed. Hence, it makes the top ten commandments in the Bible, as lying is a war tactic to preserve the innocent and destroy the guilty.

This is one of many instances where the Bible corrects our misconceptions and religious theories that we impose upon the Scripture from our modern culture. It certainly corrected mine (and frankly there's just something intuitive that we were always misreading that in light of the Nazi scenario). It's not that God would have mercy for our lies to dogs. It's that He would have nothing but praise for us. There is no sin committed. There is only the righteous act of preserving human life, His people, and wiping murderers from the face of the earth. Preserving true human life is the very nature of what is "good" in the Bible. Hence, sometimes lying is a good thing.

So the devil is the father of lies in the biblical sense of the word. He works to deceive true humanity to become and remain false humanity. He is the destroyer, the murderer, of true humanity. He is the one who bears false witness against the truth and against the people of God. But God is the father of preserving human life through all sorts of tactics one would employ in warfare, as He is at war in the world with us. Hence, lying in our modern sense can either mimic the former or the latter, and be evil or good, depending upon to whom and for what purpose the lie is being concocted. I would say as a general rule, always tell the truth, but this post is for those extraordinary circumstances you may find yourself in one day that call for a lie of the divine craftiness variety, and you should know that you have God's full support in such a lie as that.

So the Scripture has corrected me, and I stand corrected. And what I learned was far better than what I thought I knew: that God is the trickster who tricks the tricky. He is the one who catches destroyers of the order that brings life and peace to His people in their own web of deception. He sets His people on a hill to shine with the truth of the gospel in order to preserve the lives of all of His elect. We are to speak the truth of the gospel at all times for this purpose, since we do not know from what guilty men God will make into innocent men. But when it comes to civil issues, no one has the right to withhold a lie if it will save an innocent person's life or lead murderers to their end. After all, we are in this epic battle with God to preserve creation and to destroy chaos. Let us then come to the truth about lying, and be ready to fool Hitler to save a saint, precisely, because that's what God would have us do.

8 comments:

  1. Two questions arose from the first half-or-so of your post:

    1 - Regarding the OT examples you gave of people who deceived: Yes, but we can find OT examples of people with multiple wives who were never directly admonished by God for that specific decision on their part either. Does that then justify poligamy in the same way your examples attempt to justify deception?

    2 - In the NT, the laws like murder and adultery are expanded in scope to include the thoughts/mind. Are you implying that the NT scope of lying/deception is somehow lessened or not to be expanded in like manner over the OT's more specific context of just bearing false witness?

    Thanks in advance for any clarity you can provide on these items.

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  2. Actually, I'd like to add a third question in light of the rest of your post:

    3 - Does this mindset not make you less trustworthy? It certainly communicates that sentiment to me. I feel as though if you are capable of deceiving others, you might choose to deceive me as well. Can i trust what you say? What if your reasoning is flawed and you choose to deceive me to my harm because you wrongly thought I was intending harm to you or the hypothetical Jews? The higher standard of seeking to avoid lying or not having to lie in the first place avoids this conundrum and promotes a more Christlike character on the whole.

    And, if you are caught in your lie about the Jews, what does that communicate about Christ? That he is a deceiver and liar? How is that a witness for Christ? Perhaps if your standard is not to lie, you don't put yourself in a situation where lying is a necessity. And, if you find yourself in such a circumstance unavoidably, you allow God the opportunity to act on your behalf to protect you from having to bear false witness by keeping the Nazis from even coming to your house in the first place.

    It seems being too willing to act like the world is a lack of faith, and attempting to then justify that weakness as godliness is sad.

    It seems you might be more concerned with weighing secondary temporal consequences than holding to a consistent Godly standard that is based in the ten commandments but obviously expands beyond that in light of the life and testimony of Jesus Christ (and the writings of the apostles) in the NT. By doing so that makes you seem (and indeed be) less reliable or trustworthy.

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  3. Jay,

    Please take the following a harsh rebuke in love. As a pastor to a well-meaning Christian whose religious philosophy will not only dishonor God, but possibly get thousands, if not millions, of people killed if it were to spread and create no safe haven for the innocent during times of genocide (or just whenever the innocent are at the mercy of wicked men), I offer you the response below in a very direct manner. Please take it in the spirit in which it is given.


    1 - Regarding the OT examples you gave of people who deceived: Yes, but we can find OT examples of people with multiple wives who were never directly admonished by God for that specific decision on their part either. Does that then justify poligamy in the same way your examples attempt to justify deception?

    Actually, I gave examples of people who deceived because they were told by God to do it, or when they deceived, they were praised as God’s agents by the Scripture itself. So let’s get that clear, as the rest of what you say follows from this misunderstanding. God isn’t merely accommodating or passing over people deceiving others. He’s commanding it.
    Second to this, polygamy is never condemned in the OT because it isn’t a sin in the OT. Possession of a spouse runs only from the husband to the wife, not from the wife to the husband. This is consistent with the OT world. God does accommodate here, I believe, but there is no command being broken. If lying, in the absolute sense in which you are taking it, were a sin that was commanded in the Ten Commandments, then God would not be accommodating to it, much less commanding it Himself.

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  4. 2 - In the NT, the laws like murder and adultery are expanded in scope to include the thoughts/mind. Are you implying that the NT scope of lying/deception is somehow lessened or not to be expanded in like manner over the OT's more specific context of just bearing false witness?

    Actually, the principles behind these laws are expanded and applied to all areas in our lives. They are not expanded in the sense that they now cover things they were never meant to address in their principles. Adultery was always meant to deal with marital possession and coveting another’s possession. It’s simply given also the wife in the NT based on another expanded principle of marriage (“the two become one flesh”). So the principles behind the laws are being expanded, rather than the case that you seem to be proposing, were the laws are morphed into different laws than what they once were.
    Hence, my point was that the principle behind bearing false witness or not bearing false witness has to do with preserving true humanity against false humanity, i.e., the murderers of true humanity. That principle is applied and expanded into the New Testament when we are told to preach the gospel to all people, speak the truth in love to our fellow brothers in Christ, live in the light of the truth revealed, etc. But to say that the principle is expanded to mean that we tell the truth at the cost of destroying true humanity and preserving false humanity is twisted, as it doesn’t actually expand the principle at all. Instead, it completely demolishes it when we partner with murderers in their murder simply because we want to tell the truth. What exactly is the good principle behind that?

    3 - Does this mindset not make you less trustworthy? It certainly communicates that sentiment to me. I feel as though if you are capable of deceiving others, you might choose to deceive me as well. Can i trust what you say?

    I don’t know. Are you a murderer? If you are, you certainly can’t trust me, as I will be absolutely lying to you to save human life and possibly end yours. If you’re not a murderer, then you can completely trust me, as I will not be blowing the whistle on your children when people come to my house asking for them so that they might hack them to pieces. A person who is untrustworthy would just tell them the truth. So the question really becomes, Does your commitment to some nebulous idea of telling the truth make you trustworthy to the innocent or only to the murderers of the innocent? Being trustworthy has to do with someone trusting you, not you spilling the beans on everyone. When in a war/survival situation, there are sides to take. You can join sides with the violent, or you can join the innocent. Jael could have been trustworthy to Sisera, the wicked, but she chose to be trustworthy to Debra and Barak, who were God’s agents to deliver God’s people from violence.
    Btw, gossips aren’t trustworthy people, and yet, according to the standard you’re laying out, since they tell the truth, we should consider them Christlike people. I disagree. I think that “he who goes about as a talebearer reveals secrets, but he who is trustworthy conceals a matter” (Prov 11:13).

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  5. "What if your reasoning is flawed and you choose to deceive me to my harm because you wrongly thought I was intending harm to you or the hypothetical Jews?"

    Then once I made sure I was wrong, I would apologize and seek repentance for a transgression (not a willful sin). Are you honestly arguing that it’s better to not defend the innocent from the violent because you might mistake a murderer for a friend? Would you apply this to other things, like defending your wife from someone swinging a knife at her? Maybe if you did something violent to save her, you’d be in the wrong because she was really just rehearsing a scene in a play? I’d rather risk the highly unlikely chance of misinterpretation than to risk the lives of the innocent, wouldn’t you?

    "The higher standard of seeking to avoid lying or not having to lie in the first place avoids this conundrum and promotes a more Christlike character on the whole."

    1. It would be nice if we lived on clouds, but we don’t. We live in a violent world, and in this world, Nazis, Hutus, Young Turks, the Khmer Rouge, the Taliban, Bloods, Crips, Serial Killers, etc. all really exist and it may be that God wants you to confront them someday, not hide away and hope that you won’t have to save someone’s life from them in order to spoil your Christian perfection.

    2. Saying that not deceiving the wicked is more Christlike is a bit odd. You are aware that Christ gave parables to muddy the reality of what He was saying to the unbelieving, rather than to speak the truth plainly to them, correct? His goal was to bring them further into their deception and unbelief by not allowing them to understand what He was saying, but present truth to them nonetheless, so that the truth He spoke would condemn them all the more.

    And you are also aware that Christ is the God of the OT who told people to lie, correct? And you are also aware that Christ is the God of the NT, who does a supernatural work in the lives of the wicked so that they believe a lie, correct? Apparently, Christ doesn’t make it on your list of being more Christlike. I’d be careful of judging the Christ of the Bible with the Christ of our modern conventions and empty ideals.

    "And, if you are caught in your lie about the Jews, what does that communicate about Christ? That he is a deceiver and liar?"

    Well, of course, my point is that lying in the Bible doesn’t have to do with tricking the wicked to bring them to destruction or to save the innocent from them. So I’m sure the murderers would think less of your Christianity, much like people think less of your Christianity when you may become angry over sin, because they have a false idea of what is being Christlike. I’m not going to live my life according to the perceptions of Christianity held by the wicked, but by what is actually Christlike.

    But if you ask what it communicates in heaven, and to those who know better, it communicates that He is a preserver of human life and One who does not give any regard to false humanity as being worthy to receive the truth.

    "How is that a witness for Christ?"

    See above.

    "Perhaps if your standard is not to lie, you don't put yourself in a situation where lying is a necessity."

    So you just don’t help the Tutsi in the first place, and if they run to your house for shelter, you just say, No? Do you put up a sign, saying, No Jews aloud? Sounds very Christian to me. When integrity is preserved at the cost of others, it is a false integrity, as it is not of love of others and God who seeks to preserve His people, but love of self and one’s own warped view of righteousness, rather than the Bible’s.

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  6. "And, if you find yourself in such a circumstance unavoidably, you allow God the opportunity to act on your behalf to protect you from having to bear false witness by keeping the Nazis from even coming to your house in the first place."

    Do you mean like He did when He kept the Jerichoans from coming to Rahab’s place, or like He did when Samuel, who fully trusted in Him and asked Him personally what he should do, and God told him to lie? Why didn’t God just say, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll just make it to where Saul will never ask you about it”?

    "It seems being too willing to act like the world is a lack of faith, and attempting to then justify that weakness as godliness is sad."

    Well, I do believe I said that these were extraordinary circumstances, not day to day events. But it is sad to act like the world and take upon ourselves their definitions of lying by shunning the very principle behind the act that sought to preserve human life and destroy the wicked. The attempt to justify our concept of lying at the expense of God’s Word, so that we can remain comfortable with what we already believe is a justification of our weaknesses indeed.

    "It seems you might be more concerned with weighing secondary temporal consequences than holding to a consistent Godly standard . . ."

    This sounds a bit Gnostic to me. Partnering with murderers in this world isn’t a secondary temporal consequence. It has eternal ramifications, as it is an evil I can liken only to a mother who is trusted by her child and is then thrown to the crocodiles by that very hand. We are to do good in this world at all times. I do not consider a willingness to follow God in His shared struggle with us against chaotic agents in the world as not being concerned with a godly standard, but rather holding up a godliness that is as high as heaven.

    " . . . that is based in the ten commandments but obviously expands beyond that in light of the life and testimony of Jesus Christ (and the writings of the apostles) in the NT. By doing so that makes you seem (and indeed be) less reliable or trustworthy."

    I’ve addressed this already. You’re simply imposing your concept of lying on the Ten Commandments that isn’t there. The command is not, Thou shalt not trick your enemy. Your interpretation lacks exegesis and is simply wrong in light of the entire Bible (OT and NT).
    Furthermore, you have not established a basis in interpreting the principle behind the law, which is the very principle behind the entire law, as it is the principle of good, as its definition is rooted in the creation and preservation of true humanity and the type of community that sustains them. You have interpreted Jesus and the apostles in a way that befits your modern concept of lying, but it is not in accordance with the Scriptures.
    And you have interpreted reliability and trustworthiness as someone who sides with murderers against those innocent people who might come to you for help (or, God forbid, even need you to step in and help them—thus placing yourself in the situation to deceive the violent). If you want to know who people would trust more after reading the post above, and your comments below it, just ask all of the people being slaughtered whose house they would run to and feel safer at, yours or mine.

    My suggestion for us is that we need to be quick to listen to Scripture and slow to speak our own ideas, lest we find ourselves, as the old and wise Gamaliel once said, “fighting against God,” and I would add, “in the misguided pursuit to fight for God.”

    Thanks for commenting.

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  7. Hey there, just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to defend your arguments. I appreciated reading your responses.

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