My riddle-solving son asked me a simple question this past week that moved me beyond my area of expertise in physics. His metaphysical question stemmed from a discussion on how to judge his free-reading books based on their content. He had approached me and relayed a scenario where a character lied in order to save another character. Trying to apply our family rule of not finishing books when their heroes or heroines are promoting evil, he needed guidance after finding this character intentionally disobeying YHWH’s command found in Exodus 20:16 (Exodus 23:1, Deuteronomy 5:20 and its further elucidation in Leviticus 19:11-18).
So, is it right to do wrong to do right? And specifically, is it okay to tell a lie if it helps, for instance, hide a family from the Gestapo in Amsterdam in 1942? This was my example on top of my son's own, and I was impressed that he was able to recall The Diary of Anne Frank, the book we had read during the thick sap of 2020.
This rule, quandary, and example together brings to mind a detouring set of issues that are worth addressing. One: a character struggling with evil is different than a character resorting to or promoting it. And two: characters encountering evil in literature can unintentionally promote it with an act of omission. For example, I remember censoring two passages in Anne’s diary where she expressed her struggle with abominable desires and left the issue unresolved as if her clearly abominable curiosities were acceptable. The concept of publishing a private diary only complicates the issue further, but it is not the case with Anne Frank, who admits in her writing that though she started out privately, she later was editing it through with hopes of getting it published. Meaning, she picked up the chore and responsibility of authorship to either remove or morally conclude the evil matter.
Swinging again at this pitch to hopefully hit something hard enough to make it to first, there is a different level of tolerance and compromise in certain types of literature. A historical account that accurately portrays the consequences of evil without glorifying it is one type. A fictional tale that is hoping to prove a point with a character through a counter example has a different bar to meet. And in either case, the author can crudely or subtly veer their good characters into causing curiosity if not outright promoting sin. This is a weighty responsibility on the author, who alone is charged with crafting their story and its moral. Some feedback that my mother gave me on my first published novel also drove this home for me. My skepticism of authors will no doubt surface here, and I have my reasons. Early on in my youth, I lost the blind confidence I had in authors from one author in particular that had put a cool F-14 Tomcat picture on the cover of his book and gave no hint as to the adult content he had barfed into the first three chapters, and it’s why I have such a censoring paradigm for my son. So now I push setting down books when the heroes or heroines start dabbling in evil because, as I have since discovered, there is always better literature out there to read, a plethora of it. In fact, I was about to call an end to our reading of The Diary of Anne Frank except that her breaching entries were short and the topic shortly abandoned. I will admit and I’m sure my son will agree that struggling with evil verses promoting evil is a smudged and hard to decipher fine line.
Returning to the original sin that sparked this boundary laying discussion, Matthew 5:33-48 touches on the concept of dishonesty. To tackle this metaphysical topic, I looked to Yeshua and his perspective on taking oaths. An oath certainly characterizes honesty when I put my fist up to my chin and think about it. It puts language under contract and usually puts a consequence on switching true to false, sealed to open, yes to no, and the like. An oath is even more lenient than a lie because it can be unintentionally broken. Whereas a lie, if truly a lie, is premeditated. Intention is a critical factor at the end of this argument, but this river of Biblical thought might empty into a different river delta than you might expect. Then again, maybe not. Yeshua begins his master point by dismissing oaths, moves to setting the standard of inherent honesty, touches on unbiased motives, and finishes with his Father’s expectation of obedience. It’s beyond intriguing to tie the concept of visible honesty, I.e. contracts, to loving your enemies, and then to a command claiming you would not be righteous without compliance. But it answers the “aiding Anne Frank” dilemma. I will summarize: Let your yes be yes and your no be no, even to the Gestapo.
Did I open a dangerous door?
Basing a principle on testimonials is the true danger and is why stories need to be screened against the Biblical commands of the Torah. The commands of YHWH lay the grounds for the whole of the Bible, and the Bible should set the standard for righteousness in stories, novels, and life. Not vice-versa. The late Ravi Zacharias made this point emphatically and exemplified this practice repeatedly in his apologetic presentations at universities around the world. I am forever grateful to Ravi for his teachings. Even Justice Amy Coney Barrett during her senate confirmation hearing exuded this philosophy in her repeated answer, “I’m not going to answer hypotheticals.” Hypotheticals, fictional novels, and embellished narratives are where morality should be demonstrated, not established.
This backdrop demands that the title of this blog be left as it is instead of changing it to a question. Honesty should be completely honest.
Leviticus 19:11-18 sets the Biblical standard for lying, and the passage predictably resembles a chunk of Yeshua’s memorable Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:33-48). It’s that simple. Yeshua lived out this standard; his story is noble. And true to form, the heart-wrenching climax of Yeshua's story, found in Mark 14:53-72, bleeds this righteous moral, How Honest Honest Should Be. Yeshua's honest testimony is masterfully juxtaposed against those of his false accusers as well as against Peter's three denials.
Through his short ministry career, Yeshua may have dodged answering hypotheticals like Justice Barrett, but he always answered honestly. He often spoke the hard to hear truth. Yes, he sometimes held his tongue, and in certain cases, he answered questions with questions. The result of this behavior was as you might expect: he reaped the consequences of his tireless honesty. Belief in the whole Bible requires obedience even under persecution, and there will be persecution as there has always been persecution (John 15:9-27, Hebrews 11:32-12:3).
The principle remains: Honesty should be without blemish, and especially in captivating literature.
The consequence of such a pure measure is dividing. My natural instinct, yes even mine, is to dissociate with the individual who can’t keep a secret. And this phenomenon is quite the opposite that a parent who is teaching their child to be honest would expect. But notice who is trying to cover what. This sentence is one to mull over (with a fist under your chin): who is trying to cover what by dissociating from honest individuals. This natural inclination sheds more light on Matthew 10:16-31 and why the disciples' benefitting behavior of healing lepers, casting out demons, and raising the dead would strike such a discordant response from governments, neighbors, and family. Read it and you'll get what I mean. Yet this last passage also speaks the maxim that Yeshua so often deployed: clever wisdom.
"Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." Matthew 10:16
Could clever wisdom solve the same issues that my son, I, and those protecting the oppressed are struggling with, issues where faithful people are seemingly forced to resort to lying? Countering this question, the Biblical story of Rahab in Joshua 2 has been used to excuse intentional lying when not doing so would cause greater evil. Although this argument does lean toward using the rare hypotheticals as a proof text, I won't completely contest this point. However, here's an alternative view of the passage that lines up more with Yeshua's fulfillment of the law. It appears to the scan-reader that Rahab lies to the guards that have come to collect the two Israelite spies, but read what Rahab said in Joshua 2:4-5 again, and read it carefully. It's the cleverest riddle I've unpacked in a while. Rahab said:
"There came men unto me, but I wist (knew [past tense]) not whence they were (from where they had come [true]): And it came to pass about the time of shutting of the gate, when it was dark, that the men went out [soon to be true]: whither the men went I wot (know [present tense]) not: pursue after them quickly; for ye shall overtake them [also true]."
It is completely possible that Rahab did not know who the men were when they first came to her, which was in the past. Her clever line about the men leaving had a rather vague time stamp on it, a time that was still in the future as clarified in Joshua 2:7, making her statement, though grammatically presumptuous, true. Which way the men went she could not presently know either, because they had not yet departed in a direction. The guardsmen, too, would certainly overtake the spies because they would overtake, or pass by, the spies as soon as they departed the premises. This may be an interpretive stretch, but it makes me wonder over the Ruach, the Spirit, that moves within us and speaks for us during our hour of need. Would He not have spoken with the same convincing precision in Rahab, who had received His spies in peace (Hebrews 11:31). At the end of the matter, Rahab's words were still meant to deceive, and this deception was acknowledged and rewarded by YHWH. But is deception the same as lying?
What of the midwives in Egypt in Exodus 1 when Pharoah commanded them to kill every male child when the Israelite women were on the stool giving birth? This is another proof text used by many for sanctioning a lie in certain scenarios. The two wise midwives in their clever obedience of Pharoah's law have the same YHWH-fearing heart as Rahab does. Notice their obedience. By cleverly delaying their arrivals to the birthing stools of the Israelite women's babies, they appear to have found the loophole in the Pharoah's evil command so that they could obey both of their masters, Pharoah and YHWH. It was a frustrating dereliction of duty for the government, obviously, and it caused the government to charge others with the evil task of murder. But as far as it was in their abilities, it is completely plausible that the midwives spoke the truth to their task master.
I said earlier that intention was critical to the conclusion of this principle. When it comes down to lying and bearing false witness, it looks like many and most have good intentions, but they still sin by lying, authors, characters, and practitioners alike. If the intention in any of the above is to warrant or to promote lying, the stories they have constructed contradict YHWH's command and, in my humble opinion, can in good conscience be returned to the library unread. However, if the intention for deception is to dance out from between a rock and a hard place, the dancer needs to ask themselves at the outset if they had any hand in picking the rock and the hard place or if they were just unfairly thrust into it like Rahab or the Israelite midwives. Conclusively, while dodging the rare extreme, the principle is:
"Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another." Leviticus 19:11
Keep it real (honest),
JH
Photo by Ilse Orsel on Unsplash
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