This question comes up from time to time. What should you do if telling the truth would put you or others in harms way? Is it okay to tell a lie in such situations. Some people have argued that we are under no moral obligation to give the truth to someone who is morally evil. The argument is that God would want us to choose life over truth.
I’ve mentioned before that sometimes it is suggested that there is Biblical support for this, examples including Rahab and the Israelite midwives in Egypt. I don’t think that those examples do prove that God is okay with lying and deceit in certain situations. I explain in more detail why in regards to the midwives here. In summary:
- The Israelite boys are protected because the midwives do not co-operate with the Pharoah’s demands. It’s their bravery not any lying that preserves life.
- It is arguable as to whether or not the midwives do lie. It is unlikely that the Egyptians would have accepted their claims as credible. The example seems to be more one of ironic humour than deceit.
Here I want to pay more attention to the moral question though. I think the suggestion that lying is okay in certain circumstances is problematic for a few reasons. First because it suggests that we can rank one aspect of who God is over another. We are saying that life is more important than truth. Yet, I would suggest that God loves life more than truth. Secondly it separates out love and truth which again is to attempt to rank aspects of God’s character.
My third concern is that in effect, what we do is weaponise truth in a dangerous manner. It’s important to understand the sense in which I mean that truth is weaponised. Some of us may balk at that word but to clear, I’m not saying that “weaponisation” is in itself a bad thing. Morally we accept that self-defence is legitimate and in the case of a state, this includes the use of weapons to defend against military attack. However, not all weapons and not all use of weapons is a good thing, even with the justification of self-defence. For this reason, many of us would insist that using nuclear weapons, even in self defence as a last resort is morally wrong.
There is a sense in which truth is a weapon, the truth defeats evil by shining its light into the darkness of lies and deception. Often those who seek to harm, control, manipulate and bully rely on lies to do so. This is why I think that the weaponisation of truth in this way is dangerous and destructive. It actually robs truth of its power by relativising it and changing it from something that we submit to and which is objectively consistent into something unreliable and something that we can manipulate and mould for our use. The point is that if I can do this with truth, believing that it is for good, then others can also do it for ill. It also means that we are attempting to fight fire with fire. We become like those we seek to challenge.
What we do, when we say that it is okay to lie in certain situations is we make ourselves the lords and owners of truth. If we claim to be doing it to save lives, we are also seeking lordship over life and death. After all, how do you know what will happen. Even if you lie, you may not be believed and lives may still be lost.
Finally, I am concerned that if we permit people to use deception in the face of evil, then it distracts from other things that we should be encouraging them to do, perhaps things that are far more urgent. Like I said, you can lie to protect life and it might still fail. The better option might be to flee to saftey.
This comes back to a crucial point that I learnt many years back and often repeat. God’s grace is always more loving than human attempts at mercy, even when that grace sounds like law.
Faithroots 