(35) S2E12 Consequentialism: The Moral Conundrum of Lying to Save Lives
Welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. We are continuing our discussion of consequentialism by looking at our third moral conundrum today. That is the moral conundrum of whether it is right to lie in order to save lives. I'm really excited about this conundrum because I think the first two, I can argue very well that it's fairly clear what the right answer is based on our accepted moral framework at this point. I think the lying one is a lot harder to handle because there's this intuition that a lot of us have that while lying is enough to send us to hell, we have one lie that's enough to damn us in the eyes of God.
Derek:Nevertheless, we believe that lying really isn't that bad, especially if you're going to lie to save somebody's life. How could something so small that is so inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, how could that be wrong to do in order to save somebody's life? And That's exactly what I want to talk about today. So in our scenario, we're going to say, of course we're in everybody's favorite place when we get to moral conundrums and thought experiments. We are in Nazi Germany, and we are harboring Jews and some Nazis, maybe some SS come knocking at the door, and they ask, are you hiding Jews?
Derek:What do you what do you do? At this point, most Christians are going to say that, well, you lie, of course, because, you know, when you weigh a lie versus having somebody get killed, the weight of the lie is so much smaller than the weight of somebody getting killed. There's this valuation here which is very clear. Some Christians might try to invoke a sort of double effect type thing which we talked about in our ectopic pregnancy episode, and they might say, Well, I would lie, but I'm really not wanting to lie, that's not my intent. My intent is to save lives.
Derek:Again, I really need to do an episode on double effect at some point to hash that out and explain in more detail what that means and you can look it up and I'll provide some resources here. But in a double effect, we cannot say that a double effect is a legitimate double effect if the means that one is using is evil. So we talked about how if a mother takes chemotherapy, the chemotherapy is intended to kill the cancer and a side effect is that it might kill the child. That's a legitimate double effect, employing chemotherapy whose job is not to kill the child in order to resolve the cancer. But if you are if you have a gun to your head and you're told to kill Jews in order to save your life, that's not a double effect because you're murdering to save your life.
Derek:If you kill somebody at the bottom of a transplant list who's gonna die anyway, you kill them to save somebody else on the bottom of a different transplant list. Well, that's immoral because you're using the death of somebody is is the means you're using to get to save somebody else's life. And we also looked at the the king's example where mothers trade off killing their kid to cannibalize them, and they do it in order to save their families from starvation, so as to save a greater number of people. But they do it with a means that is evil, which is killing their child, their children. So in this instance, you can't invoke a double effect because the means you are using in order to save life is not amoral, it is immoral.
Derek:It's lying. So lying is an evil that you are embracing and you can't invoke the double effect here. Nevertheless, Christians are going to argue that the weights are just so clear and far more clear than the ectopic pregnancy because rather than be a death, a life for a life or a death for a death, here we're talking about a lie, a little white lie, for the lives of a group of people. That is clearly more weighty to save the group of people. So I want to explore this and I want to show you why taking on if you accept lying as a legitimate means, as a moral means to accomplish something, you are going to create far far bigger problems for your Christian viewpoint and your your upholding of God than if you take the inconsequentialist view and just say, hey, we need to maintain holiness and do the right thing in all circumstances.
Derek:Then I'll talk about how that's not as hopeless as you might think it is. The biggest problem with embracing lying as a moral means is because it undermines God and His reliability. You might think, well that's stupid because how could a little white lie being immoral means, how could that undermine God's reliability when I'm saving people's lives? Well first, you know, if lying is sometimes the most moral path and if and if God is the most moral being who's never immoral, that must mean that lying is on the table for God. Right?
Derek:God is the standard of morality, and if lying can be moral at times, then lying is on the table for God to use. What Christians are essentially saying is that lying is one of those moral things like eating meat sacrificed to idols. It's bad in some circumstances, but in other circumstances it's not. Well, if that's the case and lying isn't always immoral, then God has lying at his disposal. What what good could lying possibly be to God?
Derek:I don't know. You could probably come up with with a lot of different scenarios, but I can think of I think can think of two scenarios where if lying was moral, God might want to use it. It might be something that God wanted or needed to use in order to accomplish the greatest good. So in the first scenario, right, let's say God's really a universalist. He knows that every single person is going to be saved because his son died for everybody and that blood will be applied to everybody.
Derek:And through time and and discipline and and pain and everything that life and purgatory or hell or whatever brings, everybody will eventually come to repent and know God. God's really a universalist. Well, God knows though that if he tells everybody he's a universalist, that's gonna be problematic for sin on this world because if everybody knows, hey, look, I'm gonna I'm gonna eventually be in heaven with God and live an awesome life. So while I'm here on Earth, I might as well just do whatever I want. Right?
Derek:I've got I've got all the time in the world to end up repenting and coming to God. So instead of telling people that God's a universalist, God decides to tell them that there's this place of eternal torment and fire, hell. And by him telling people that, it's actually the greatest good because it curbs immorality and evil and pain and suffering on earth more than if God would tell the truth. Now, we could reverse that scenario and play it the opposite way and come to the same conclusion. What if everybody's really damned?
Derek:God knows it. Everybody's going to hell or gonna be annihilated or whatever. But God knows that a world in which religion exists produces the least amount of evil and violence. So we really don't have any hope even though the Bible says that we do and other religions say that we do. There's really no hope.
Derek:We're hopelessly lost. But God tells us that there's hope because by giving us hope, we actually lead less damnable lives and the greatest good comes about. So lying could be very useful to God in his work with with free creatures. Of course, the the Christian retort is going to be, well, it's impossible for God to lie. Okay?
Derek:Even even if it were useful for God, it's impossible for God to lie because the Bible tells us that God can't lie. But that right there is what we call circular reasoning. God can't lie because the Bible tells us God can't lie. The Bible can't lie because God can't lie. Alright?
Derek:That that's circular reasoning. If we are going to say that lying can be moral, then God has lying at his disposal. It does not conflict with God's character. If we believe in the greatest maximal being, which is what Christians would say God is, then lying wouldn't be this component that needs to be part of that maximal aspect. It's the morality, right?
Derek:God an upright moral being. And if lying isn't always immoral, then lying is one of the possibilities for God. And so if his word tells us that he can't lie, we can't trust that that's true, that God can't lie because God has lying at His disposal. Especially for conservative Christians, this is extremely problematic because it undermines the Bible's reliability. Now it doesn't if God is a maximally good being, it doesn't undermine God's goodness and so we still have that intact, but we just can't trust that God will always tell us the truth because sometimes the truth might lead us to do worse things than if God would just lie to us.
Derek:And since God has to be moral and bring about the greatest good, then he needs to lie to us at times, most likely. I think a lot of confusion can be disposed of by looking at the two different types of morality that we see existence in the world. So like I said, what a lot of people are doing is they take a look at lying and they view it kind of like the meat sacrificed to idols thing. They're going to say, Look, there are certain times, places, situations where eating meat sacrificed to idols might be wrong because it might offend a weaker brother and we don't want to do that. But then there are other times when it's just fine, you know, as long as you're not participating in the sacrifice, you're just eating the meat, it's just meat.
Derek:So what? Who cares? And a lot of people are going to view lying like that. And that's possible, but we have to assess which type of morality is lying. And the first type of morality stems from natural obligations.
Derek:So, if you think of God and you think of descriptions of who God is and who God will always be, those produce natural obligations. So for instance, love. God is love, We are to always love. There is no time ever where we are not to love. And Augustine, even in his his approval of just war, would say that self defense is wrong because in self defense, almost certainly, if somebody's attacking you, there's anger, there's selfish selfishness, self interestedness, you couldn't be objective because you're protecting family or property or your life.
Derek:It's impossible to love your attacker when you're caught up in the moment, when you're trying to defend yourself. But Augustine thought that you could love you could fight for your country and love because it's it's more sanitized. Your your emperor says, go attack these people. You're not doing it because you hate them. You're not doing it in in fear for your, whatever, land or country, which I I think Augustine is wrong about that.
Derek:But nevertheless, his point is that you you can't even kill if it's not in love. And that's because God is love and expects us to comport with that. God is righteous and we are to comport with that. And now, God is also truth and so we are, I would argue, to comport with that in all circumstances. And that right there, if truthfulness, if truth is part of God's character, then anything that is opposed to the truth, anything that is not the truth, anything that is a lie would be opposed to God's character and therefore wrong because it it it oversteps this natural obligation we have which flows out of the character of God himself.
Derek:God can't contradict his character, so he can't not be love. He can't not be truth. And he calls us to seek that same holiness to be perfect like he is perfect. It is it is impossible to transgress natural obligations without being immoral. God can't do it.
Derek:We are not to do it. It's immoral. The problem is that a lot of Christians who want to approve of lying are going to put lying into the second category and that would be not natural obligations but relational obligations. So certain obligations that we have are a result of authority or position in a relationship. We have responsibility when our car hits someone else, even if we weren't driving.
Derek:Most cultures or many cultures have this this law that I I still my insurance pays for it. Like, my I'm I'm responsible because I'm the owner of that car. And my car was brought into relationship with another car owned by somebody else. So I was brought into a a relationship with somebody else through an accident, and I therefore have some level of responsibility. We see something to this extent in the Old Testament.
Derek:There are some commands, one in particular that I can think of where God commanded that there be fences placed around roofs or second stories or something like that because people had to take care for the family and friends to make sure that they weren't negligent of taking proper precautions in order to protect life because life is sacred. See this example all the time with your own kids. Parents can demand certain things of their kids that aren't necessarily immoral. With our daughter who's five, she has learned how to make eggs, but we tell her, you may not use the stove. Now that's not because using the stove is immoral, it's because it's a safety issue.
Derek:Nevertheless, there are times when we say, okay, hey, we're around, we'll be we'll be here, so you can go ahead and make eggs on the stove today, right now. And then using the stove isn't immoral. So there are times when it is immoral for her and times when it isn't even though the use of the stove in and of itself is not a moral issue. It becomes a moral issue because of the relationship of authority and us telling her that she cannot do something. We can find other parental, parental sorts of things.
Derek:Right? So I could allow like, some parents allow their kids to drink alcohol underage and have, like, alcohol parties. That would be something that is not legitimate for me to do because of my relationship to the state and the state says that doing such a thing is parental negligence and illegal. So even though I could give my kids permission to do that, because of my relationship with the state, I can't. Not to mention my relationship with God and my responsibility to take care of my children.
Derek:And then also there are other times like I can discipline my daughter or son, but they can't discipline each other. Sometimes what's right for me to do is not right for for them to do. And sometimes what's okay for me to do is okay for them to do. And sometimes it's dependent. And we've got all of these relationally dependent things with authorities, with peers, with whatever.
Derek:There are things that are moral which change based on circumstances. Now that's the category that people want to put lying into. They want to say that there are certain circumstances where to lie would actually be the right thing to do. And I get that sentiment. I think I would want to lie in a situation, and I might lie in a situation where I was trying to hide a protected group of people.
Derek:Nevertheless, I don't know how you can argue that truthfulness and lying fit into the relational obligation that can sometimes be wrong, sometimes right versus putting it into the natural obligation which is something that flows out of the character of God himself. It seems very clear that truthfulness and its antithesis of lying would go against God's character. So is lying just a command from God given to us like we give commands to our kids not to use the stove? Is it something that that can be rescinded by God? And he can say, nah, you can go ahead and lie in this situation.
Derek:Is it God's prerogative? Or is it directly tied to his nature? Those who want to argue that lying is God's prerogative beyond running into numerous problems that we already mentioned about undermining scripture, undermining who God is declared to be. Besides those huge problems, despite those people want to continue to argue that lying can be okay because it's so intuitively right in a situation where you're protecting innocent lives. And they they bring up problem passages where God clearly seems to deceive people.
Derek:First Samuel 16 is is my favorite example. I remember coming across this a long time ago and I'm like, how do you deal with this? And Samuel is told to go and anoint David king while Saul is already the king. And Samuel says, God, if I go to do this, Saul's gonna kill me. And God says, oh, don't tell him what you're doing.
Derek:You just you tell him you're going to make a sacrifice. And that's true. Samuel is going to make a sacrifice. But the intent of the sacrifice and his trip is really to anoint David as king. So God clearly, and I will agree with this, God clearly tells Samuel to deceive Saul.
Derek:John seven, not not as clear, I mean you can spin this one, but it sure seems like Jesus deceives his brothers when his brothers say, hey, Jesus. Why don't you come on up with us to the feast? And and Jesus is like, it's not my time to go yet. And then his brothers leave and he's like, alright. Let's go.
Derek:And and he he leaves. We don't know the time frame there, how long he waited, but, it seems like Jesus wanted to go, but he didn't wanna go with his brothers. And it's like, well, it's not my time now, but in five minutes, it was his time. And that seems kinda shady on Jesus' part. First Corinthians two, God deceived the the rulers of the age in regard to his plan.
Derek:We ask why is God so veiled in the Old Testament in terms of his plan of salvation. And first Corinthians two tells us that had the had the powers known God's plan, they would have never crucified Jesus. So God had to kinda hide little tidbits and hints and and make things deceptive and unclear in the Old Testament in order that Jesus Christ would be crucified by the powers of darkness. So God deceived. I mean, you you can call it another word if you want, but God pretty clearly deceived.
Derek:Now this is where our earlier discussion on the two types of morality are extremely important because I'm gonna argue that what you will be able to see in in the Bible is that God is able to deceive. That is that is not contrary to his character. That is actually determined, that is part of the relational morality. Because deceit is a quantitative dispersing of information, it is not a qualitative. Lying is a qualitative use of changing of information, whereas deceit is quantitative.
Derek:So for example, if you lie, you are saying something that is untrue, you are saying something that is false. If you deceive, you are not saying something that's false, you are only giving a particular amount of information, you're not giving the whole piece of information. Now, of course, when we think deceit, we think, oh, that's bad. That's what scammers do to try to trick people out of money. That's what kids do to try to get out of discipline.
Derek:And that's right, deceit is bad in those circumstances. But let me give you some examples where we'd say deceit isn't wrong. If we are driving by an accident scene and I see that, you know, somebody's decapitated, it's like really bad, it's a terrible scene as we drive by, and my kids say, hey, daddy, what happened? Do I say, Oh, a terrible accident. In fact, I saw that guy's head over there.
Derek:Or do I say, Oh, there an accident, baby, but the the rescue personnel are on the scene and they're taking care of it. Those are are two very different assessments of the situation, neither of which are are false and I would argue only one of which is appropriate and the one which is appropriate is the one with limited information that doesn't have the overtones of fear and horror and and everything else. And that's because I the gatekeeper of information for my kids and determining what is good and useful for them in their situation, their age, etcetera. And that's because I'm an authority over them. Deceit, I mean, you can in in government, now certainly there's a lot of deceit in the government that's bad, but there there's a certain amount of deceit where the government only gives certain amounts of information for good reason.
Derek:You can find certain examples of deceit and lying, but certainly instances of deceit like with World War II and D Day and and certain types of ruses and and things that that they would do, you you can find examples of deceit that are appropriate all the time. Now, God is the the owner of the universe. He is the master of Saul. And if God doesn't want to tell Saul what he's doing when Samuel goes to anoint David, while that might not be Samuel's prerogative to be able to determine what information he gives Saul, maybe it is, maybe it isn't his prerogative, I don't know. But it's certainly God's prerogative to not give Saul all the information.
Derek:He doesn't owe that to Saul. And so if God tells Samuel, hey, look, I'm telling you this is the amount of information I want Saul to know, it's my prerogative, tell him you're going to make a sacrifice. God didn't make up a lie, He told truth, just not all of the truth. And that's what I'm going to argue most of the cases you're going to find in the Bible are. It is if you ever see God engaging in something that you might call lying, I would argue that it's most likely deceit.
Derek:As we see in the example of one Samuel 16, John seven, one Corinthians two. And again, that's because deceit deals with the amount of information, not the veracity of it. Whereas lying deals with changing the veracity as well as potentially the amount. There are other problem passages however that seem to go beyond indicating deceit and show the idea of lying. So we do need to assess a couple of those.
Derek:Two examples that that stick out right away are Rahab, when she lied to hide the spies of Canaan, the spies of Israel against Canaan, and the midwives of Israel and Egypt who are commended for their faith. Now it's important in both of these situations to recognize a couple things. First of all, these individuals are never recognized for the lies that they told. Rahab's faith was in God and she recognized God as Lord and she decided to lie in order to to do what she thought was the right thing. Now the right thing was worshiping Yahweh, but that doesn't mean that everything she did to go about worshiping him and following him was right.
Derek:We're not told that that's what was right. But Rahab siding with Israel certainly was. I mean, if you are going to try to argue that we have to accept Rahab's lying for sure as something that the Bible condones, then you're gonna run into a lot of problems with other stories like, you know, Tamar dressing up as a prostitute and getting her father-in-law to have the kid that she deserved with him. She's in the lineage of Jesus, and you know that she was wronged. But is that how she should have gone about doing it?
Derek:I don't know. I mean, it's a story of a woman who was bold and who who kind of got justice for herself in in one sense, but that doesn't mean that the Bible necessarily approves of of her actions. So I would say the same thing with Rahab. It's just you can't say that Rahab's lie is what's in view here. And I would say the same thing with the midwives as well.
Derek:The midwives, the point of the story of the midwives isn't that they are commended for lying, it's that they recognize the dignity of human life and tried to protect it and they may have deceived Pharaoh. We don't know exactly what was said or if they were lying. Maybe the the Hebrew women were more robust and and had their kids quickly. Maybe God gave the Hebrew women that special feature during this time in order to to prevent kids from being killed. We just don't know if they lied or not.
Derek:But that also isn't what's in view when they're commended for their faith in following God. So up to this point, it would be pretty easy to make my argument. Unfortunately, there is one very difficult passage to deal with in terms of defending defending lying from God. And that is one Kings 22. I believe it's also found in Chronicles, but I know you can find it in one Kings 22.
Derek:And I I expound on it a little bit more in my book if you wanna to kind of get more of that. And essentially what happens is there's there's this wicked king and God's like, alright. He needs to be judged. How are we gonna go about judging him? I'm open to suggestions.
Derek:What's what's how's how's his downfall gonna occur? And you have he asked his counsel this question. You have different different people chime in and one of the the spirits chimes in and says, hey, tell you what, I'll go be a lying spirit in the mouth of the prophets and they'll tell him, hey, you're good to go king, go go fight, and then he'll die a battle. And God says, yeah. Yeah.
Derek:Go for it. Now that seems right there that God is commanding an evil spirit or or a spirit. I don't remember if it says evil. It says a lying spirit. I don't know that this really shows that God is is siding with lying.
Derek:And here's here's what I'd say my take would be on on it to defend God from from the accusation of lying. First of all, as Christians, if we're gonna say that that God's good with lying, we've got the problems that that I mentioned at the beginning, which doesn't prove God can't lie, but you have to keep in mind what you're winning or losing if you're gonna defend this passage. But here's how I would take it. Basically, seems to me like God has this counsel that he he talks to. We see it maybe something like in Job where Satan comes into his presence, the accuser comes into the presence and talks about inflicting Job with all these problems and getting Job to deny God.
Derek:So you've got this lying spirit, which it seems right away, if it's a lying spirit and lying is antithetical to God, it seems like the spirit is an evil spirit. So you've got this evil spirit who who comes to God and says, hey, look. I hate humanity. I, you know, I hate this king. Well, I I don't like you, God.
Derek:You know what? I hate people too. So I'll be happy to go down into one of your people, people of your nation, and mess with them and and bring their downfall because that's the kind of thing I like to do. So that spirit says, he'll do it. And God says, alright.
Derek:You have permission. God doesn't lie. God doesn't create a lying spirit to go into somebody's mouth, but what he does is he allows a spirit in its free will to to enact a particular plan just like Satan inflicted killed Job's kids and inflicted terrible pain on Job. God permits evil to have its way with this particular king in first Kings 22. The main problem people have with that explanation is that they're not comfortable with with the language that the passage uses because it says that God places an evil spirit in the mouth and it uses this active idea.
Derek:It makes it seem like God is active in the lying process. And that's just that's a poor reading, I think, of the Bible. Or I shouldn't say it's a poor reading. I should say it's it's clearly not the only way that active the active words like this are used for God. We see in in Joseph's slavery, right, you intended this for evil, God intended this for good.
Derek:We see with Assyria in Isaiah 10 that it's Assyria who attacks Israel, yet it describes that attack to God. We see it in the crucifixion where evil men did it, but God did it. You see a lot of instances throughout the Bible where there's this active voice where it says God does this, but then you find out it's not really God who does it. It's it's some other being or entity, whatever. Greg Boyd talks about this.
Derek:Tim Mackie has a good article. I'll link both of those, but there hundreds, if not thousands of examples where something that's attributed to God is really done by some somebody else. And what the Bible means when it says that God does something, sometimes what the Bible means, oftentimes what the Bible means, isn't that God directly does something. It's saying that, look, God in his sovereignty, if something happens, it does not happen outside of God's sovereignty. So you can pretty much say God did it in this in in a certain sense because God allowed it.
Derek:And here that's what we see. There's an evil spirit who is a liar, who says, God permit me to do this. And God says, hey, look, my king, he's evil. I'm not gonna stop you from doing it. That your plan works to accomplish my ends even though I don't lie or think lying is moral, go for it.
Derek:I'll permit it. And he permits it and the lying spirit brings the king's downfall. First Kings 22 is definitely the hardest passage to deal with, but there isn't much else that's extremely difficult to handle. I think you can explain deceit very easily throughout the Bible. I think you can explain very clearly that truthfulness is the antithesis of lying and is a and truthfulness is a part of God's character, so that character must be adhered to.
Derek:I just and not to mention you lose so much if you are going to embrace the possibility of lying as moral. So I can deal with one passage that makes me uncomfortable. I think there's also one with like Elisha or Elijah or something. But I can deal with one or two uncomfortable passages that may be difficult to explain and have two good explanations, one for lying and one against it. I can deal with one or two passages like that light of all of the problems and evidence that I have on my side.
Derek:Okay, but what about the heart of the law over the letter of the law? Isn't saying that you're not going to lie to save lives just being a legalistic Pharisee, just so you can say that you're holy. I will definitely talk about this in its own episode and go into a lot more detail about inconsequentialism is not pharisaical. In fact, it's very opposed to being pharisaical and it actually helps you not to be. So for further explanation, please go and check out that episode.
Derek:But just for a basic rundown here, I would just highlight that you need to know that the heart is always harder than than legalism. So just because I'm asking somebody to do a hard thing here, that that doesn't make it legalistic or pharisaical. Right? Jesus added to the command of adultery, lust. He added to the command of murder, hatred.
Derek:And I would say that that in in this instance, you know, saying that I can choose to lie to somebody because they're my enemy. I think Jesus would take that away too. Right? Say, okay, so you heard you shouldn't bear false witness, right, in court. Well, I tell you don't even lie to your enemy.
Derek:I mean, that seems like the type of thing that Jesus would say, where truth isn't just for your own people, truth is for everybody. So don't withhold truth from people. Don't don't create falsities, falsehoods. The other thing I'd I'd say right here is that the heart of the law tends to strip away rigid barriers added to God's being. Let me give you an example and then try to go from there.
Derek:So the Sabbath is is one of the examples that Jesus uses and he he said, look, the he stripped away empty ritual by saying that, like, the Sabbath was made for for humans, not humans for the Sabbath. Like, you got the wrong order. And and observe you are to observe the Sabbath the the Sabbath. But the Sabbath is kinda like what you find in Hebrews ten twenty four. Right?
Derek:Don't forsake the assembling of yourselves together, but spur one another on to loving good deeds. The point of resting on the Sabbath is to look to God for dependence and to have community with other people. It's a the Sabbath is so you focus on others. It's not so you are are so rigid that you can't focus on on people. And for your neighbors, of course, but Jesus even expands who our neighbors are by including everybody, Samaritans, Romans, enemies.
Derek:Our concern is to be for everybody, not just for our own in group. God is community and and he desires community. So when you plug lying into this, I'm not talking about being ritualistically truthful and just having some rigid standard of of what truth is. No. God is truth.
Derek:Right? That is our rigid standard. Like, that's immovable. That is who our god is and who we're to display. And Jesus strips away notions of of enemies, and he extends extends the concept of neighbor to our enemies.
Derek:And so when we say that God is truth and we are to convey that God is truth, then we convey truthfulness to everybody without exception. The heart of the law doesn't say, I can pick and choose who to display truth to and if they're my enemy, I can choose not to display it to them. That's not the heart of the law. That's pharisaical. The heart of the law says, even my enemies are worthy of glimpsing God's character, which is present in truthfulness, but absent in lie.
Derek:And now I I wanna acknowledge that that life is very important. We are all made in the image of God, but life is not the ultimate thing for Christians. Imaging God is, and God is imaged in more ways than just life. He's imaged in love. He's imaged in truthfulness.
Derek:You know, when I when I think of, this type of thing of of upholding life, I think of the witch from from, Tangled Rapunzel who I mean, she kidnap kidnaps and lies and steals and murders to sustain life. And it's her own life. Yeah. But you can just see that what a compromise it is for her because she values life so much that she lacks all integrity. And now a little white lie might not seem like much, but theologically, it's saying a lot about who God is.
Derek:It's saying a lot about what's important in life. It's it just says a lot, which we've talked about to a great extent so far. Okay. So here's the big question that most people probably have by this point, if you haven't written me off and stopped listening yet. If lying is bad but saving innocent lives and doing good in the world is important, then how can we uphold the value of both life and truth?
Derek:And this is, once again, if you have listened to to season one on nonviolence, you just recognize over and over and over again that people give you false dichotomies to make you feel like you have to to choose an evil. They do it with the election. They do it with ectopic pregnancies. They do it with nonviolence. I mean, they do it all the time.
Derek:And it it's done again here in this idea of of telling the truth. Right? As the story goes, if the Nazis come knocking at your door, you either have to lie and be a loving person or you have to bear it all. You have to you have to tell them everything. And that's just that's just not true.
Derek:You have a number of options at your disposal. You can lie, you can tell the truth, the whole truth, you can remain silent, or you can deceive by giving a partial truth. And I would argue that the partial truth, we already talked about why deceit isn't inherently bad. I would argue that while lying is always wrong, deceit giving people only a certain amount of information in order to misdirect them, in order to save lives. I would argue that somebody looking for innocent life in order to kill it does not they are not warranted full information.
Derek:I don't feel like I have to give that to them. So I think that would be perfectly moral to do that in that situation. Most people are going to push back though and say that, look, if if a Nazi comes to your door and you just remain silent, he's going to know that something's up. If you tell a partial truth, like if they say, do you have any Jews hiding here? Well, you don't want to say yes and you don't want to say no.
Derek:I mean, I guess you could say yes like, Oh yeah, we've got what, 10 Jews hiding here? You could try to say it sarcastically, but in general you're not going want say yes or no. So how do you really deceive if they say, Do you have Jews hiding here? It's a great question. You have to be creative and and I don't know.
Derek:I hope I'm never put in that situation, whether it's through through comedy or or sarcasm or whatever else. I know that people can figure out ways and that if God can blind a donkey, he can blind people to your deceit or your silence, and he can preserve and save you if you want. But I think lying is something that people think, well, if the Nazis come to my door and I lie, that's my hope of success. And if I don't, then there's failure. But you know, lying isn't necessarily proven to give you any better chances.
Derek:It might make you make it feel easier, to sustain a lie, the implications of if they find out you were lying, they might have harsher consequences on you and your family. Lying and choosing evil, you're you're refusing to acknowledge the possibility of God's hand in the in the whole series of events, and you're depending on on yourself for control. I mean, lying just sounds like it's a lot better, but it just isn't necessarily better than than deceit, and maybe not even better than than remaining silent. You just don't know what God's gonna do in a particular situation. Augustine and Grudem are two men that you won't find me agreeing with very much when it comes to subjects related to this podcast.
Derek:But both of them affirm that lying is never moral for Christians. I'll provide a source here. Grudem has a pretty interesting relatively short article that assesses this and and some historical background. And, yeah, Augustine too. It's it's very interesting.
Derek:Both of those men recognize the problem you're gonna get if you embrace the morality of lying. It doesn't it might get you a more comfortable position when you talk about things like the holocaust, but you lose a lot when you take that on and and you create a lot of inconsistencies. Hopefully, you found this this episode thought provoking and informative even if you you don't wholly agree yet. But I I also hope that you see that consequentialism even on even on seemingly trivial topics like a white lie, it really has has very huge ramifications on our theology and consequentially on on the image that we bear to the world, including the image that we bear to enemies. And that image that we bear to enemies, we might not wanna bear it to them, but it is through our imaging to the world that God often uses that means to bring people to himself.
Derek:I think of Paul on the road to Damascus. Yeah. He he came to Christ initially because of of his vision, but it was Ananias who I think it was Ananias who took him in and cared for him and really kick started the process for Paul to become a disciple. God uses us and it's important that we recognize that we need to avoid evil, and that we need to rest in God's grace for the evil that we inevitably do, but that we need to pursue the good works that Christ has saved us for. So that's all for now.
Derek:Since I'm a pacifist Messed that one up. That's all for now. So peace. Because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it. It.
