Derek: 00:00

This episode is a repeat episode of, something I did all the way back in season 2, in our season on consequentialism. Nevertheless, it is going to be an extremely important episode, to to get into. There might be a few things that I would I would, change or add on today, but I went back and listened to it. And I actually think that it it fits really well, and I think it's gonna be a perfect addition here. Now it is it is back in our, season 2 audio quality of Xbox headset and, telephone recording, But hopefully, you can manage with that and it works out for you.

Derek: 00:42

But there there is also a, like, written version because it it came from one of my blog posts, so you can read it if you can't deal with the audio. But this this episode is representative of something that that is really a a part of who I am. I have always loved, you know, thinking through ethical, moral conundrums. And oh, in sports, I love asking, like, well, what if this happens? And what if that happens?

Derek: 01:13

And just trying to find all these loopholes in the rules. And so this, this episode was born out of that type of thing. Because it was I don't know. Maybe when I was, like, 15 or something, I came across this this passage in the Bible, first Samuel 15 or 16, where it sure seemed like God was telling Samuel to deceive or lie or whatever. And I was like, oh, that that doesn't seem really good for God because, you know, God can't lie.

Derek: 01:46

Right? And so you you get into that and you start asking other people about it. And then you start, of course, you know, applying this to real life. Well, if lying is bad, could I lie to Nazis who are coming to look for Jews in my house? And, of course, I I would ask this question all the time.

Derek: 02:06

And along with a bunch of other moral conundrums. And I remember it wasn't too long ago, maybe like 5 or 6 years ago, I was talking to, somebody else who was, you know, he had graduated from seminary and we're just having a good discussion. And I was like, I mean, like, there are serious ramifications to how you answer this this question. Like, because either, God can lie or he can't, and that means that we should lie or we can't. And what what are the implications for love then if if I can't lie in a situation where, you know, some people's lives are at stake?

Derek: 02:44

But if I can lie, then what implications does that have too? Like, it was just mind boggling to me. And this individual just kind of got, got tired of it because he's like, I I don't have an answer. Like, there's just we need to be okay with with not knowing things. He's like, you he implied that I was, not arrogant, but, maybe trying to be too black and white, and that I was I was too concerned about things and maybe being moralistic and stuff and and whatnot.

Derek: 03:15

That really got me angry because I love having discussions that are like angels dancing on the heads of pins for fun, but this didn't seem like one of those discussions. Like, there are real world implications. There are theological implications for how you answer this question. And sure, maybe we can't ever come to know, but we sure should really rack our brains and try to think of an answer and not just kind of dismiss it after after an hour and be done with it. So it's something that I thought for a long, long, long time about, and I kept coming back to it until eventually I I think I landed on on, this episode.

Derek: 03:59

And what I think are are fairly good answers to the the seeming conundrum of lying and deceit and and God and such. So that's what you're gonna get in this episode. We're we're gonna get more theological, into things. This is mostly an episode for Christians, but it could also be for non Christians. Because if, if you're interested in trying to pick apart Christianity, then understanding some of the implications of of if God can lie or not and what God calls us to might be interesting to you.

Derek: 04:34

So, go ahead and take a listen. There are, you know, 1 or 2 things that I I do wanna point out first, though, summarize and and kind of have you look out for so you don't miss them, because I think I think, they're really important aspects. And the first thing is that in this episode, I'm going to talk about 2 different kinds of morality, and it's gonna be really important that you understand the distinction there. There is a type of morality where, it's, dictated morality. You know, I tell my daughter, you're 8 years old.

Derek: 05:10

I don't want you to use the stove when I'm not around. But sometimes when I am around, she asks me and I say, okay. There's nothing inherently wrong with using stoves, but there is for my daughter to use it. That is wrong without my permission, because I've decreed that at this age, at this time, I wanna make sure that I know that there's a fire on the stove so I can check it periodically, and so I can oversee that to a certain extent. But that's different than another kind of morality, which is, like, don't murder somebody.

Derek: 05:40

That's I can't give my daughter permission to murder somebody because that's that's off the table. That's not something that I can decree in and out of existence. And so we talk about those 2 types of morality and ask which type lying is and and seems to be. Now if God can't lie and not lying or truthfulness is a part of who God is, then that seems to be directly tied to his character and not something that he can decree in and out of existence. That's gonna have serious implications for us.

Derek: 06:16

2nd, I'm gonna talk about how the importance of truthfulness and fidelity, is, I mean, prime on the list. Right? If if God is not truthful, if he has lying at his disposal, if he can be unfaithful in that regard, unfaithful to the truth, then what is what are the implications for my ability to trust in him? And we will we'll talk about some of those scenarios and explain why, if God can lie, we can't trust him. Like, we can't have confidence in our faith.

Derek: 06:50

And then finally, something that I I don't really get into, but, I want to kind of draw a conclusion about is that yeah. Okay. It's important for God to be to be faithful and and to be truthful, but then it it also follows then that it's important for us to be faithful and truthful as well. Now that's going to include if, if truthfulness is tied to God's character, then that ideal of truthfulness requires that we are faithful to that no matter what as well. And I think everybody knows this too.

Derek: 07:25

I think even the people who are gonna wanna, christen lying as an okay thing when you're trying to save somebody's life, they they know that truthfulness is is important. Right? It can't be compromised. Let me give you a prime example. My conservative Christian crowd who wants to consequentially, dismiss, truthfulness in all occasions, I want you to think back to, the the early Christian martyrs.

Derek: 07:51

Right? They they have, Roman officials coming to their house. They've got a bust of Caesar or whatever, and they're like, look, Kiss the bust. Right? Say that Caesar is Lord, meaning Jesus is not.

Derek: 08:07

Right? Just say say the words. Right? Just kiss the bust. Now in my mind, I in wanting to kind of figure out loopholes, be like, well, I mean, if if lying to save lives can be good, wouldn't lying here save my life?

Derek: 08:26

Wouldn't that be good? What if what if I'm saving my family's lives? What if I'm saving my church community's lives by kissing the bus? Save 50 people's lives by just kiss kiss the bus. I don't mean it.

Derek: 08:38

It's a lie. Right? When I kiss the bust, it's of Caesar, it's a lie. When I say Caesar is lord, I'm lying. I don't really believe it.

Derek: 08:47

You're not gonna find a conservative evangelical who's gonna say that that's okay, because they recognize that, no, you can't you can't, you can't deny Jesus. Like, that's not something you ever do. You don't lie to do that. Why not? Because they recognize that, that upholding certain values, are are extremely important.

Derek: 09:17

Now if something like truthfulness is a part of the character of God, who he is, We are never to deny love. We are never to deny truthfulness. Right? We are always supposed to follow those ideals. You can't do anything that's not loving.

Derek: 09:31

Even Augustine himself, when he's coming up with what would end up being just war theory later on down the line, coined just war theory. Augustine, when he's trying to explain how how Christians could kill people, he has to figure out how it's loving to do that. Now I might disagree with Augustine as to how you can define killing somebody as love, but he recognizes I've gotta have love in this. Like, I I can't skimp on that. It has to be loving.

Derek: 10:02

And that's also why Augustine wrote his 2 treatises, on lying and against lying, and why he said, you just can't lie. And I think part of the reason he had to to conclude that way is because the character of God is not only love, it's also truthfulness or or not lying. And so you can't compromise on that. And and, again, we recognize it. We conservative Christians, we recognize it, when it comes to things like martyrdom.

Derek: 10:32

But we're consequentialists, and we like to, be able to define good and evil when it when we like to. And so, therefore, it's unpalatable to think about something as small as a lie coming in the way of, me saving some people's lives. That just doesn't work for us. So this episode, hopefully, will dig into a lot of, really good concepts. I'll talk about the distinction between deceit and lying, and why I think, God is able to implement forms of deceit, but not lying, and how deceit might be at our disposal.

Derek: 11:14

So, when when we're asked if we're hiding, Jews in our home under Nazi Germany, do we really have to be straight up, truthful, and, like, tell them all the details, or do we have other options, like silence and potentially deceit? And we get into some of that stuff. So, hopefully, you'll find this episode interesting and useful, and enjoy. Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. We are continuing our discussion of consequentialism by looking at our 3rd moral conundrum today, and that is the moral conundrum of whether it is right to lie in order to save lives.

Derek: 12:00

And I'm really excited about this conundrum because I think the first two, I can argue very well that it is, it it's fairly clear what the right answer is based on our accepted moral framework at this point. I think the lying one is is a lot harder to handle because there's this intuition that a lot of us have that, you know, while lying is enough to send us to hell. If if we have one lie, that's enough to damn us in the eyes of god. 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?

Derek: 12:58

And that's exactly what I wanna talk about today. So in our scenario, we're gonna 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? What do you what do you do?

Derek: 13:26

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 of somebody getting killed. Right? There's there's this valuation here, which is is very clear. And some 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 I'm really not wanting to lie.

Derek: 14:04

That's not my intent. My intent is to save lives. And, again, I I really need to do an episode on double effect at some point to to hash that out and explain in more detail what that means, and you can 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.

Derek: 14:48

That's a legitimate double effect, employing chemotherapy whose job is not to kill, the child in order to, to 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. 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.

Derek: 15:38

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 the means you are using in order to save life is not amoral. It is immoral. It's lying.

Derek: 16:04

So lying isn't evil that you are embracing, and you can't invoke the double effect here. Nevertheless, Christians are going to argue that 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, and 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. And then I'll I'll, talk about how that's not as hopeless as you might think it is.

Derek: 17:13

The biggest problem with embracing lying as a moral means is because it undermines God and His reliability. You might think, well, that's that's stupid because how could a little white lie, being a moral means, how could that undermine god's reliability when I'm saving people's lives? Well, first, if, you know, if lying is sometimes the most moral path, and if and if god is the most moral being who's never immoral, then that must mean that lying is on the table for God. Right? God is the standard of morality.

Derek: 17:51

And if lying can be moral at times, then lying is on the table for God to use. What Christians are are essentially saying is that, lying is one of those moral things like, 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: 18:27

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 2 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: 18:59

And through time and and discipline and and pain and everything, that life in 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.

Derek: 19:36

Right? 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.

Derek: 20:14

What if everybody's really damned? 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.

Derek: 20:35

There's really no hope. 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.

Derek: 21:02

Okay. 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.

Derek: 21:23

Right? That that's circular reasoning. If we are going to say that lying can be moral, then God has lying at His disposal. It it does not conflict with god's character. If we believe in the, the greatest maximal being, which is what, Christians would say, god is, then lying wouldn't be this component that, that needs to be part of that maximal aspect.

Derek: 21:53

It's the it's the morality. Right? God is god is a 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 that's true, that god can't lie, because god has lying at his disposal.

Derek: 22:20

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. And since god has to be, moral and bring about the greatest good, then he needs to lie to us at times, most likely.

Derek: 22:59

I think a lot of confusion can be disposed of by looking at the the two different types of morality that we see existent in 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 sacrifice to idols thing. They're gonna say, like, 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 wanna do that. But then there are other times when it's just fine. You know?

Derek: 23:34

As long as you're not participating in the sacrifice, you're just eating the meat. It's just meat. Like, so what? Who cares? And a lot of people are gonna view lying like that.

Derek: 23:43

And 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. 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.

Derek: 24:10

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: 24:42

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 in 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: 25:11

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. God can't contradict his character, so he can't not be love.

Derek: 26:10

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. We are not to do it.

Derek: 26:27

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, most cultures or many cultures have this this law that I I still my insurance pays for it.

Derek: 27:03

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. 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, they weren't negligent of taking proper precautions in order to protect life because life is sacred.

Derek: 27:54

See this example all the time with your with your own kids. Right? Parents can demand certain things to their kids that aren't necessarily immoral. With our daughter who's 5, she has learned how to make eggs. But we tell her, you may not use the stove.

Derek: 28:10

Now that's not because using the stove is immoral. It's because it's a safety issue. Nevertheless, there are times when we say, okay. Hey. We're around.

Derek: 28:18

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: 28:47

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 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: 29:25

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. There are things that are moral, which change based on circumstances. Now that's that's the category that people want to put lying into.

Derek: 30:05

They wanna 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 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. 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. Seems very clear that truthfulness and its antithesis of of lying would go against god's character. So is is lying just a command from god given to us like we give commands to our kids not to use the stove?

Derek: 31:02

Is it something that that can be rescinded by god? And you can say, no. You can go ahead and lie in this situation. 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 has declared to be.

Derek: 31:29

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. 1st 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.

Derek: 32:04

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. You just you tell him you're going to make a sacrifice. And that's true. Samuel is going to make a sacrifice.

Derek: 32:19

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. John 7, 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.

Derek: 32:40

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. And and he he leaves.

Derek: 32:52

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 5 minutes, it was his time. And that seems kinda shady on Jesus's part. 1st Corinthians 2, God deceived the the rulers of the age in regard to his plan. We ask why is God so veiled in the old testament in terms of his plan of salvation.

Derek: 33:25

And first Corinthians 2 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. Now this is where our earlier discussion on the 2 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.

Derek: 34:12

That is that is not contrary to his character. That is actually determined, that 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. So for example, if, if you lie, you are saying something that is untrue.

Derek: 34:46

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, well that's bad. That's what, that's what scammers do to try to get trick people out of money.

Derek: 35:10

That's what kids do to try to get out of discipline. And that's right. Deceit is bad in those circumstances. But let me give you some examples where we would 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.

Derek: 35:33

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: 35:46

Or do I say, oh, there was a there was an accident, baby, but, you know, the the personnel the rescue personnel are on the scene, and they're taking care of it. Those are are 2 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 am am the gatekeeper of information for my kids and determining what is is good and useful for them in their situation, their age, etcetera. And that's because I'm an authority over them.

Derek: 36:39

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. You can find certain examples of deceit and lying, but certainly, instances of deceit like with, World War 2 and and d day and and certain types of ruses and and things that that they would do. But 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.

Derek: 37:21

And if God doesn't wanna 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. He doesn't owe that to Saul.

Derek: 37:46

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.

Derek: 38:04

And that's what I'm gonna argue most of the cases you're gonna find in the Bible are. It is, if you ever see God engaging in something that that you might call lying, I would argue that it's most likely deceit, as we see in the example of 1 Samuel 16, John 7, 1st Corinthians 2. 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 and show the idea of lying, so we do need to assess a couple of those. Two examples that that stick out right away are Rahab, when she lied to hide the spies of Canaan, with the spies of Israel against Canaan, and the midwives of of Israel in Egypt who are commended for their faith.

Derek: 39:13

And 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. We're not told that that's what was right.

Derek: 39:52

But Rahab siding with Israel certainly was. I mean, if 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? I don't know.

Derek: 40:31

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, the midwives as well. The midwives, the point of the story of the midwives isn't that they are commended for lying.

Derek: 41:03

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.

Derek: 41:30

We just don't know if they lied or not. 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 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 from God, and that is 1st Kings 22. I believe it's also found in Chronicles, but I know you can find it in 1st Kings 22.

Derek: 42:07

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: 42:26

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.

Derek: 42:48

And they'll tell him, hey. You're good to go, king. Go go fight. And then he'll die of battle. And god says, yeah.

Derek: 42:58

Yeah. 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.

Derek: 43:11

I don't know that this really shows that god is is, siding with lying. 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.

Derek: 43:48

Basically, it 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 the accuser comes into the presence and, talks about inflicting Job with all these these problems and getting Job to deny God. 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.

Derek: 44:23

Look. I hate humanity. I, you know, I hate this king. Well, I I don't like you, god. You know what?

Derek: 44:31

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. You have permission.

Derek: 44:49

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 Jake Job's kids, and inflicted terrible pain on Job, God permits evil to have its way with this particular king in 1st 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: 45:38

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?

Derek: 46:03

You intended this for evil. God intended this for good. We see with Assyria and Isaiah 10 that it's Assyria who attacks Israel, yet it ascribes 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.

Derek: 46:32

It's, it's some other being or entity, whatever. Greg Boyd talks about this. Tim Mackey has a good article. I'll link both of those. But there are 100, if not thousands of examples where something that's attributed to god is really done by some somebody else.

Derek: 46:51

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. And here, that's what we see. There's an evil spirit who is a liar, who says, god, permit me to do this.

Derek: 47:22

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 or think lying is moral, go for it.

Derek: 47:37

I'll permit it. And he permits it, and, the lying spirit brings the king's downfall. 1st Kings 22 is definitely the hardest passage, to deal with, but there there isn't much else that's 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: 48:16

I just and and not to mention you lose so much if you are going to embrace the possibility of lying as moral. So I I can deal with 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 1 or 2 uncomfortable passages that may be difficult to explain and have 2 good explanations. 1 for, for lying and one against it.

Derek: 48:49

I can deal with with 1 or 2 passages like that in in light of all of the the problems and evidence, that I have on my side. Okay. But what about the heart of the law over the letter of the law? Isn't saying that you're not gonna lie to save lives just being a a legalistic Pharisee just so you can say that you're holy? I will I'll definitely talk about this in its own episode and and go into a lot more detail, about how con inconsequentialism, is not pharisaical.

Derek: 49:30

In fact, it's it's, very opposed to being pharisaical and it it actually helps you not to be. So for further explanation, please please go and check out that episode. But, just for a basic rundown here, I would just highlight that you need to know that the heart is always harder, than 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?

Derek: 50:04

Jesus added to the command of adultery, lust. He added to the command of murder, hatred. 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. He'd say, okay. So you heard, you shouldn't bear false witness, right, in court.

Derek: 50:29

Well, I tell you, don't even lie to your enemy. 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.

Derek: 50:47

The other thing I'd I'd say right here is that the heart of the law, it tends to strip away rigid barriers added to to god's being. Let me give you an example and then try to try to go from there. 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.

Derek: 51:22

And and observe you are to observe the Sabbath, the the Sabbath, but the Sabbath is kinda like what you find in Hebrews 1024. Right? Don't forsake the assembling of yourselves together, but spur one another on to love and 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.

Derek: 51:48

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. 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.

Derek: 52:30

No. God is truth. Right? That is our rigid standard. Like, that's immovable.

Derek: 52:36

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. 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.

Derek: 53:11

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. 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.

Derek: 53:36

Imaging God is, and God is imaged in more ways than just life. He's imaged in love. He's imaged in truthfulness. 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.

Derek: 54:00

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. 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.

Derek: 54:39

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? And this is once again, if you have listened to to season 1 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.

Derek: 55:21

They do it with, ectopic pregnancies. They do it with nonviolence. I mean, they do it all the time. And it it's done again here in this idea of of telling the truth. Right?

Derek: 55:33

The 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. You have you have a number of options at your disposal. You can lie.

Derek: 55:52

You can tell the truth, the whole truth. You can remain silent, or you can deceive and or give 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 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. I don't feel like I have to give that to them.

Derek: 56:41

So I think that would be perfectly moral to do that in that situation. Most people are gonna push back though and say that, look. If if a Nazi comes to your door and you just remain silent, he's gonna 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 wanna say yes, and you don't wanna say no.

Derek: 57:06

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 gonna say yes or no. So how do you how do you really deceive if they say, do you have Jews hiding here?

Derek: 57:23

It's a great question. You have to be creative, and and I don't know. 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 it I think lying is is something that people think, well, if the Nazis come to my door and I lie, that's my hope of success.

Derek: 58:00

And if I don't, then there's failure. But, you know, lying isn't necessarily proven to give you any better chances. It might make you make it feel easier, but 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.

Derek: 58:35

I mean, lying just it 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 2 men that you won't find me agreeing with very much when it comes to subjects related to this podcast, 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.

Derek: 59:15

And, yeah, Augustine too. It's it's very interesting. 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.

Derek: 59:55

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. 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 a disciple.

Derek: 01:00:53

God uses us, and it's important that we recognize that we need to avoid evil, 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 since I'm a pacifist. Messed that one up. That's all for now, so peace. Because I'm a pacifist.

Derek: 01:01:23

When I say it, I mean it.