Sacred Truth and Societal Lying

The 74-year-old prestigious American Mathematics Competition (AMC) represents a premier math event that America’s colleges and finance-industry recruiters use to locate top-tier teenage “whiz kids” for future university enrollment and business employment. Students begin to prepare for this competition when they are in elementary school and spend long hours working with coaches, participating in math clubs, and training for contests like this one. Allegations of online leaks of tests recently surfaced and threatened to upend the trust placed in the prestigious decades-old competition. [1]

If the fact that exams and exam questions were available online several days prior to the testing date were not enough, some contestants took advantage of the leak to gain an advantage over other participants on the actual examination. The scandal has eroded longstanding AMC fidelity and compromised trust between contestants, parents, and institutions. Sadly, this type of behavior presently permeates our culture. For example, reports regularly surface of churches and their leaders covering up sexual abuse, of recurrent fraudulent business financial schemes, of political scandals in all levels of government, and of unsanctioned performance enhancing drug use among professional athletes! All of these scenarios and others like them hold deep implications for truth, trust, and truth-telling.

These societal moral concerns form the backdrop to this newsletter article, but here is my claim: the truth is, we all lie and need to consider our Christian responsibility to live with integrity in thought, word, and action!

Truth means “the character of being, or disposition to be, true to a person, principle, or cause.” Synonyms include faithfulness, loyalty, and steadfast allegiance. In contrast, culture often justifies a lack of truth with the term "white lie" to suggest something less severe in consequences. Moral judgments about such lies are often based upon the context of a falsehood and who is affected (e.g., avoiding a party by claiming to be “under the weather,” or cheating on expense reports). People justify such lies because they spare another person’s feelings or reason that a profitable company, as a whole, will not miss the money. A "black lie," in contrast, is one that causes harm or is told to simply avoid consequences of and responsibility for what we have done (e.g., defrauding investors of their life savings!).

Moral judgments regarding truth, trust, and truth-telling actually run much deeper than using lies to avoid attending a gathering or exaggerating business expenses. Two examples illustrate the gravity of and complexity about truth. Governments withhold the truth at times to protect national interests, totalitarian regimes disseminate falsehood to conceal corruption and control citizens, and all of us are aware that politicians lie for a number of reasons. Some doctors withhold the full truth from patients out of varied motives, and patients quite often do not reveal the full truth in their relationships with doctors! [2] Lies and falsehoods are pervasive.

Here are three broad philosophical perspectives on truth, trust, and truth-telling. Some claim that the absolute truth must always be spoken (cf. Immanuel Kant and Deontology). They would assert, for example, that those in government who possess special knowledge and power because of their positions are obligated to tell the entire truth. Others disagree and argue that the consequences should come under consideration. It might be right, in this view, to tell a lie if the results are beneficial to a community. For example, protecting harbored Jews from would-be Nazi murderers (cf. John Stuart Mill and Utilitarianism). In other instances, societal judgments about truth and truth-telling often shift on cultural whims (cf. Relativism).

Nevertheless, truth is important precisely because society’s social foundation has always depended upon truthfulness and its members being trustworthy, which suggests a deeper basis for truth—a distinction not only between the “true” and “false,” but also between “the absolute” and the “relative.” [3]

First, truth and truthfulness hold ethical implications for Christian character and action. God is truth, cannot lie, and all truth derives its sanctity from Him. Therefore, all falsehood is wrong because it contradicts who He is (Psalm 111:7-8; Titus 1:2; Hebrews 16:18). Truthfulness in character is necessary because we are fashioned in the image of the God of truth (John 18:37). God's children, who bear their Heavenly Father's image, live authentically in culture (John 8:31-32, "abide"). Conversely, untruth is a hallmark of bad character (Genesis 37: 31-35, envy that leads to treachery and deception; Matthew 26: 49; Mark 14:45). [4]

Since God is truth, then His words and deeds are “faithful” and demonstrate “faithfulness” (Genesis 9:16; 15:18). In direct conflict with the truth is Satan, the “father of lies” (John 8:44). The serpent tells lies to Adam and Eve by directly assailing God's veracity  (Genesis 3:5, “You shall not surely die”). The end of such lies is darkness and death (Revelation 21:8, 27; 22: 15). Therefore, God’s fundamental commandment about truth forbids lying (Exodus 20:16; 23:7; Zechariah 8:16-17; Ephesians 4:25). Jesus instructed His disciples to simply say “yes, yes” and “no, no” to demonstrate their veracity (Matthew 5:37). Christians will choose to put aside everything from deceit to flattery to cursing (Psalm 57:4, 64:3; Jeremiah 9:8) both individually and in community (Ephesians 4:15).

Secondly, truth is essential for a Christian way of life—a worldview (2 Timothy 2:18; James 5:19; John 14:6). The source for Christian moral thought and action must emerge from within a biblical worldview, and truth and truthfulness hold importance for acting rightly and justly in God’s world. I realize that we live in a pluralistic society, but governing leaders do well to consider upon which worldview they make their moral judgments. For example, King David, who governed over Israel, learned the importance of abiding by truth. He learned through his moral failure not to separate himself from God’s truth. He writes, “Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart” (Psalm 51:6, ESV). Therefore, truth cannot "guide our lives unless it is formed within us" (John 8:31-32; 17:3). Ultimately, the life of truth and truthfulness emerges only from the transformation of the new creation in righteousness and holiness of the truth (John 17:3, 17; 2 Corinthians 4:6). The life of faith in Jesus continues in obedience to the truth in thought, word, and action (Ephesians 5:9; 3 John 4).

Thirdly, when lies prevail, the foundations of fairness (justice) are destroyed (cf. Isaiah 59:4, 14, 15). Lying is sinful and the consequences affect all of us. Abuses of justice and trust occur when parents overlook their responsibility to model truth and truth-telling before their children. Businesses violate trust and practice injustice when they accumulate vast quantities of power and influence and use them corruptly or for self-interest alone. Governments abuse the public trust and foster injustice by withholding information critical to the well-being of its citizens. Church leaders create unhealthy and unjust community relationships with church members and foster distrust when they speak only that which their people want to hear to avoid creating moral discomfort. Living in the truth includes guarding against a slide into falsehood in any area of life.

The Roman governor, Pilate, once mused, “What is truth?” (John 18:38), and current society too often asks the same question (John 18:38). But God has provided His answer to such a question in Jesus Christ. Jesus says, “for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth” (John 18:37; cf., 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”).

Christ embodies that which is absolute as contrasted against that which is relative. Jesus, God in flesh, has come into the world as the ultimate, permanent, and complete truth so that we may have abundant life. We have been reminded today that “the necessity of truthfulness in us rests upon God’s truthfulness. As we are to be holy because God is holy, so we are to be truthful because God is truthful” (John Murray). Therefore, truth, trust, and truth-telling are vital to human flourishing and are our Christian duty in society.

Larry C. Ashlock

Notes:
1. Milla Surjadi and Sara Randazzo, “The Cheating Scandal Rocking the World of Elite High-School Math,” Wall Street Journal, August 15, 2024.

2. Space in this article does not permit an exhaustive exploration of the topic. See also Glenn Stassen and David Gushee, Kingdom Ethics, 2d Ed., Ch. 15, "Let Your Yes Be Yes: The Ethics of Truthful Speech." For an analysis of government use of disinformation to protect national interests see also Ronald Stone, Ultimate Imperative, 99-112. For an examination of truth, trust, and truth-telling in medicine, see Tom Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 4th ed., 469ff.

Stone addresses the temptations to become involved in lying that arise from nationalism and the competition of power (See also, Stassen and Gushee, Kingdom Ethics, 2d ed., 268). Beauchamp and Childress write of the virtue of trustworthiness in health care. The rise of medical malpractice lawsuits and an adversarial relationship between medical practitioners and the public indicates that trust and trustworthiness are no longer central to health care. Key challenges to traditional medical confidentiality need to be considered as well. Please see chapter 7 of Tony Hope's, Medical Ethics: A Very Short Introduction.

3. See David Cook, The Moral Maze, 26-31. Cook provides a clear and concise analysis of “feeling as a basis for morality.” He states, “If we start with experience as the basis of moral judgment, we end up with an individualistic morality. Relativism means each person pleasing himself. It means doing your own thing and letting others do their thing too. There are no moral absolutes or fixed moral principles. Moral views are not true or false. They are simply matters of taste.”

4. I am grateful for John Murray's, Principles of Conduct, Ch. 6, for the background to this section.