“Do you think this outfit
looks okay?” she asks.
Hmm…“Well,”
I think to myself, “the fact that your shirt resembles a burlap sack doesn’t really
help. In fact, that you’re wearing acid
washed jeans from the 1980’s doesn’t really help either.”
“Oh yeah,” I answer
aloud. “You look great!”
What
was I supposed to say? “Hey, the 1980’s
called. They’d like their outfit
back.” This “how do I look?” question is
one I’ve been asked a lot, and usually the honest answer is, “You look
great!” Every once in a while, however,
that’s not an honest answer. It seems
that no matter how many good answers I try to come up with, all of them sound
sort of mean. I tell a little fib. My mother would call it a white lie: a lie
told for the greater good. In this case,
it’s a lie told in order not to hurt my friend’s feelings.
1.
In the Garden of
Eden, it’s the serpent who first lies to Eve, resulting in Adam and Eve’s
expulsion from the garden.
2.
In Leviticus, God
says to Moses, “You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; and you shall
not lie to one another.”
3.
The author of
Colossians writes, “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped
off the old self with its practices and have clothes yourselves with the new
self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its
creator.”
From the beginning, we see
lying as something that separates us from God.
Last week I read from Genesis chapter 3, telling the story of Adam and
Eve eating from the tree of knowledge and therefore being expelled from the
Garden of Eden. They ate from this tree
partly because they wanted to be wise.
They also ate from this tree, however, because the serpent lied to them
and told them that God would not punish them for eating from the tree from
which he told them not to. We listened
to how Adam and Eve’s eating from the tree resulted in God driving them out of
the garden. The result, however, was far
worse than mere expulsion from the garden.
Because of their actions, Adam and Eve’s hearts, as the passage last
week from Ecclesiasticus tells us, their hearts had been separated from their
maker.
These passages that we read
are about relationship with God and with one another. When we lie, our hearts are separated from
our maker. When we lie, our hearts are
separated from one another.
In the Old Testament passage
we read today, from Deuteronomy, the Lord says, “If you obey the commandments
of the Lord your god which I command you this day, by loving the Lord your God,
by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and
his ordinances, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will
bless you…” By keeping his commandments
you shall live and the Lord will bless you.
By keeping his commandments you shall have life.
God doesn’t set these laws
before us because he has nothing better to do, or because he is some intolerant
dictator. These laws are not about the
laws themselves. These laws are not
about making our life more difficult.
These laws are ultimately about relationship: relationship with God and
with one another.
The problem with lying is
that it breaks our relationship with God, and therefore breaks our relationship
with one another.
But it’s not so cut and dry,
right? Certainly it’s not so easy in
everyday life. Even theologians disagree
on this point!
If, for example, lying would
save someone’s life, then perhaps it’s okay.
Let us imagine an abusive husband is threatening to kill his wife and
children. He cannot find his children
because his wife has hidden them. He
asks his wife if she knows where they are.
She says, “no.” That’s a lie,
right? If it is saving lives, however, I
cannot imagine God would have a problem with that. That
isn’t breaking our relationship with God.
Lying is okay,
then…right? Maybe it’s okay in
particular circumstances, right?
What is the right
circumstance? If we make a blanket
statement suggesting that lying is appropriate in particularly important
circumstances, we’re going to run into some problems. What I consider an important circumstance for
lying isn’t what someone else may consider an appropriate circumstance for
lying.
What about the practical side
of lying, then? We build relationships
with one another through trust. We trust
in God because God tells us and shows us that God loves us. If we bear false witness to one another, our
relationships will begin to break down.
When we break down these relationships, we are not living as we were
created to live: in relationship.
There are exceptions. As I said earlier, and as many theologians
have argued, if the act of lying will save someone’s life (or some other
equally important situation), then perhaps a person can lie. It would be a mistake, however, to make a
blanket statement allowing for the use of lying. Doing so opens up the possibility for lying
to take place when it is not necessary.
If we continue to point to lying as an act that is intolerable, then we are
only likely to use it when the circumstances are so extreme that not using
it would violate our responsibility to one another.
Remember Deuteronomy: choose
life, God says. If we want to have life,
if we want our hearts always connected with our creator, we must live by his
commandments. We must follow his call to
us to live in relationship with him, and therefore with one another. These commandments guide us into a life lived
in relationship with God. As Christian
people, as people who know what it means to be in relationship with our
Creator, we know that we must follow these commandments.
May we keep be always mindful
of these commandments, loving the Lord our God, by walking in his ways, and by
keeping his commandments. That’s how we
choose life. That’s how we help bring
life back into this fractured world.
That is how we, too, become blessed.