Truth-telling, as it turns out, is extremely complicated.
There’s a great line in the eminently quotable movie, Ladyhawke (1985). Philippe Gaston, a common pickpocket, is learning how to navigate the perils of truth-telling. Having lived a life full of lies, he’s discovering how much more freeing honesty can be. Until, that is, he’s faced with a dilemma. If he tells the truth, he betrays his traveling companion to those who mean him harm. So, he tells the truth hoping it will be taken as a lie – and it backfires on him.
“I told the truth, Lord! How can I learn any moral lessons when you keep confusing me this way?”
Much to our surprise, good does not always come from being honest. We live in a fallen world, and it is not only the guilty who suffer. Our collective fallenness affects everything and everyone. And the truth doesn’t always set us free. Or so it would seem.
In contrast, lying can be surprisingly profitable. People tell half-truths and lies, and climb to the top of the social or political heap.
Or they tell the truth out of context or truth that is not theirs to tell. Shockingly, they show us how truth can be manipulated for evil. And they even live to ripe old ages and amass great wealth and power.
We can say that such liars and truth-manipulators will have their just reward in the end. But here on earth and in this present life, Philippe asks, is it really safe to tell the truth?
To tell or not to tell. That is the greatest dilemma far too many of us will ever face.
Nothing is more binding on a child than the words from an abusive adult, “Keep this our little secret.”
So, we learn not to tell.
Don’t bring up the past. Don’t speak ill of those in authority. Don’t speak ill of the dead. In other words, don’t tell. With such pronouncements, lips are sealed out of fear of harm greater than the pain that is bottled up.
Victims get forced to sign non-disclosure agreements, prohibiting them from saying anything about what went down. However you phrase it, such coercion is “bullying” in street lingo.
Whistleblowers tell the truth about a leader or an organization out of concern for the safety of coworkers only to find their own lives ruined. How do you spell “betrayal”? Not betrayal of an organization by an individual, but betrayal of an individual and their conscience by an organization.
Is it better to tell the truth or self-protect?
***
The Bible can be brutally honest about even the best of its heroes. It’s all there for everyone to see. The Good Book doesn’t pull any punches, doesn’t hold anything back.
Abraham impregnates an enslaved woman, then dumps her and her child in the wilderness. David destroys the family of Uriah and Bathsheba. Peter denies Jesus. All too often the stories get pretty sordid.
And that is the point. No one gets a pass. No one gets to stuff their sins in a closet, never to be opened. We think we can somehow escape the spotlight, but we can’t. In fact, Jesus says as much when he tells the parable of the lamp on a stand. Mark’s gospel puts it the plainest:
“Whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open.” (4:22) Jesus is saying it’s all going to come out in the end, so why stuff it?
As I’m writing this, a contractor is in our kitchen tearing up the vinyl plank flooring we had put in two years ago. For the past several months, the floor’s been buckling and cupping and coming apart. The contractor just called me over to show me the final reveal. It’s not a pretty sight.
We thought the problem was that two years ago installers hadn’t taken out the old linoleum before laying down new vinyl plank flooring. But that is only part of the problem. Other underlying particleboards have a surface with the smoothness of the moon.
The previous workers thought they could get away with simply covering up a mess. Instead, their “sins” are being revealed as I write. As I told the contractor’s assistant just now, be sure to do it right the first time or someone will be cursing you long after they’ve forgotten your name.
In one of the biggest construction sob stories I’ve ever heard, a friend relayed how their newly constructed house started to have a problem with disgusting odors after only a few months. I’ll spare you the details other than to say that what finally came to light is that the sewer pipes had never been connected to the sewer lines under the house.
There are numerous passages where the biblical witness makes it clear that you can’t keep the bad a secret forever. In Luke 12:3, Jesus is quoted as saying that “what you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the inner rooms will be shouted from the rooftops.”
Sin happens. Everyone sins. It’s what you do with your sin that sets you apart. As I wrote a few weeks ago, when you sin, repent and make things right. And stop sinning!
One sin will damn you as much as another. But some sins carry greater consequences. Perhaps surprisingly, one of the sins with the greatest of consequences is the sin of self-preservation.
***
Self-preservation can be a good thing. I’ve walked down my own street and had a wild turkey attack me (true story). I did what it took to keep the turkey from pecking me, short of ringing its neck, that is.
But when self-preservation is used to cover up misdeeds or avoid fallout from said misdeeds, it can be deadly. When we try to avoid the consequences of our actions, we attempt the one thing we humans cannot do – foresee the future. We may try to protect ourselves against loss, but only God knows what will happen as a result of our actions or reactions.
Some predictions are likely to come true. Stick your finger in a live electrical socket and you’ll get shocked. Others are not. If we don’t do this floor right, no one will ever know. No guarantee.
In his book, Moral Man and Immoral Society, Reinhold Niebuhr – the guy credited with creating the Serenity Prayer – wrote that people are more likely to sin in groups than alone. It is easier to hide collectively.
Which is why organizations, corporations – even nations – are so vulnerable to collective sinning. Few individuals take responsibility when groups do wrong. Often by the time the guilt is rightly assigned, individuals who so wrongly steered the entity are long gone and the next generation’s leaders are left to pick up the pieces.
Niebuhr wrote Moral Man and Immoral Society in 1932, the year before Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. Over the next decade, individuals who would never have dared act in such sinful ways individually hid behind the collective identities of church, political parties, and nations to commit the worst of human atrocities.
Even those who did nothing, and yet knew, were guilty. We think we don’t have to take responsibility for another’s sin. But like a virus or a genetic disease, sin can be transferred – and passed down to future generations. If the story of Adam and Eve tells us anything, it is that the sins of the parents are visited on the children. We all live with the consequences of Adam and Eve having taken a bite out of that fruit. And unless we work to undo the curse, we live with it still.
If individuals are enticed by self-preservation, corporate entities are even more tempted. We’d rather preserve our corporate existence than give up our corporate sins. History is replete with such gross misdeeds. Think of nations which have clung to prosperity or unity (their very existence) rather than give up vice. Think of businesses that have hidden behind the idea that whatever harm they have done is more than made up for in the good they have achieved. As if good covers bad.
And the same applies to nonprofit and civic organizations. But the greatest millstones are surely reserved for communities of faith – religious entities who try to avoid doing the right thing because self-preservation is such a noble idea. After all, if we went out of existence, think of all the good that would be lost.
On a recent family vacation, we rewatched The Mission (1986), a brilliant, if excruciatingly disturbing movie. Has ever a more beautiful soundtrack been written for such depraved scenes? The Mission is a fictionalized take on the true story of how the Jesuit order sold out South America’s indigenous peoples to the Portuguese and Spaniards in order to preserve their own existence in Europe.
One would think we would learn lessons from others instead of having to learn through our own experience. Would that modern nations would take note of what previous nations have done wrong and work to avoid the same mistakes. Would that corporations would heed what misdeeds brought down other companies. Would that religious organizations would take note of what similar organizations have done wrong and do it the right way instead.
Would that we as individuals would learn from the sins of others. But no, we seem hellbent – and I use that word in the literal sense – on making the same errors.
The opposite of self-preservation is not self-sacrifice, for as the Apostle Paul so eloquently writes, “If I give my body to be burned and have not charity (love), I am nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:3) No, the opposite of self-preservation is doing the right thing for the right reasons. And that can mean putting self (or one’s own organization) on the line to do right by those we have wronged. As Jesus so famously said, “Better to gouge out your eye than burn in hell.” (Matthew 18:9)
I see organizations, corporations, and governments committing the sin of self-preservation instead of doing the right thing for the right reasons. They say they hope good will come of their efforts of self-preservation in spite of sacrificing victims and whistleblowers. All the while they ignore the little ones they are causing to stumble. (Luke 17:2)
What they don’t understand is that, as Adam and Eve discovered, we cannot hide from God – sooner or later everything will be revealed. Better to have the light of God’s grace shine on our misdeeds now than have them burn on Judgement Day – and perhaps us with them.
There are times to be discreet with the truth. As the monk, Imperius, in Ladyhawke reminds Philippe, discretion is the better of valor. Oh yeah, that was Shakespeare speaking through Sir John Falstaff, who in Henry IV actually says, “the better part of valor is discretion.” But wait, the idiom really means better to be a living coward than a dead hero.
And that is not a good reason to be discreet. Neither is self-preservation. Better to do the right thing for the right reason and leave the consequences to God.
For this is the amazing truth about humble transparency. It is a hallmark of God’s grace. When we are honest about our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive our sins. (1 John 1:9) We may still have to live with the consequences of our actions (or inactions), but God has a way of redeeming bad consequences. That is, if we are willing to trust the only One who knows the future.
Watch this pivotal scene from the Mission where the sin of self-preservation betrays the mission of the church: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTUNJ7f0tHU
For a take on the story of a contemporary of Niebuhr who experienced what it means to lose one’s way in the larger society, watch this short video on Martin Niemöller: https://www.facebook.com/reel/1326204955307162.
We live in complicated times. Join me here weekly as we wrestle with the tough questions.
Photo: from a scene in The Mission