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Thursday, April 02, 2015

Is it ever ok to lie?


A commenter referred me to this post:
I'll make a few observations:
On the other hand, those that hold to absolute ethics (like me, Moses, and Jesus) say that all commands from God are binding, and it is never ok to set aside any of them. God doesn’t grade on a curve, so  we shouldn’t view his commands in some kind of order of importance.
That commits the fallacy of a hasty generalization. The existence of moral absolutes doesn't mean all actions reduce to a choice between what's intrinsically right and what's intrinsically wrong. In some cases, the morality of the action is affected by circumstances or consequences. 
Not all obligations are equally obligatory. In case of conflict, a higher obligation overrides a lower obligation.
The simple problem with the graded-ethics approach is that it is not taught by the Bible—verses like Mark 12:31 notwithstanding.
Except that we do see a priority structure in Scripture. For instance, preserving life takes precedence over Sabbath-keeping. Sabbath-keeping is a means to an end, not an end in itself. 
But this takes us back to the Jews hiding in the living room. What then? Well, when scheming up hypothetical ethical dilemmas, you have to remember that hypotheticals are literally problematic. They are contrived precisely because they expose a supposed weakness in a person’s argument.
Sheltering Jews from Nazis isn't merely a hypothetical case. During WWII, many Gentiles sheltered Jews. And some of them had to deal with Nazis barging in to question the homeowner, search the premises, &c. 
So if you are going to play the hypothetical game, remember that God is sovereign, and with that comes his promise that every instance of temptation he will always provide a way of escape (1 Corinthians 10:13)… and that escape is NEVER going to involve sinning. God does not open your escape hatch through sin. In fact, in the context of 1 Corinthians 10, sin is the very thing that God gives you an escape from.
Thus, in any hypothetical moral dilemma you need to remember that there is an unstated contingent—namely, God will give you a way out that does not involve sin.
That begs the question. Here's the implicit argument:
i) Lying is always sinful. 
ii) God will never put you in a position where sinning is unavoidable.
iii) Therefore, God will never put you in a position where lying is unavoidable.
But premise #1 assumes the very issue in dispute! So his argument is viciously circular. 
Well, this decision is really made before you took the Jews in. When you gave them refuge in your house, you did so while taking responsibility for their safety. If you are brave enough to hide them, then you better be brave enough to protect them.  How can you hide them but not be willing to physically defend them? If the guards knock on your door, respond by telling them that they have no right to enter your house, and that what they are doing is morally reprehensible—but that Jesus offers forgiveness for their sins, and they need to repent. Then slam the door, and take the hypothetical from there. A person who is brave enough to lie but not brave enough to be a martyr, isn’t brave at all.
This is incoherent. You can't protect the Jews you're hiding by informing the Gestapo that "they have no right to enter your house" and slamming the door in their face. 
In fact, Jesse concedes the ineffectuality of that tactic by admitting that it will lead to martyrdom. So he has no workable alternative.

7 comments:

  1. I think Google ate my comment, so here is the gist of it again, just in case:

    Under his "What About Wartime Ethics?" heading, he says:

    >>As absolutist as that sounds, the Bible keeps room in its moral constructs for war time ethics. [...] It is expected that war includes both deception and violence. An army can fake left and go right, because they are bearing the sword to suppress evil.

    The argument throughout his entire article is, as you say, begging the question. "Lying is always wrong." That's his response no matter what the challenge.

    But then he finishes things out by qualifying: "Except when it isn't."

    "Rahab?" Wrong, because lying is *always* wrong.

    "Jews in the floorboards?" Wrong, because lying is *always* wrong.

    "War?" Just fine, because lying isn't always wrong after all.

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    1. That brings up interesting points too. Like, is it lying when you bluff in Poker? For that matter, in the past I've even pranked a friend by saying something that was 100% true knowing full well that the person I was talking to would believe I was being sarcastic, which would thereby cause him to believe the opposite of what I was stating, which was my intended goal. So that's an instance of not lying at all but still deceiving someone, and in fact *intending* for them to believe a lie.

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  2. I dunno, if Christ is our exemplar as Christians, and "no deceit was found in His mouth", and we have all the clear explicit NT admonitions against lying, plus the OT admonitions, it seems pretty clear that lying is to be avoided if we are to be imitators of Christ.

    Not to mention the Pauline reasoning in Rom. 3 along these very lines of "sinning that grace might abound".

    To change the hypothetical up a bit, would it be justifiable to lie to people about the Gospel in order to trick them into confessing Christ, and say in God's good providence He was pleased to regenerate some of the deceived folks, would such tactics be honoring to God? Would the ends justify the means? Shouldn't we rather obey God and do things the way He has clearly prescribed, which includes putting away lying?

    It seems so to me.

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    1. CR:

      "I dunno, if Christ is our exemplar as Christians…"

      Given the deity of Christ and the further fact that, according to Scripture, God sometimes deceives unbelievers, your appeal backfires.

      "and we have all the clear explicit NT admonitions against lying, plus the OT admonitions…"

      You don't even bother to say what you have in mind. Are you alluding to verses like Lev 19:11, Eph 4:25, and Col 3:9? If so, the appeal is misguided.

      Commands and prohibitions have a implied context. In this case, they refer to the covenant community. That's the setting they envision.

      You can't just rip that out of context and transplant to a very different situation. Suppose you have a Jewish mother and a Gentile father. Suppose the Nazis demand to know if there are any Jews in the house. You really think Paul is saying you have a duty to betray your mother to the Nazis? How does that square with the command to honor your parents?

      Commands and prohibitions deal with typical situations, not anomalous situations. Take the prohibition against perjury.

      Keep in mind that true, but incomplete answers, can be equivalent to falsehoods. Half-truths. That's why crooked lawyers ask "simple" questions. They know the truncated answers will be misleading. The "true" answers will foster a misimpression of what actually happened.

      The prohibition against perjury is designed to avoid a miscarriage of justice. But in a Kafkaesque situation, with a kangaroo court, crooked judge, and crooked prosecutor, everything is inverted.

      "Not to mention the Pauline reasoning in Rom. 3 along these very lines of 'sinning that grace might abound.'"

      That's not a serious effort to engage the argument. It presumes that lying is a sin. But that's the very question at issue.

      "To change the hypothetical up a bit, would it be justifiable to lie to people about the Gospel in order to trick them into confessing Christ, and say in God's good providence He was pleased to regenerate some of the deceived folks, would such tactics be honoring to God?"

      That's a silly comparison. You act as though, if lying is sometimes permissible, then lying is always permissible. Suppose we applied your logic to killing.

      To believe the Gospel under false pretenses is not to believe the Gospel at all. How is that comparable to the issue at hand?

      "Would the ends justify the means?"

      Again, you're being simplistic. Some ends do justify some means. Not all ends. Not all means.

      "Shouldn't we rather obey God and do things the way He has clearly prescribed, which includes putting away lying?"

      You're talking like a pacifist who quotes the Sermon on the Mount, but disregards every other social obligation in Scripture.

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    2. I had lots of verses in mind, but I'm traveling and typing on my phone, so it was a little difficult to put together a list of prooftexts.

      "That's a silly comparison. You act as though, if lying is sometimes permissible, then lying is always permissible. Suppose we applied your logic to killing. 

      To believe the Gospel under false pretenses is not to believe the Gospel at all. How is that comparable to the issue at hand?"


      I thought there was an analogy between saving physical lives and spiritual lives, which is why I picked this hypothetical. Plus in my hypothetical God used the deception to actually regenerate the deceived, so you don't get to take that away!

      I'm not thinking like a pacifist, although I may sound that way, I'm trying to think Biblically.

      I do wonder how if we're to do all things to the glory of God how we lie to the glory of God. Seems an odd thing to conceive of under the New Covenant.

      Good thoughts anyway, thanks for the interaction.

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    3. "I do wonder how if we're to do all things to the glory of God how we lie to the glory of God. Seems an odd thing to conceive of under the New Covenant."

      Lying to the glory of God is no odder than killing to the glory of God. If the latter is compatible with God-glorifying behavior, so is the former.

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  3. It's important to define what lying is, yes?

    There are scenarios where lying can be defined as telling or describing something that is not literally true. You could be telling a joke, a story, a parable. Other examples are given above – bluffing in poker, giving a "head fake" in a war, being deceptive in order to rightfully preserve life. I don't feel scenarios such as these are what the scriptures have in mind when it condemns lying tongues, or bearing false witness.

    Then there are the scenarios where the definition of lying clearly runs afoul of scripture. In a general sense it is those situations where the motive or desired outcome of the lying is sinful – ill gotten gain, bringing wrongful harm to someone, etc.

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