Don Follis 1/11/2002 religion column:
"Truthfulness holds the community together"
Just five days after George
O'Leary was hired to be Notre Dame's new
football coach last December, he resigned. O'Leary lied on his
resume
about his academic and athletic background.
Last weekend historian Stephen
Ambrose apologized for lifting phrases and
sentences from another author's book and putting them in "The Wild
Blue,"
Ambrose's current best seller. Simon and Schuster, who published
Ambrose's
book, said that phrases in question would be set within quotation marks
in
future editions.
Ambrose's apology was a
response to being accused of copying entire
passages from Thomas Childers' "Wings of Morning." Both books
are accounts
of B-24 bomber crews in Europe during World War II. The embattled Ambrose
says he'll give a full accounting on an unspecified television show.
Several years ago my daughter
came home from church with her handwritten
version of the 10 commandments. The paraphrased commandments
were printed
on a large sheet of butcher-block paper with colored markers.
The ninth commandment --
"You shall not bear false witness against your
neighbor" -- was written with an orange marker. My daughter's
paraphrase
read: "NO LYING!"
Writer Lewis Smedes says,
"Lying breaks the tissue of faith that holds
every human community together." In our day, where lying is practically
a
lifestyle, the ninth commandment sounds like an anachronism.
For most people, even well
respected coaches and brilliant historians,
truthfulness comes very hard. The prophet Jeremiah pessimistically
asserts
that the human heart is "deceitful above all things."
In fact, most of us want
to be better people than we are. So we deceive
others, intentionally keeping people from knowing the truth.
Whenever we
intend to deceive others, we lie. Deception is the heart of all
lies.
Pastors and priests, the
people I know best, have many opportunities to
deceive. Some of the best preachers in the country disperse their
sermons
over the Internet. One pastor told me of the temptation to lift
the
material from those electronically transmitted sermons and to present
the
material as his own.
Already I have received
via email some excellent sermons that were
preached this past Sunday. The illustrations are current, and
some of the
material is exquisitely crafted. Do I give the preacher credit
if I use
the material? Or do I take the credit for someone else's work,
introducing
the best example by saying, "I have always thought…"
The commandment that forbids
lying really is a commandment that compels us
to be truthful. Civility obligates us to be authentic and
honest.
Pretending to be something or someone we are not is the epitome of
untruthfulness. Jesus reserved his harshest words for the Pharisees,
the
religious leaders of his day, because they deceived others into thinking
they were what they never could or even intend to be.
Being true to what we intend
to be does not mean revealing everything
about ourselves. Silence can be golden. Even with the best
of intentions,
truthfulness is hard to come by because we're all a mixed bag of motives.
Do you really want to know about the anger and confusion lurking in
my
heart?
Still, truthfulness is essential
because it equals trustworthiness. Jesus
said, "Let your yes be yes and your no, no." He admired people
who said
what they meant and meant what they said.
And yet, I know of no one
who doesn't tell "tolerated" lies. We tell
polite lies. We speak in euphemisms. We exaggerate. We gloss
over the true
details. We have become are a society of cynics, thinking a white
lie
hurts people less than the plain truth. But even a white lie
prevents the
deceived person from responding freely to reality.
Frankly, the truth can be
painful, complex, even unwanted. Should we lie
to protect children? If a pastor does not share his congregation's
literal
belief in an article of faith, should he keep his private interpretation
to
himself? Should I lie to protect an incompetent colleague that
I know
wouldn't be hired by another company? Should a physician tell
a dying
patient about his true condition? Am I willing to balance whatever
I say
on the ground that truthfulness is the heart of our human community?
There are a thousand George
O'Leary's and Stephen Ambrose's and a thousand
reasons they deceive. If we can't trust that people communicating
with us
are truthful, the fabric that holds communities together means nothing,
and
we all lose.
The ninth commandment is
intrinsically reasonable. Truthfulness is the
fiber that holds us together in humane community. Speaking the
truth sets
others free.
Don Follis is an Urbana minister. Reprinted with permission from
the
Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, copyright 2002.