The Truth About Lying

Sheldon:         Remember how Leonard told you we couldn’t come to your performance because we were attending a symposium on molecular positronium?

Penny:             I remember ‘symposium’.

Sheldon:         Yes, well, he lied.

Penny:             Wait, what?

Sheldon:         He lied, and I’m feeling very uncomfortable about it.

Penny:             Well, imagine how I’m feeling.

Sheldon:         Hungry? Tired? I’m sorry, this really isn’t my strong suit.

The Big Bang Theory S1 E10, ‘The Loobenfeld Decay’ (2008)

 

Pinocchio. Because, you know, lying. Thanks to parrysuwanitch at freedigitalphotos.net.

So here’s a slightly crazy-sounding proposal for you all to run through your heresy filters: lying isn’t a sin.

What? Don’t be ridiculous. Of course it is. What about “you shall not bear false witness against your neighbour” (Exodus 20:16)? What about “you shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; you shall not lie to one another” (Leviticus 19:11)? What about “no one who practises deceit shall dwell in my house; no one who utters lies shall continue before my eyes” (Psalm 101:7)? What about “lying lips are an abomination to the LORD” (Proverbs 12:22)? What about “do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices” (Colossians 3:9)? And I hope you realise I’ve barely scratched the surface!

Ah. Well. Yes. Such evidence would, I grant you, appear to suggest that there’s an inherent sinfulness in deliberately stating something that isn’t true as if it were – for the purposes of this post, I’m dealing exclusively with lying defined as verbal assertion of something the speaker knows is untrue, and not other forms of deception or dissimulation – but, on the contrary, I think you’ll find that if we take all the scriptures together, including narrative passages…

You mean narrative passages like the one where Ananias and Sapphira are struck dead by God for lying to the apostles about the price they received for a field?¹

Actually, that wasn’t one I had in mind – but why don’t you keep going for a bit? How many occasions in the Bible where somebody speaks an untruth to somebody else can you think of, just off the top of your head?

All right, let’s go: Abraham lies to Pharaoh that Sarah isn’t his wife;² he tells the same lie to Abimelech;³ so does Isaac, about his own wife Rebekah;⁴ Jacob lies to Isaac that he’s Esau⁵ … um … Potiphar’s wife lies to him that Joseph assaulted her⁶ …

Keep going. There are a few in the books of Samuel.

Michal lies to Saul that David’s sick when, in fact, she’s let him out through the window and put a decoy in his bed;⁷ David lies to Achish king of Gath about where he’s been raiding;⁸ then during Absalom’s rebellion, Hushai the Archite lies to Absalom that he’s on his side rather than David’s, so that he can give him faulty counsel and keep David informed of his movements;⁹ and there’s a woman who hides the two messengers Hushai sends in a well and lies to Absalom’s men that they’re elsewhere…¹⁰

… and the two supporters in question consequently make it back to David, and can tell him to use the time that Hushai’s bad advice has bought him to cross the river and regroup. A combination of Hushai’s lying and the woman’s lying rather saves David’s skin there, don’t you think?

Well, sure – but just because God uses a lie someone tells in order to achieve his purposes, it doesn’t necessarily mean he endorses the telling of the lie.¹¹

Oh, of course not. Which is why I’m now going to give you two examples when God quite clearly does endorse the telling of the lie.

First, consider Shiphrah and Puah, the Israelite midwives ordered by Pharoah to carry out mass infanticide among their people: “But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live. So the king of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, ‘Why have you done this, and let the male children live?’ The midwives said to Pharoah, ‘Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.’ So God dealt well with the midwives. And the people multiplied and grew very strong. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families.”¹² Note how we go directly from the midwives lying to Pharoah to cover up their illegal activity, to God blessing them for their actions.

That’s … uncomfortable.

It’s about to get even more uncomfortable. Consider now Rahab, who hid the spies Joshua sent to scout out the city of Jericho prior to Israel’s conquest of it: “Then the king of Jericho sent to Rahab, saying, ‘Bring out the men who have come to you, who entered your house, for they have come to search out all the land.’ But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. And she said, ‘True, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from. And when the gate was about to be closed at dark, the men went out. I do not know where the men went. Pursue them quickly, for you will overtake them.’ But she had brought them up to the roof and hid them with the stalks of flax that she had laid in order on the roof.”¹³

Later, Joshua declares of Jericho: “And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the LORD for destruction. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall live, because she hid the messengers whom we sent.” And sure enough: “But Rahab the prostitute and her father’s household and all who belonged to her, Joshua saved alive. And she has lived in Israel to this day, because she hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.”¹⁴

Concealing the spies is literally the one thing Rahab actively does in the narrative, and the fact that she lied in order to do it is presented, I think it’s fair to say, without ambiguity or embarrassment. This deed is then explicitly identified as the reason why she and her household are saved when every other living thing in Jericho is annihilated. On top of that, in the New Testament, Rahab’s concealment of the spies is referred to as a shining example of what faith in God looks like in action – not only once, but twice: “by faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies” (Hebrews 11:31); and “and in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way?” (James 2:25). How can we possibly both commend Rahab’s actions as an imitable demonstration of faith, and simultaneously characterise what she did as sinful? We’ve got to forsake one or the other – and since scripture unequivocally demands the former with reference to this specific scenario, the latter must be the one to go. It cannot be a sin in and of itself merely to deliberately state a falsehood as if it were true.

But what about “lying lips are an abomination to the LORD” and so forth?

I’ll deal with that next week, God willing. For the moment, I’ll leave you with this: where scripture condemns lying, it must be condemning something other than mere verbal assertion of something the speaker knows is untrue. As to what that is, why not have a ponder and a pray and a search of the scriptures over the next few days – and then see whether your conclusions match up with mine?

Footnotes

¹ That’s in Acts 5. I’m not doing hyperlinks to Bible passages this week because there would be an altogether unwieldy number of them.

² Genesis 12.

³ Genesis 20.

⁴ Genesis 26.

⁵ Genesis 27.

⁶ ♫ It’s all there in chapter thirty-nine of Genesis… ♫

⁷ 1 Samuel 19.

⁸ 1 Samuel 27.

⁹ 2 Samuel 16.

¹⁰ 2 Samuel 17.

¹¹ This is the approach that GotQuestions takes to this issue: https://www.gotquestions.org/white-lies.html. I don’t think they present the full picture.

¹² Exodus 1.

¹³ Joshua 2.

¹⁴ Joshua 6.