Telling the Truth [“Faith at Work”, sermon IX] 3/7/48
Scripture: Ephesians 4: 25-32
Text: Exodus 20: 16; “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”
For the three past Sundays, we have considered three of the short, specific commandments: “Thou shalt not kill;” “Thou shalt not commit adultery;” “Thou shalt not steal.” We know and remember well, that these are concerned with persons. In each case, an act is seen as evil, not in abstraction, but in its effect on human beings, who are precious because they are made in the image of God.
Killing is evil because it is persons who suffer and die; adultery is evil, because it is some person to whom one is disloyal in breaking the marriage vow or in disregarding marriage sanctity; theft is evil because private property represents the effort and struggle, often the blood and sweat and even tears, of other human beings.
In the same way a lie is evil because it harms one’s neighbor.
The personal basis of evil is assumed in the other three “short” commandments. But in the case of false witness, the ancient moral law makes the personal reference explicit in the words “against thy neighbor.” The kind of lying which is specifically denounced is that against a neighbor. This kind is really dangerous.
All of these particular moral laws are ways of showing, in detail, what it means to uphold in word and deed the dignity and value of human life -- the lives of others as well as our own life.
All people seek to safeguard the dignity and worth of their own lives. By that same token, our heritage asserts that we ought to seek the same safeguard for others who are also children of God, the Father of us all. These specific moral laws are detailed applications of the Rule of Jesus: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” and of the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
It is important that truth-telling be placed on this larger ethical plane because it sometimes appears, on the surface, to be an abstract virtue. The commandment puts truth-telling into an important and difficult context when it infers that it is lies about people which are the most dangerous lies in the world. For it is lies about people which otherwise good people may be tempted to tell.
The ninth commandment may be broken more often than any other, unless it be the tenth. Thousands of otherwise highly respectable people, who would never dream of committing murder or adultery or robbery, will engage in tale-bearing, or detraction.
It is dangerously pleasant to sit with one’s friends and discuss a third party when the conversation is at least mildly derogatory. No one is ever sent to jail for such comments and yet they yield a bit of excitement along with a sense of relative virtue in one’s self. Somehow a comment on the supposed shortcomings of another makes one’s self appear virtuous by contrast.
We must use our minds and form our judgments. This is inescapable. And we are incurably interested, for good or ill, in one another, in our opinions of the acts of others and in their opinion of our acts. This is our human situation. And this makes amateur moralists of us.
What we must bear constantly in mind is that people are persistently and painfully concerned with reputation. We want approval and need praise. Often we will go to some extremes to get it. We can hardly bear to be ridiculed. We would perhaps choose to be despised or hated rather than ridiculed.
We build up systems of honor, and if these be destroyed by a revolution of sorts we create new forms by which excellence is to be recognized. And people who claim that they do not prize such honors -- well do they really tell the truth?
The old Japanese custom of committing suicide when suffering a severe loss of face is merely a stylized form of what all people feel in such situations. We care tremendously what others think of our purposes and actions.
Once in a while it is possible to rise above the desire to be praised, to the desire rather to be praiseworthy, but that is a very high level of moral achievement. It is most understandable if it is a desire for the respect of God, the infinite impartial observer, rather than the respect of finite people.
It is precisely because we care about reputation so keenly that we can harm one another so easily. Nearly all blackmail gets its power from the desire to maintain good standing in the eyes of others. However, thoroughgoing blackmail is comparatively rare.
What is common, but is also dishonest and perhaps cowardly, is an effort to advance our own standing by sly insinuations about our competitors for place and power.
Two teachers of the same department in a school, each eager to achieve a high reputation for scholarship, may be sorely tempted to say a word that the colleague has somehow missed his goal. Perhaps one condemns the other with faint praise - suggesting that his scholarship is superficial rather than deep by commenting that he is adept at popularization. You can do your competitor terrible harm by appearing to pity him in conversation with others.
In positive form, the ninth commandment might be phrased: “Thou shalt be meticulously honest in dealing with the reputations of others.” I understand that the Quakers have an ancient, and searching, query which runs like this: “Do you avoid tale-bearing and detraction and are you careful concerning the reputation of others?”
Now of course the requirement that we be careful concerning the reputation of others does not imply that we abstain from careful criticism, or even from condemnation, when the truth requires it. This commandment gives no support to the easy doctrine that we must always speak well of others, and to others. The prophets rightly used hard words on some occasions. Jesus used the stern language of hard truth when speaking of, and to, certain of the Pharisees. Our heritage is not one of uncritical tolerance, and most assuredly not one of bootlicking.
Probably there was too much of uncritical tolerance of the Nazis prior to 1940 as illustrated in the comment of one rhetorical: “Well, they think they’re right, don’t they?”
The storm of criticism that broke over Dale Carnegie’s book as offensive to good taste is not so important as his general doctrine of non-judgment. Since criticism is like a homing pigeon, sure to return in the form of counter-criticism, Carnegie argues that it is smarter and more profitable not to criticize, but to try and understand the other fellow -- I suppose in order to get more out of him in trade or business, or general good will or in buildup for yourself. That leaves the whole matter simply at the level of expedience. There is no ethical standard held up there at all! Of course we must criticize.
The solution is not in abstaining from all criticism, but in striving to keep all criticism in line with absolute truth. This is difficult, but necessary. And we do well to remember that important criticism is not alone pointing out what is wrong, but in pointing to what may happen that is right.
But though truth-telling is concerned chiefly with relations between persons, it is so good a thing that it must be extended to all relations of life. Actually we do find it highly prized in certain basic areas of human experience. The success of science rests on ethical foundations. The work of a laboratory is such that a man doing the first experiments on a problem might lie about it if he wished, but he knows that the hope of each succeeding step rests on the honesty with which he records and reports the first steps.
Fortunately for us and the world, the meticulous regard for truth is still the dominant tendency in regard to things. We are more careful what we say about atoms than we are about people -- more exacting with a tape measure and scales than we are with character. Now there is nothing sacred about figures; only persons are really sacred. But both ought to be treated with honesty.
Perhaps the best form in which to put the imperative positive form of the eleventh commandment is this: “Thou shalt be trustworthy.” And this is obviously more significant for human welfare than any negative commandment could be.
The fate of the world and its present civilization now hangs on the answer to the question: “Are those who control the power of the world -- scientific, mechanical, political, atomic -- trustworthy?” [A year ago, in this nation, we were a very sad country in learning that a President, and others close to him, were not trustworthy in telling all of the truth. We expect the truth from those whom we place in high office, and we demand it, rightly.] (the bracketed comment added in 1975, a reference to Mr. Nixon. ed.)
A good man is one who keeps his promises -- though he suffer and die for them. The world is immeasurably helped by that kind of faithfulness.
A wise man will be careful what promises he makes. But a good man is meticulous in keeping his word.
The reconstruction of our world is not primarily a problem in engineering or politics. It is a problem of recovering the sense of a moral order. As Dr. Paik suggested yesterday, the only conquest worth our hope is the conquest of all hearts by Christ. [and the heart that is given to Christ is not one to bear false witness.]
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Wisconsin Rapids, March 7, 1948
Waioli Church, March 9, 1975