The Morality of Truth Telling
According to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, telling the truth is both a matter of moral character and "a matter of correct appreciation of real situations and of serious reflection upon them." I do not wish to minimize Bonhoeffer by utilizing only this quote or idea. His essay, What is meant by 'telling the truth'? is one that is meritorious of study and reflection. What I do wish to address is the simple profundity and lucid yet almost foreign idea of telling the truth.
With the ascension of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States, lies and falsehoods have become so frequent and so often passed off as the truth that truth itself finds short shrift in the fact that the task of simply pointing out and naming the lies has become a full time task. Refutation and argument have little time to take place before a new list of fabrications arise.
While I don't agree much in Rod Dreher's book The Benedict Option, I do find that his statement about Trump is on the mark: "The idea that someone as robustly vulgar, fiercely combative, and morally compromised as Trump will be an avatar for the return of Christian morality and social unity is beyond delusional. He is not a solution to the problem of America's cultural decline, but a symptom of it.”[1]
When truth has become so associated with enemies of the state (or of any given politician), one wonders about the nature of that state. One also wonders at the nature of those who support the lies and those who lie - especially if they are people of faith.
Take, for example, Jim Ziegler, who defended (not debunked, but defended) the idea of Roy Moore having an alleged affair with a 14 year old when he was in his 30s. He said that it wasn't illegal or immoral, but it was like the relationship of Joseph and Mary who were the parents of Jesus. Very much off the mark there, but the point isn't his misreading of the Bible texts or of the misrepresentation of the Christian faith, but his use of the scriptures to excuse behavior society deems inappropriate.
Of course Christians have a long, long, long history of cut-and-paste readings of scripture. So perhaps the fact that people of faith can so easily come to the defense of those they deem worthy with Biblical quotes is no real surprise. They are also the ones who can quickly condemn those they despise with the same level of Biblical references.
What this is is, in my opinion, a kind of intellectual and Biblical dishonesty. It stems from wanting something to be true, regardless of whether or not it is, and then circling the wagons, stories, or scriptures around it to provide some legitimacy to the claim - whatever it might be. In so doing, false narratives become true (or have enough people believing them that they seem to be true), and truth fails to matter.
I suppose we all do this at one time or another, but the point Bonhoeffer makes is that if we know we aren't telling the truth, then we have sunk to an abysmal moral standard. Granted, and Bonhoeffer makes this point, too, there are moments when telling the truth would perhaps be inappropriate, but that those situational bound moments require levels of discernment that are absent from most television conversations and news reports as of late (from all sides).
If telling the truth is a gauge of morality and character, then we are in danger of becoming a nation of disrepute because we have stopped being able to tell the truth and, at the same time, in danger of not being willing to tell the truth either. Perhaps the backlash of the continued outcry against sexual misconduct and discrimination can boomerang around to speaking out against bigotry and out and out lies. Perhaps...
With the ascension of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States, lies and falsehoods have become so frequent and so often passed off as the truth that truth itself finds short shrift in the fact that the task of simply pointing out and naming the lies has become a full time task. Refutation and argument have little time to take place before a new list of fabrications arise.
While I don't agree much in Rod Dreher's book The Benedict Option, I do find that his statement about Trump is on the mark: "The idea that someone as robustly vulgar, fiercely combative, and morally compromised as Trump will be an avatar for the return of Christian morality and social unity is beyond delusional. He is not a solution to the problem of America's cultural decline, but a symptom of it.”[1]
When truth has become so associated with enemies of the state (or of any given politician), one wonders about the nature of that state. One also wonders at the nature of those who support the lies and those who lie - especially if they are people of faith.
Take, for example, Jim Ziegler, who defended (not debunked, but defended) the idea of Roy Moore having an alleged affair with a 14 year old when he was in his 30s. He said that it wasn't illegal or immoral, but it was like the relationship of Joseph and Mary who were the parents of Jesus. Very much off the mark there, but the point isn't his misreading of the Bible texts or of the misrepresentation of the Christian faith, but his use of the scriptures to excuse behavior society deems inappropriate.
Of course Christians have a long, long, long history of cut-and-paste readings of scripture. So perhaps the fact that people of faith can so easily come to the defense of those they deem worthy with Biblical quotes is no real surprise. They are also the ones who can quickly condemn those they despise with the same level of Biblical references.
What this is is, in my opinion, a kind of intellectual and Biblical dishonesty. It stems from wanting something to be true, regardless of whether or not it is, and then circling the wagons, stories, or scriptures around it to provide some legitimacy to the claim - whatever it might be. In so doing, false narratives become true (or have enough people believing them that they seem to be true), and truth fails to matter.
I suppose we all do this at one time or another, but the point Bonhoeffer makes is that if we know we aren't telling the truth, then we have sunk to an abysmal moral standard. Granted, and Bonhoeffer makes this point, too, there are moments when telling the truth would perhaps be inappropriate, but that those situational bound moments require levels of discernment that are absent from most television conversations and news reports as of late (from all sides).
If telling the truth is a gauge of morality and character, then we are in danger of becoming a nation of disrepute because we have stopped being able to tell the truth and, at the same time, in danger of not being willing to tell the truth either. Perhaps the backlash of the continued outcry against sexual misconduct and discrimination can boomerang around to speaking out against bigotry and out and out lies. Perhaps...
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