Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Christian Justifications for Lying by Bart Ehrman Isn't lying acceptable and even the right thing to do in some circumstances?
[00:00:12] I became keenly interested in this question when writing my books on early Christian forgeries that will be forged and forgery and counter forgery. I was writing about canonical and non canonical writings by authors claiming to be Peter, Paul, John, or even Jesus, knowing full well that they were someone else. Contrary to what you sometimes hear, this was decidedly and repeatedly talked of as a kind of lying throughout the ancient world, intentional attempts to deceive others.
[00:00:41] But isn't intentional deception the right thing to do sometimes?
[00:00:46] It's certainly possible that ancient Christian authors sometimes felt that way, that lying is the right thing to do in some instances throughout much of antiquity. This view was based on the idea that there could be such thing as a noble lie, a lie that serves a noble cause. If a doctor needs to lie to a patient in order to get her to take the medicine that she needs, then that can be a good form of deception.
[00:01:10] If a commander in chief needs to lie to his troops that reinforcements are about to arrive in order to inspire them to fight more courageously, then that can be a good thing. Some lies are noble, and these two examples come from Plato, one of the world's great moral philosophers.
[00:01:27] Some Christian authors, most notably Augustine, took precisely the opposite line, arguing that lying in all its forms was bad, very bad, very, very bad, and it was not to be engaged in no matter what.
[00:01:40] For Augustine, even if a lie could guarantee that your young daughter would not spend eternity in the fires of hell, that was not enough to justify telling the lie. You should never lie, Period.
[00:01:52] Most ancient Christians probably disagreed with Augustine, which is why he had to argue his points so strenuously. And most people today probably disagree as well.
[00:02:02] Most of us see lying as a complicated matter. Ethicists, philosophers, religious scholars, all disagree even today on when lying is appropriate and when it's not.
[00:02:12] At the end of the day, this is a question that each and every one of us needs to decide for ourselves, based on our own circumstances and the specific situations that we find ourselves in.
[00:02:22] Maybe sometimes it is okay to lie.
[00:02:26] Maybe it's okay for parents to lie to their children about their own religious beliefs to tell them that God exists, even though they don't actually think so.
[00:02:34] Maybe it's okay for a spouse to lie to her partner about her extramarital affair if it will prevent him from going through great turmoil and pain.
[00:02:43] Maybe it's okay to lie to one's parents about their prognosis after their surgery if it will keep them from worrying about dying before they their time?
[00:02:51] Maybe it's okay for church leaders to lie to their congregations about their personal beliefs or about their far from perfect pasts if they have to be seen as respected and stalwart leaders of their communities.
[00:03:03] Maybe it's okay for elected officials to lie about budgets or deficits, shortfalls or windfalls, about possible outcomes of policies, about foreign intelligence, or about the known outcomes of a war if the ends are sufficiently important to require lies instead of the truth, and if lying is justified in some instances, what better reason for lying than to get people to understand and believe the truth?
[00:03:28] What would make better sense than writing a book that embodies a lie about a relatively important matter, such as who really wrote it, in order to accomplish what really does matter, such as the truth being proclaimed? Or in the modern world to lie about scholars who propound views that threaten a gospel that will bring salvation.
[00:03:47] On the other hand, maybe that view is wrong. Maybe it's always better to tell the truth, to stand by the truth, to be willing to take the consequences of the truth, even if you would much rather prefer the consequences of telling the lie.
[00:04:00] Maybe children have the right to know what parents honestly believe.
[00:04:04] Maybe it's better for a spouse to tell her partner about the extramarital affair if the alternative is to live a life of deceit and distrust. Maybe dying parents or grandparents or siblings or indeed anyone else have the right to know that they are dying so that they can prepare themselves for the inevitable.
[00:04:20] Maybe it's better for church leaders not to mislead their people, but to tell them what they honestly know to be true, such as about church finances or about their own sinful pasts or what they honestly believe, such as about God or about the Bible.
[00:04:34] Maybe it's better for our elected officials to come clean and to tell us the truth rather than mislead us so as to be authorized to do what they desperately want to do, domestically or on foreign soil. Maybe, on the whole, truth is better than lying.
[00:04:48] To be sure, most people in most circumstances present, past, and very distant past, realize that there are times when it might be right and good to lie if, for example, it can save a life or it can keep someone from physical harm. But the reality is that most of our lies are not so weighty. Certainly the lies manufactured by the forgers of early Christian texts and modern religious polemicists and apologists were not and are not told in order to protect life and limb.
[00:05:17] Another way to look at it is those who have practiced these kinds of deceits were and are no doubt like nearly everyone else in the world, ancient and modern. They too probably did not want to be lied to and deceived. But for reasons of their own, they felt compelled to lie and to deceive others.
[00:05:34] In that respect, at least, they have not lived up to one of the fundamental principles of the Christian tradition, taught by Jesus himself, that you should do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
[00:05:46] Possibly they felt that in their circumstances the Golden Rule did not apply.
