telling the truth
perhaps the three most famous statements about truth all occur in the gospel of john. jesus tells his audience: 'you shall know the truth, and the shall make you free.' later jesus claims: 'i am the way, the truth, and the life.' and in his conversation with pilate, jesus explains that his kingdom is not of this world, but that all who are the side of truth are on his side. pilate responds with a rhetorical question: 'what is truth?' (is pilate earnest? mocking? annoyed? -it is hard to be sure in what tone we should hear the question)
one of our strongest associations with the word 'truth' comes from the courtroom: 'do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?' to ask a witness to swear to this oath is in effect to have him promise to follow one of the ten commandments: 'thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.' it strikes me as a little odd that we have people swear to tell the truth -is this, as it seems, an effort to secure their honesty while on the stand? but if a person is willing to lie on the stand, why will he not be willing to break his promise to the court, to lie in taking the oath?
not longer ago, a friend of mine described a mutual friend of ours by saying: "i think that she is especially open to the truth." i took this to be a tremendous complement, and i think the person who said this meant it as such. (i also agreed with her assessment of our mutual friend).
most of us, i think, value truthfulness in other people. wouldn't we all say that 'honesty' is a virtue? and few of us, i think, would be willing to describe ourselves as 'dishonest.' we may be willing to admit lying on certain occasions (almost all of these lies, of course, being of no real consequence). not many of us would say of ourselves: 'i can be quite a liar when it serves my purposes' or 'i can be a deeply dishonest person.'
but what does the virtue of honesty or truthfulness amount? what does it mean for us to be people who are receptive to the truth, and also who speak the truth, to ourselves and to others?
i have been mulling over the phrase, 'the whole truth.' in the context of a trial, what counts as 'the whole truth' is determined by its relevance to the question(s) at hand in the courtroom. it may be true that i am wearing green underwear, but telling this to the jury is not likely to be necessary (or even appropriate) in order to fulfill my commitment to speak the whole truth. in the case of our ordinary lives, however, it is harder to know what counts as 'the whole truth', and it is harder to specify when and why and how we should speak the whole truth. this is particularly hard in the case of ourselves -there is a great deal about us that we could reveal to family, friends, strangers. what does it mean to speak the whole truth about yourself to those around you?
there was a time when i thought that transparency about oneself was a great virtue. i remember discussing this my freshman year of college with a friend who thought otherwise. i insisted that we should be striving for complete openness with others, and that there was something christian about this way of being: fully sharing ourselves with others, self-disclosing with nothing to hide and nothing to fear. i am now much less certain about what transparency ought to look like, or what value it has. however, i have also been troubled lately by the thought that i may be a liar.
perhaps we might say: what it means to speak the whole truth is to speak all the truth that is demanded by the situation or context. formally, this seems right, but materially it leaves the question essentially unanswered. how much truth about oneself is called for by a given friendship? how much truth about oneself is demanded in virtue of being someone's son or daughter? brother or sister? maybe the answer to depends on the kind of relationships we think are best or worth pursuing -if you think a relationship like this is choiceworthy, then you will have to reveal this much truth about yourself to realize such a relationship. even saying this, though, we have not really answered the question of what is choiceworthy. and don't we all feel that our relationships might be very different if we told more of the truth about ourselves? don't we suspect that if we told that person such-and-such about ourselves, the whole relationship would change? don't we hope that it would change for the better, and fear that it would change for the worse? but how could i tell them that?
doubtless one reason we often don't tell others 'the whole truth' about ourselves is that we are afraid of being misunderstood. this, i think, may well be a reasonable fear. there is little that feels as bad as being misunderstood on an important point about oneself. and few things are grosser and unhappier than a scene of deep misunderstanding between two people. we want to tell the truth but we also know not to throw our pearls before swine, and we know that the truth about ourselves is precious indeed.
but we must present something of ourselves to others. and if we don't offer them the deep truths about ourself -if we don't tell them 'the whole truth'- it seems that this can come close to telling a lie.
one of our strongest associations with the word 'truth' comes from the courtroom: 'do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?' to ask a witness to swear to this oath is in effect to have him promise to follow one of the ten commandments: 'thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.' it strikes me as a little odd that we have people swear to tell the truth -is this, as it seems, an effort to secure their honesty while on the stand? but if a person is willing to lie on the stand, why will he not be willing to break his promise to the court, to lie in taking the oath?
not longer ago, a friend of mine described a mutual friend of ours by saying: "i think that she is especially open to the truth." i took this to be a tremendous complement, and i think the person who said this meant it as such. (i also agreed with her assessment of our mutual friend).
most of us, i think, value truthfulness in other people. wouldn't we all say that 'honesty' is a virtue? and few of us, i think, would be willing to describe ourselves as 'dishonest.' we may be willing to admit lying on certain occasions (almost all of these lies, of course, being of no real consequence). not many of us would say of ourselves: 'i can be quite a liar when it serves my purposes' or 'i can be a deeply dishonest person.'
but what does the virtue of honesty or truthfulness amount? what does it mean for us to be people who are receptive to the truth, and also who speak the truth, to ourselves and to others?
i have been mulling over the phrase, 'the whole truth.' in the context of a trial, what counts as 'the whole truth' is determined by its relevance to the question(s) at hand in the courtroom. it may be true that i am wearing green underwear, but telling this to the jury is not likely to be necessary (or even appropriate) in order to fulfill my commitment to speak the whole truth. in the case of our ordinary lives, however, it is harder to know what counts as 'the whole truth', and it is harder to specify when and why and how we should speak the whole truth. this is particularly hard in the case of ourselves -there is a great deal about us that we could reveal to family, friends, strangers. what does it mean to speak the whole truth about yourself to those around you?
there was a time when i thought that transparency about oneself was a great virtue. i remember discussing this my freshman year of college with a friend who thought otherwise. i insisted that we should be striving for complete openness with others, and that there was something christian about this way of being: fully sharing ourselves with others, self-disclosing with nothing to hide and nothing to fear. i am now much less certain about what transparency ought to look like, or what value it has. however, i have also been troubled lately by the thought that i may be a liar.
perhaps we might say: what it means to speak the whole truth is to speak all the truth that is demanded by the situation or context. formally, this seems right, but materially it leaves the question essentially unanswered. how much truth about oneself is called for by a given friendship? how much truth about oneself is demanded in virtue of being someone's son or daughter? brother or sister? maybe the answer to depends on the kind of relationships we think are best or worth pursuing -if you think a relationship like this is choiceworthy, then you will have to reveal this much truth about yourself to realize such a relationship. even saying this, though, we have not really answered the question of what is choiceworthy. and don't we all feel that our relationships might be very different if we told more of the truth about ourselves? don't we suspect that if we told that person such-and-such about ourselves, the whole relationship would change? don't we hope that it would change for the better, and fear that it would change for the worse? but how could i tell them that?
doubtless one reason we often don't tell others 'the whole truth' about ourselves is that we are afraid of being misunderstood. this, i think, may well be a reasonable fear. there is little that feels as bad as being misunderstood on an important point about oneself. and few things are grosser and unhappier than a scene of deep misunderstanding between two people. we want to tell the truth but we also know not to throw our pearls before swine, and we know that the truth about ourselves is precious indeed.
but we must present something of ourselves to others. and if we don't offer them the deep truths about ourself -if we don't tell them 'the whole truth'- it seems that this can come close to telling a lie.
posted by micah at 3:52 PM
1 Comments:
Thank you for your probing words on the nitty-gritty of honesty. Your post hits close to home for me and inspired many questions and thoughts of my own, as I often struggle with the idea of truth and full transparency in relationships and what it means for me as an individual in general and a Christian specifically. It also has illuminated another facet of a verse on which I've been meditating: He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father and I will love him and disclose Myself to him (John 14:21 NASB).
Pulling the idea of honesty versus falsehood entirely out of the courtroom, I am left wondering: is there a difference between truth and fact? And is there a difference between honesty and truthfulness or honesty and the "whole truth"? It seems to me that an honest man is one who is straightforward and truthful in spirit and word to the best of his ability when it is asked of him, but he must not volunteer all potentially relevant, though unasked, information in order to remain honest. Indeed, he is still honest because he is not false in his answers (my caveat here is that his honesty is consistent in spirit and in word and not just in word, that he does not come by truthfulness on a technicality).
And what of the virtue of Christ's own partial concealment of self that we find so frequently in John and elsewhere? Can we apply similar tactics in our own lives without fault? There are innumerable instances where we are expected, by God, to understand and live in faith on what could be argued to be a "half truth." We are told what we need to according to His wisdom, not to our own, and often times that leaves us with what we may perceive to be a partial truth of a situation. Furthermore, I see that the more faithful we are with the truths He offers, the more truths He will reveal. In this sense, it is a trust to be guarded and doled out wisely (as you noted) and over time. I feel that we can and should do likewise in our own lives. What's more, in adult relationships (for Christians specifically), a reassertion in the place of God in individual lives releases the pressure to bring about full disclosure the facts at all times.
Finally, I wonder what is more true: who or what we are or who or what we desire to be, and is this not a possible difference between fact and truth? First the truth must be known by us before it can be offered to another. Often it is not a matter of dishonesty to not reveal as it is a matter of appropriate timing. Some things that are not or should not be known another in the present may or must be known later, and tempering the revealing of intelligence in this way does not always equate guile. I think knowing that timing can be the difference between a wise man and a fool, perhaps, instead of a liar and an honest person. Ultimately the question for me is: "Am I a lover of truth through and through and do I feel something die a little when (not if) I bend or break it?". That sort of existential system of accounting may be just the ticket.
Post a Comment
<< Home