Truth-telling modifies behavior

The question of truth-telling has been an interesting one throughout my life. As a child, I was utterly guileless. The other day, commenting on how my younger brother was grounded for something or another that involved lying--and inept lying, at that--my dad noted that Noah is only slightly better at lying than I am, and we both knew that was a pretty bad insult (if having one's talent at lying slighted can be called an insult). I learned very quickly when I was young that I was a terrible liar, and I had such a deep fear of angering or disappointing anyone that I did all I could to avoid any situation that would require (or maybe I should say tempt) me to lie later.

My freshman year of college, I wound up in a romantic relationship that thankfully did not pan out as horribly as it could have, but still reflected lots and lots of bad judgment. The other person involved had the gall to lecture me on honesty when our whole relationship was largely secret and based on deception. I learned from that mistake, though unfortunately it took me one or two more similar situations to really figure out that any relationship that involves deception is not OK. Period.

A friend of mine was in a scarily similar situation a few years ago and protested my concerns by asking why it was anyone's business what people did with their personal lives. Unluckily (or luckily?) for her, she's a Christian, and folks, being a Christian means that you don't get the kind of personal life we talk about in America--the kind where you keep your problems to yourself and think that mistakes won't affect anyone but you. We are called to bear one another's burdens, and guess what that means? We have to know about each other's burdens. And sins. And mistakes. And joys!

My dad and I had an interesting conversation the other day (stemming from shaking our heads in amusement at my little brother). He told me about something he heard from a Jewish man who grew up in Europe, I think in the early 20th century. What he said was that being a Jew in Europe meant that you couldn't make any mistakes. If you stole someone, suddenly all Jews were thieves. If you had family problems, suddenly all Jewish marriages were dysfunctional. And on and on. What he said was that, far from encouraging good behavior and high moral standards, this pressure cultivated deception. You had to maintain your outward appearance and reputation, but if you could violate that image in secret, you would.

My response summed up some things I've been thinking about a lot lately. To me, I think the problem is a matter of priority. If our main concern is our image, what others think of us, then the truth can become secondary and inevitably it will be sacrificed if it comes into conflict with the maintenance of that image. Whether it is your economic status, marital bliss, academic prowess or what have you, if other people's perception of that is more important than their integrity, when push comes to shove the truth will lose every time.

On the other hand, if truth is the most important thing, it's a whole different ball game. If you commit to being honest all the time, there are tons of things you might say or do otherwise that you won't do if you know you'd have to tell someone about it. Truth-telling modifies behavior. Sometimes, you may even know that you are behaving in a way that is inconsistent with your beliefs, but trying to change that on your own is not enough. But, if you just tell someone what's actually going on, suddenly whatever you're doing is no longer your personal life, no longer just your business. Suddenly, whether you change a behavior or not affects someone else, and someone else cares.

I wish that I had understood this earlier in life, and also that I had had people in my world at certain points with whom I could be completely honest all the time. I'm still really bad at lying, but I'm ashamed to say that there have been times when I've found myself telling selective truths to different people. For a while at one point, I was basically living two separate lives, one all happy and Christian-y and the other pretty much a mess, but neither really knew much about the other. Oh, and by the way, this person to whom I would have liked to have been able to honest would have had to have been a Christian, or at least someone whose values aligned with mine (because I have plenty of non-Christian friends whose morals rock way harder than those of a lot of Christians out there). There were some people who knew when I wasn't always acting the way I should, but they didn't care because they were doing it too. That's just self-justification.

My thesis is in the subject line. If your first commitment is to truth-telling, everything else has to fall in line with that. If anything else is more important--your looks, your relationship, your popularity, your job--you will find yourself sacrificing truth to that, and though I have neither the time nor the emotional energy to go into what happens when that goes down, we've all been there. Let's hold each other to a higher standard of integrity. Let's be people who tell the truth and are willing to hear the truth from others--without being offended, without judging or condemning. Only in this way can we seek the Truth of the One who made us all.