Is it okay to tell a white lie?

4/9/2012

No. So says atheist neuroscientist and author Sam Harris in his tiny little book, Lying. Say what? Atheists aren't supposed to have any legitimate moral foundation! On what basis can Harris go even farther than many Christians and preach against telling your friend she doesn't look fat in that dress?

I confess I'm not always a fan of Harris' manners; I can certainly see how some might be put off by his direct, blunt, and sometimes smug pronouncements. Yet he does have an effective way with words, and sometimes it can't hurt to receive a jolt from the likes of Harris to help us see our failings and steer us in a less self-destructive direction. His e-book is so short and inexpensive ($1.99) and so chock full of nuggets that it would be worth your while just to read it yourself than to read any attempt of mine to summarize it. Perhaps a couple of anecdotes from the book would suffice to whet your appetite for more:

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A friend of mine recently asked me whether I thought he was overweight. In fact, he probably was just asking for reassurance: It was the beginning of summer, and we were sitting with our wives by the side of his pool. However, I’m more comfortable relying on the words that actually come out of a person’s mouth, rather than on my powers of telepathy, to know what he is asking. So I answered my friend’s question very directly: “No one would ever call you ‘fat,’ but I think you could probably lose twenty-five pounds.” That was two months ago, and he is now fifteen pounds lighter. Neither of us knew that he was ready to go on a diet until I declined the opportunity to lie about how he looked in a bathing suit.
Harris, Sam (2011-09-13). Lying (Kindle Single) (Kindle Locations 184-190). Kindle Edition.

Jessica recently overheard her friend Lucy telling a white lie: Lucy had a social obligation she wanted to get free of, and Jessica heard her leave a voicemail message for another friend, explaining why their meeting would have to be rescheduled. Lucy’s excuse was entirely fictitious—something involving her child’s getting sick—but she lied so effortlessly and persuasively that Jessica was left wondering if she had ever been duped by Lucy in the past. Now, whenever Lucy cancels a plan, Jessica suspects she might not be telling the truth. These tiny erosions of trust are especially insidious because they are almost never remedied. Lucy has no reason to think that Jessica has a grievance with her—because she doesn’t. She simply does not her as much as she used to, having heard her lie without compunction to another friend. Of course, if the problem (or the relationship) were deeper, perhaps Jessica would say something—but, as it happens, she feels there is no point in admonishing Lucy about her ethics. The net result is that a single voicemail message, left for a third party, has subtly undermined a friendship (Harris 2011, loc. 252-261).
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Harris has been criticized by believers and unbelievers alike for his insistence that objective moral values can be constructed from a naturalistic, consequentialist foundation. Perhaps some moral questions aren't as cut and dried as Harris's critics contend he makes them out to be, but I confess I'm drawn to the simplicity of one of Harris' prescriptions for an uncomplicated life: unless someone's life is on the line, always tell the truth. If you do, then others will know they can trust what you say, and when you praise them, it will be genuine and well deserved. These are conclusions that can be drawn by observing the fruit of people's interactions, and they are conclusions that can be drawn whether or not a higher power prescribes them.

For those who are in the throes of deconversion, a gut-wrenching question you'll be confronted with is how and whether and when to "come out" to those who think you're still a believer. Part of what makes it difficult is that the line between belief and unbelief is somewhat fuzzy, and if you're like me, you'll cross the line back and forth several times before you realize you really don't believe and aren't likely to cross back over the line to faith. In the meantime, especially if you're in Christian ministry, but even if you're just a committed lay Christian, other believers will continue to expect to see and hear ongoing affirmations of your faith: praying before meals, chiming in agreement with pronouncements on biblical theology, preaching sermons and leading worship music (in the case of clergy who've lost their faith), etc. The longer it takes you to “come out,” the longer you will be putting on an act, in other words, deceiving those who think you're a Christian when you're not. Harris maintains that “to lie is to intentionally mislead others when they expect honest communication.” (Harris 2011, loc 46-47).

Though I hadn't read Harris before I left the mission field, there came a point when I knew that to continue working as a Bible translator would be to intentionally mislead my mission board and my financial supporters who had the right to expect honest communication regarding my loss of faith. My wife and family also deserved to know. Sure, I could have continued on in the ministry I was being paid to perform, putting on a pious face and pretending to believe what I no longer knew in my heart to be true, but I realized a day of reckoning would have to come at some point, and there was nothing to be gained—only further trust to be lost—by delaying that day. I was in a precarious situation; I did not know how I could find gainful employment and support my family after having spent the previous 7+ years in the mission organization. It nearly ripped me apart, but I could not lie: I no longer believed, and I owed it to everyone who thought I believed to tell them the truth. As it turned out, our family survived, and we didn't end up on the streets. I would have been willing to work minimum wage at McDonald's if necessary to avoid a lie.

Yet I know some individuals who remain in the ministry today, understandably fearful of coming out of the closet during these difficult financial times. Any act of apostasy is an affront to a believing community, but the betrayal must be even more acute if and when it's learned that the apostate continued putting on an act for months or years after deconverting. My heart goes out to those caught in a situation like this—I remember it all too well myself as if it were yesterday—but to them I say, What's the worst that can happen if you come out? It's not likely you'll die; you may have to depend for a time on charity or government assistance, but at least you'll have your integrity intact and you can keep your head held high, and you won't have betrayed the trust of your former fellow believers more than was necessary.

Julia

4/9/2012 10:38:14 pm

Interesting post, as usual.
The "...when they expect honest communication" part of that definition of a lie could be tricky. I would love to see what would happen were "The Emperor's New Clothes" aspect of faith to vanish, but (perhaps connected with your earlier "loyalty" post) this is a (the?) major aspect of religious faith, and perhaps most people do not even want (ie, expect) "honest communication" in that realm in the same way they do in other aspects of existence.
On another note, I recently I took a look at the Clergy Project website, assuming it might include a fund to which one could contribute in financial support of ministers desiring to make a break/transition, but that project seems to have other goals and private funding. Do you know of any such effort?

Ken Daniels

4/10/2012 02:54:46 am

Thanks, Julia. Yes, I agree that things are a bit more tricky than my short post or Harris' ebook might suggest. I would wager that most Christians wouldn't want us to pretend to be a Christian when we're not, but neither would they want us to shout from the rooftops the reasons we no longer believe. I didn't really address the latter issue in this post, but I think most Christians would agree we shouldn't go on falsely pretending to be Christians, especially if we're in Christian ministry.

You're right though--I think many believers would only want us to go so far in pressing what we nonbelievers think to be the truth. In other words, telling the truth is a virtue in theory, but in practice if what someone else thinks is true conflicts with what believers think is true, then that conflicting "truth" is best left unsaid, no matter how firmly held the conviction might be.

Steve

4/10/2012 12:48:18 pm

I don't mind if you shout it from the rooftops. Just don't violate any local ordinances about noise or disrupting the peace. And be careful up there; some of those roofs are steep! :-)

Julia

4/10/2012 02:18:58 pm

I would not have wanted to be "spared" the pain of my own children's ideas that began my own terrifying journey. One of my offspring had a policy of "respectful" silence on the issue following a complete turn-around in belief (unknown to me at the time of course, due to that silence!), but if I hadn't heard of it from the other of my children and opened the communication, my horror at hanging on so long before my own true questioning would only have been intensified.

Perhaps to anyone observing from outside, the journey that resulted would have appeared so terrible as make it seem a better solution for me to have been "spared." But the only real solution to avoiding damage in my opinion is for the faith never to have been passed on (to me, and then by me) in the first place. Once it has been, there is no one right or easy answer for the transitions that come with its ending, and some of the injuries that ensue can never be fully healed. The only "right" way is for it never to have happened.

And based on all of that, it sometimes does strike me that sensitivity is so often expected of those who do not believe, when often they are themselves in desperate need of sensitivity. Having no one to talk to these things about, being expected to be quiet about them in order to spare the feelings of believers, and yet being surrounded by Christianity in painful ways at every turn can make for a continually haunted life I find.

Ryan

4/9/2012 10:53:17 pm

What an interesting topic! I agree that Harris can be a bit abrasive (I have read several of his books) but it can not be said that he is prone to making poorly thought out or ill-informed claims. On the topic of honesty though, I think it is a little more grey than he makes it out to be. I do not think that life or death situations are the only area in which we should exercise a little liberty with the truth, but I have been forced recently to give more thought to who I am honest too about my lack of faith. At first, I had a hard time talking to anyone about it. I realized early on however, that that trying to keep it from my wife could only lead to trouble. She has been very accepting and our marriage has survived. I think this is largely due to the fact that she is a moderate to liberal Christian. I don't however, intend to tell my parents. My father is an "executive pastor" at a pretty large Southern Baptist church in the deep south. He is as fundamentalist as it gets. When considering the question of whether to tell him, the Hippocratic Oath that doctors are bound to, stuck me as applicable to me situation. "First, do no harm." My father is unlikely to waver in his beliefs. He is sure to feel that his son is doomed to an eternity of everlasting hell. I live halfway across the world now, so it is not hard to let him think what he wants. I just can't think of any circumstance in this situation, where the truth would do more good than harm. I am open to the idea though, that this is just selfishness on my part. Thoughts?

Jerry

4/10/2012 02:58:58 am

Ryan, I have no doubt (based on having read all of his books, including Lying, and his blog posts) that if Harris were to advise you, he would say to tell your parents. He would say that it can only strengthen the relationship, and that the relationship can only be weakened by the deception. Like you, though, I don't always agree with Harris.

From your description I don't think you're being selfish. Your application of the Hippocratic Oath is an example of your consideration of your father's feelings.

I hope you've considered some of the practical problems it may create for you. For example, what if your father comes to visit over a weekend? Do you take him to "your" church? Or if you visit him for the weekend, do you attend church? Does your father bring up religion in discussions with you, and if so, do you have to actively lie on a regular basis? If discussing a problem with him, does he quote bible verses at you, and do you have to pretend they apply? What about children? How will you raise them? What will your parents' involvement be?

It's not an easy decision, and not a clear one either. Whatever decision you make, or have made, as long as you make it with consideration of all involved and not just for your own convenience, I would consider it a moral one. (For what my opinion is worth.)

One last point: although it's also true that you can't undo any lies you need to tell to maintain the deception, once you tell him, you've told him, and there's no going back.

Ken Daniels

4/10/2012 03:25:26 am

Thanks for your input, Ryan. Yes, I've gone back and forth on this question since my deconversion. But I think it's more than one question--at least two:

1) Should I go on saying things and doing things that demonstrate I accept the truth of Christianity when I really don't?
2) Should I simply remain silent and avoid saying and doing things that falsely indicate I accept the truth of Christianity?

I have a bigger problem with #1 than with #2. However, over time, it could become harder and harder to continue #2 without moving to #1, depending on how attuned your friends and family are to detecting lack of faith when you don't show any signs of believing.

Since you're half a world away from your parents, it may not be a real problem to continue on without bringing up the topic, but there may come a time when you're confronted with questions that will force you to either tell the truth or lie, and it would probably be best to know ahead of time how you'll respond.

Not long ago the father of our daughter's closest soccer friend asked something about our church, knowing that our family attends a church, but not realizing (even after several years of friendship with me) that I'm not a believer and no longer regularly attend church. I kind of said something off hand to answer his question, but I realized that even though I didn't lie about not attending the church, the impression I gave him bolstered his assumption that I attend the church with my family. I felt somewhat guilty, having recently read Harris' book on lying, so the next day I screwed up my courage and let him know my situation. I didn't really try to explain why I no longer believed, and I don't think it would have been appropriate to do so in that context. Though a strong believer himself, he was very courteous and accepting, and I think he respected me for being up front. It doesn't seem to have affected our friendship. That's not at all to say that it won't affect your relationship with your parents if you were to let them know--every relationship is different. A parent-child relationship is whole different matter from a soccer dad friendship.

If you were ever to let your father know about your deconversion, I would say it would be best to avoid elaborating too much or getting into a discussion where one or both of you attempt to win the other over. If and when the time comes, you could just say, "Dad, I've come to the point where the Christian faith no longer makes sense to me, so I no longer consider myself a believer. I still love and respect you, and I don't think either of us is going to win the other over, so it's best if we just avoid talking about it." Then you no longer have to carry a secret or pretend to believe when you don't. That's just my take on it, but it could well be more grey than I see it, so I don't make any claims that this is what you should do.

I would be curious to hear from believers: if your grown son had been a believer all his life but then left the faith, would you want to know about his deconversion or not? If not, then perhaps remaining silent wouldn't qualify as a lie according to Harris' definition: "To lie is to intentionally mislead others when they expect honest communication.” I'm personally guessing that most parents would want to know this about their children, however painful it might be, but I could be wrong. Then too, even if they were to expect it from you, as long as you don't *intentionally* indicate you're a Christian, then I suppose it's not a lie. Like you say, this is a grey area.

In my situation, though, being financially supported to do Christian work, I think my supporters would have had a legitimate expectation to know about my loss of faith, so I felt compelled to come clean. They had a right to know this, though they probably would have preferred I just quietly go away without continuing to express to others why I no longer believe. Certainly I could have done the one without the other--I consider them to be two different issues.

Jay

4/11/2012 07:26:29 am

Ken,

I am curious about your thoughts on an additionional definition of lying. In your post you quote Harris as saying that, "To lie is to intentionally mislead others when they expect honest communication.” One additional thing that I was always taught, (by my fundamentalist mother no less) was that, "Allowing someone to continue to believe something that is not true, when you know better, is the same thing as out-and-out lying." Many salesmen (and companies) do this on a regular basis and use it to their advantage whenever they can. (I see it in the industry I work in all the time.) They may not intentionally "lie" in the technical since, but if someone happens to believe something that is not true, but this belief somehow benefits the salesperson, then they will continue to allow the potential customer to go on believing it and not correct their misunderstanding. I know that telling "little white lies" is a grey area, (and feel this more strongly now as a non-believer), but I really feel that telling the truth in all situations is the best way to live if at all possible, including not allowing others to continue to believe things that are not true, even if their doing so would somehow benefit us.

Regards,

Jay

Ken Daniels

4/12/2012 10:48:19 am

Jay,

I was hoping no one would open this can of worms ;) !

It's something I struggle with at work fairly often. I'm in the software development business, and if you know anything about the software industry, any nontrivial program has bugs. What if we found a problem that could have potentially affected the integrity of customer data but then fixed it, hoping there wasn't a real problem? Do we tell them about it or just fix it and say nothing? Do we need to air our dirty laundry or just put on a good face? It's hard to imagine a business every surviving if it aired every little bit of dirty laundry imaginable. I'd be interested in knowing Harris' take on questions like these, because I face them all the time.It's not always cut an dried--that's for sure.

Thanks for stirring the pot!

Margaret

4/10/2012 03:23:05 am

It is my in-laws that I continue to protect and have never shared my deconversion with. They are 87 years old and they already are upset about one grandaughter who will raise her child without a belief in the god of the bible. I do and say enough to keep them from suspecting that I no longer believe. Is this right or wrong I have no idea, however, I can not break their hearts. I feel like Charles Templeton in some ways. What do you think?

Ken Daniels

4/10/2012 03:30:27 am

Hi Margaret,

Thanks for adding to the conversation. I just now saw your response after I responded to Ryan above. The real world has a way of being messier and greyer than the world as it ideally should be. If they're 87, there's probably little to no chance they'll come to appreciate, let alone adopt your position, so I probably wouldn't recommend going out of your way to tell them about about your deconversion, but neither would recommend saying anything to indicate you believe when you don't. That's a tough one!

Mike

4/10/2012 08:11:58 am

Ah, this is all very timely for me. I used to scoff at characters in movies who can't seem to come clean in time, but now I understand why people do it. It's far easier than the alternative... at least, until your bill comes due.

If I could do it again, I would have brought up my doubts more regularly with many more people -- not to spark debate, but to share what's happening in my life. I just hate blindsiding people with it, and there's a "wait, why didn't you tell me??" factor too.

It's hard, though. Most of my relationships will never be the same.

I'm three months out of the fold, and only my immediate family knows (besides a few dozen friends). I was petrified about telling my parents, but after a four hour long conversation, they communicated that they still love me and understand that I need to do this, even though it completely tears them apart because they believe I'm going to hell.

On Easter Sunday I visited some relatives in a nearby city, one of whom is a retired pastor (Out of the few dozen relatives I name, all attend church regularly). I talked to my parents on the way, and I was surprised when they encouraged me not to bring it up while I was there. Perhaps they're assuming that I can just wait until all my older relatives die, or until another day besides the most significant Christian holiday. I'm certain they're worried about the heartache that I will cause, which they have experienced first-hand.

I actually decided to go to church on Easter for the first time in three months -- partly because that was always one of my favorite services, especially the music, and I wanted to see what it felt like; but partly so if any relatives asked me how church was, I could have an answer. It's the first time I can remember committing "premeditated deception." (as it turns out, the topic didn't come up)

Ken Daniels

4/10/2012 10:52:38 am

Mike, thanks for your valuable perspective based on your personal experience. I hope others can benefit from your story.

Unfortunately for some reason your post went into the blog site's spam folder for several hours until I just now freed it up, and I fear it was cut off. I'm wondering if there's some sort of size limit to these responses. In any case, I'd be very interested to hear more about things turned out and what you took away from it.

Erica A.

4/10/2012 10:34:35 pm

I agree with you that it is overall much better to be honest about one's beliefs. As a teenager, I felt much better when my parents knew, even though the ensuing discussions were painful and went on for YEARS, and I knew it caused them distress. However, I felt it was not my fault that they believed in a deity who created billions of humans only to condemn most of them to eternal punishment. Their knowing certainly made life simpler, not to have to pretend to be something I had wanted to be but could not be. Even as a young person, I couldn't stand it, and felt like I couldn't become myself, whatever that means, while trying to live a lie. Being open about my beliefs with people near my age has always been easy. I had zero friends in my church/Sunday school, so I had nothing at all to lose there. The idea of disappointing some of my Sunday School teachers bothered me, and I never had any conversations with adults at my church, other than my parents, regarding my beliefs.

I felt much better years later when members of my extended family friended me on facebook, so that my political and religious beliefs became known to them. Although I had a little panic beforehand about what might happen, no one has ever even talked to me about it.

However, I feel that there is a distance between certain family members and me due to my abandoning of conservative Christianity that would not exist if I had tried to pretend. I think this distance may be more my fault, though, trying to protect myself from feeling rejected.

I agree with Harris in principle on the social lies thing, but I'm not sure how that would work in practice. I noticed that in his example, he told his MALE friend that he needed to lose weight. I'm not sure it would have gone over so well with his female friend or his wife.

But the major things, yes, I think it's better to be honest. I have never, ever regretted so far, over the past 12 years, letting anyone know that I'm atheist/agnostic.

Comments are closed.

Author

Kenneth W. Daniels (1968-), son of evangelical missionaries, is the author of Why I Believed: Reflections of a Former Missionary. He grew up in Africa and returned as an adult to serve with Wycliffe Bible Translators in Niger on the edge of the Sahara Desert. While studying the Bible on the mission field, he came to doubt the message he had traveled across the world to bring to a nomadic camel-herding ethnic group. Though he lost his faith and as a result left Africa in 2000, he remains part of a conservative Christian family. He currently resides with his wife and three children in suburban Dallas, TX, where he works as a software developer.

Is it okay to tell a white lie?

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