Should you always tell the truth? That seems like one of those questions which is really easy to answer. Set aside the question of whether it is permissible to lie in order to save someone’s life. Suppose you are asked a simple question and nobody will die if you are honest. Should you be honest?
Let’s take a particular example. Suppose someone you know tells you they wrote some poetry and they would like your honest feedback on it. Suppose the poetry is unbelievably awful. If you want a good example of what this could be like, consider the poetry collection described in a recent blog post. Suppose I came up to you and told you I was really proud of this poetry collection I wrote and asked you for your honest evaluation of it.
Would you tell me the truth? Would you say, “That collection of so-called poetry is too lame for words. I have never seen something so unbelievably idiotic. What were you thinking?” Or would you politely tell me that, well, you aren’t the best judge of poetry, but it isn’t your sort of thing but you are sure that people who know about poetry would really like it.
Why wouldn’t you tell me the truth? It is objectively bad. It is inane. Indeed it is so unbelievably horrid that nobody could ever think it was worth reading.
Moliere examines exactly this problem in The Misanthrope. It is a funny play, laugh out loud funny. What gives the play its comedic force is Alceste, who always tells the truth. If someone were to ask him if a poem is bad, Alceste would not hesitate to tell the truth. Indeed, he does exactly that in the play. Calling the poem “tedious rot,” he proceeds to dissect just how awful it is.
Should we admire Alceste? He is the type of person who, if asked “How do I look?,” would actually give an honest answer. Is that the right thing to do?
We read this play in one of my reading groups, and the students were fascinating. When asked the pair of questions about a situation involving a polite lie “Should you tell the truth?” and “Would you tell the truth?,” the majority of the students said Yes to the first and No to the second.
We had an impossible time sorting out when you should be honest and when you should engage in a polite lie.
On the other hand, the play also has a character, Celemine, who is the perfect flatterer, always telling everyone exactly what they want to hear. Nobody thought that was a good idea. Such lying always catches up with you sooner or later.
So what then? Moliere does not give a good answer to how we should live our lives. But, he does do a marvelous job explaining why there is so much bad art and so many bad arguments. People simply are not willing to be honest with others if there is any danger of hurting someone’s feelings.
One complaint about the current generation of college students is that they have no resiliency, that they collapse at the slightest criticism. There is frequent blame on others for never telling these students “Not good.” As a result, they grow up never learning the difference between a good poem and a bad poem. So, they write horrible poetry. Nobody ever tells them that their writing is awful, so they are awful writers. They grow up never knowing the difference between a good argument and bad arguments. So, they make really bad arguments.
Moliere comes along with a play that is a perfect illustration of the problems with this generation…well, except this play was written over 300 years ago. It seems that even thee centuries ago, the idea of just being honest was laughable. Maybe college students today are not all that different than people in France in the 1660s.
What then shall we do? It seems pretty obvious that it cannot be a good situation if nobody ever tells the truth. It also seems pretty obvious that if you decide you will always tell the truth, nobody will talk with you anymore. We expect people to tell us those polite fictions, but that means we also know that nobody is ever being honest.
Is my poetic collection from the earlier post worth reading? Is this current reflection on The Misanthrope any good? I know the answer to both. The more interesting question is whether you would be honest with me if I asked you.
Are there truly no comments? I’ll comment: scriptural examples of Jesus having answers to questions that sound evasive or are not exactly what one would expect as a clear answer do not necessarily instruct us in answering your question – but at least they do indicate that if God Himself chooses to answer obliquely it’s at least a possible answer to your question, Jim. So in my estimation, yes, it is fine to not be totally honest or even partially honest and even to tell a big fat lie. Per your example, my saying “Gee, I don’t know if that’s a good poem, maybe poem experts know if that’s a good poem. Are you asking if it does anything for me? No, it doesn’t. But poems pretty much don’t do anything for me.” Luckily for me, that’s likely the truth. And if I thought the poem was horrid, I’d still use the same answer because I could be wrong – I don’t know poetry. I’m lucky I can spell my name.
When teaching or in a relationship – an important relationship and even a not as important relationship, delivering direct answers may be helpful, but delivering oblique answers that inspire more self-reflection or examination of data (i.e., not the self) is a very good approach. You just have to be smart enough or sensitive enough to know what the situation calls for. Ultimately, love for the person you’re with or greater love for another person, maybe even yourself, determines how you answer. I love “saying” this (what’s about to follow) because I think it’s my daring to tell the best possible truth from my fallen failed heart & mind: we humans are not capable of Truth with a capital T or Loving with a capital L. Since we know that we are fallible…
(y’know aside from 2+2=4 – science is ad infinitum Truth for Dummies, I say with affection for my science friends, and insist that when they’re being more thoughtful that they’re actually practicing philosophy or something like that),
…the “relationship world” is a higher plane than truth for us even though it is still a much more fuzzier hazier difficult plane. Telling non-oblique truth can be lazy stuff, and so also could be telling oblique truth. Truth with a capital T comes with thoughtful loving care, and yet isn’t always called for – you can be lazy and it doesn’t matter. Other times it does. Jesus is infinite, His cases are different – we’re not – fatigue permits sloppiness at times.