Lying, Clinton and Nearer Home

Sex, lies and videotape

The serious issue behind the videotape of President Clinton's testimony to the Grand Jury from the White House on 17 August 1998, has been highlighted in the press, on the radio and on TV as "sex". Hence the reporting of the sordid details of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. But as important, if not more important, are the lies or alleged lies. Indeed, the vast quantity of salacious material that has been published is an attempt by Kenneth Starr to prove that Clinton has been lying.

The modern world is awash with lies. President Clinton is simply a symptom of the problem; and as the most powerful man in the world, when found lying he inevitably acts as a focus for this moral disease that we all are in danger of being infected with at the end of the 20th century.

Some think the problem is so acute that popular "lie detectors" are being marketed for home use. No longer will they be the exclusive tools of police departments. Current polygraph machines that monitor blood pressure, perspiration, breathing and pulse rates cost up to £7,000. But there is now a cheap PC programme on a CD-rom named Truster. And it costs only £110.

To pass its verdict the machine simply records the frequencies of a person's voice. Tests have found that it is 85 percent accurate. Devised to catch potential terrorists at border checkpoints in Israel, it can now have a wider use. Indeed, an experiment was tried on President Clinton's infamous words "I did not have sexual relations with that woman - Monica Lewinsky". And the result? It showed that during the press conference when Clinton wagged his finger and asserted his innocence, he was under great stress and had signs of "extreme excitement in his voice." The conclusion was that "the subject never lied but there were some inaccuracies". Clinton had a global honesty rating of 94 per cent. So much for its accuracy!

That lying is a serious modern problem only dawned on me in the late 1980's. Of course, I, as most did, knew that people lied. And people lied in public life. I can remember well the Profumo scandal with John Profumo lying to the House of Commons over his relationship with Christine Keeler and bringing to an end the Macmillan era. But lying then in the 1960's was generally believed to be wrong. However, late in the 1980's I read a book on management. In it lying was being suggested as one strategy among others for the manager to consider in problem-solving. True, it was a risky strategy, but one to be considered.

I was profoundly shocked. I realised that the world had changed. That, of course, was why there was by now a striking loss of confidence in public leaders in government, the law, business, medicine and, sometimes, the church. In America the change was well documented, beginning with 1960. That was the year the American people were genuinely astonished to discover that President Eisenhower had lied when asked about the U-2 spy plane that had been shot down over Russia. By the mid-70's after lies from President Johnson over US involvement in Vietnam and from President Nixon over Watergate, 69 percent, according to a national poll agreed that "over the last ten years, this country's leaders have consistently lied to the people" (Cambridge Survey Research 1975, 1976).


The 1990's epidemic

The erosion of contemporary morality in terms of lying has a long history. Undoubtedly the 1960's moral revolution in which liberal churchmen played a prominent part had a great effect. However, it is more recently that there has been an escalation, certainly in the West. In the 1980's there was a veneer of morality during the Thatcher/Reagan years; but some young political bloods brought on over that period became part of a new 1990's epidemic of deceit and decadence. There is now no longer the honourable immediate resignation from office and the immersion in some piece of quiet charitable work. Rather there can well be an absence of shame, the enjoyment of fortune and some form of media celebrity status.

On Tyneside the 1990's epidemic was epitomized exactly eight years ago this Autumn in the Lesbian Adoption case. On 30 September 1990 the Sunday Express stated that two lesbians were adopting a boy under the age of ten in Newcastle. The story was picked up in the Evening Chronicle on 1 October 1990. The chairman of Newcastle Social Services committee, Councillor Tony Flynn, according to the press said that the boy was handicapped and that the only alternative to the placement with the lesbian couple was long term care in a hospital or institution (The Journal, 2 October 1990).

Bryan Roycroft, the Director of Social Services for Newcastle and a distinguished national figure, was quoted as saying that the child would have "a quality of life he would never experience in a hospital or institution." These press reports led people to believe that the boy had been placed for adoption with a lesbian couple as an alternative to life in an institution or a hospital. But on 8 October an experienced (and irate) foster mother told the press that she had fostered the boy for two and a half years since he was a tiny baby and had applied to adopt him herself after learning that another couple had applied to adopt the child (Evening Chronicle, 8 October 1990). Her application, however, had been turned down and the boy was taken away and placed for adoption with the lesbian couple (one a social worker and the other a former employee of Newcastle City Council). The comments, of course, made by the foster mother called into question the reported statements made by Newcastle Social Services and its director about the alternative to lesbian adoption being institutional care.

After a national uproar the case reached the High Court in January 1991. The judge then ordered the little boy to be returned to the foster mother on the ground of the existing bond between the foster mother and the boy.


1997 - 1998

This epidemic has sadly affected the wider church. An example was 14 July 1997. That morning I was asked to appear on the BBC TV Breakfast News Extra to debate the lowering of the age of consent for homosexual sex with the pro-Gay bishop Derek Rawcliffe.

In the course of our discussion I said: "The bishop ... he's wanting to lower the age of consent for children aged 14". I was then amazed when the bishop replied in front of the hundreds of thousands, probably millions, watching (and these are his exact words from the videotape): "I want to correct something David Holloway has said. I have not said that I want to lower the age of consent to 14. I want that to be made quite clear." As soon as I got home from the studio I searched for a copy of the letter from Bishop Derek Rawcliffe that had appeared in the Gay Times of August 1996. When I found it I read once again these words: "ideally starting with the age of puberty we don't need an age of consent for gay sex, though I think 14 would be reasonable."

It needs to be added that to go through this sort of experience when, by another's deceit or "economy with the truth", you yourself are suspected of being the deceiver (when you are not), is very disturbing. And this is the experience we had at Jesmond earlier this year when we took exception to the new Bishop of Newcastle's view that gay sex is sometimes permitted for Christians - a view that denies biblical teaching as the recent Lambeth Conference has so helpfully reminded us.

But this past month, September 1998, things seem to have got even worse, in the wake of the Clinton saga - or it may be that we now have to be more suspicious. You can hardly open your paper or listen to the news without wondering - "is this a lie or not?"

There has been, for example, the sad death, at the young age of 38, of the great athlete Florence Griffith Joyner (Flo Jo) who still holds the records at 100 and 200 meters. The announcement of her death on TV was accompanied with claims that she had taken performance enhancing drugs and the suggestion that her death was a consequence. But there she was, resurrected on TV, filmed in the late 1980's, denying she had ever taken them. The media, however, generally gave the impression they thought she had. In the context of President Clinton and his denials, how do we now know who to trust?

At the same time, at the end of September, there was the good news of the release of the hostages, Camilla Carr and Jon James from Chechnya. The Foreign Office denied that a ransom had been paid. But as The Times reported on 22 September: "a meeting at the Foreign Office between a Russian millionaire businessman and a senior British official with experience of intelligence and counter-terrorism appears to have played a crucial part in the release of the two Britons ... no one in Whitehall doubted that the meeting between Mr Berezovsky [the Russian] and Mr Budd [the Briton] helped to finalise the deal that led to their freedom."

How in the public world of today do you know what to believe? It may not have been a technical "ransom", in the same way as President Clinton's was not a technical "sexual relationship". On 17 January this year in his deposition in the Paula Jones civil law suit he said: "I have never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. I've never had an affair with her." But after tape recordings from Linda Tripp, statements by Monica Lewinsky and now his own confessions, we know that he had. Are words being used like that by our government officials? If so, it needs to be recognized that civil society (and what indeed we call civilization) will be hard pressed to sustain itself if such a culture of suspicion and de facto lies is allowed to continue. This is not to moralize. It is hard reality.


The Bible

So what does the bible have to say about lying and lies? It seems clear enough. The ten commandments do not have a direct prohibition against lying as such. But there is the ninth commandment against "false testimony": "You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour" (Ex 20.16).

However, prophets, psalmists and wisdom writers were quite direct. For example, Psalm 34.13 says:

keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking lies.

Proverbs 12.22 says:

The LORD detests lying lips, but he delights in men who are truthful.

Zechariah 8.16 says:

These are the things you are to do: Speak the truth to each other, and render true and sound judgment in your courts.

And through the prophets God was especially damning of lying religious leaders:

For they have done outrageous things in Israel; they have committed adultery with their neighbours' wives and in my name have spoken lies (Jeremiah 29.23).

The New Testament is also direct and definite. First, it gives us Jesus own teaching. For example, he taught that the devil was behind all lying as himself "a liar and the father of lies" (John 8.44). He taught that the truth was liberating: "the truth will set you free" (John 8.32). He taught that the Holy Spirit was "the Spirit of truth" (John 14.17). And he said to Pilate: "for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me" (John 18.37). He also pronounced a virtual anathema on hypocrisy.

Then the New Testament gives us the Apostles' teaching. Here, for example, is Paul instructing the Colossians: "Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices" (Col 3.9). Here he is instructing the Ephesians: "put off falsehood and speak truthfully" Eph 4.25). And truth, he says, must be spoken "in love". The book of Revelation says this is all very, very serious. It says that "everyone who loves and practices falsehood" will ultimately be "outside" the heavenly city, in a situation of unimaginable awfulness (Rev 21.8; 22.15). That is why the gospel of Christ - the gospel of repentance and forgiveness - is such good news. But there can be no hope if people do not recognise that there is a problem to repent of and falsehood that needs to be forgiven.


Other writings

This clear teaching of the bible is not always echoed when you turn to some modern writing, even some Christian writing. Take the modern Dictionary of Christian Ethics from the SCM press. There you read the following:

It is clear that there may be circumstances in which it is right to tell a lie ... The only way to have the sensitivity of spirit to know when a lie is called for in particular circumstances is to be habitually truthful.

Written in 1967 this is proposing a justifiable falsehood - something the New Testament never entertains. But this is now a common view and widely held. President Clinton may hold it. Lawrence Henderson certainly does. Some time ago Henderson wrote this (as a medical doctor):

Above all, remember that it is meaningless to speak of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to a patient. It is meaningless because it is impossible ... Since telling the truth is impossible, there can be no sharp distinction between what is true and what is false ... So far as possible do not harm. You can do harm by the process that is quaintly called telling the truth. You can do harm by lying ... But try to do as little harm as possible.

Here the criterion of harm makes this a utilitarian ethic (if it works, OK, or "the end justifies the means"). Charles Curtis a lawyer seems to be even stronger in his convictions:

I don't see why we should not come out roundly and say that one of the functions of the lawyer is to lie for his client.

Then remember Hitler. He used a utilitarian ethic to justify lying to millions. He was not the first national leader to say that the good of the state justified lying. But he probably was the first to talk about the "big lie". In Mein Kampf he wrote: "The great masses of the people ... will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one." And he proved the truth of that proposition in his own terrible Nazi way. But he was only following the steer of his compatriot, the philosopher Nietzsche, who had written some time before: "a great man ... he rather lies than tells the truth."

The clock must be turned back and turned back to that earlier Christian ethic - the biblical ethic that the church and the world followed for centuries. That is why President Clinton, as a symbol, is so important. If he does not resign or get impeached, public trust may be so eroded that in the words of Hannah Arendt we are not able "to take our bearings in the real world." This happens with brainwashing and it may happen if President Clinton's lying is simply shrugged off as a minor peccadillo. Hannah Arendt writes:

It has frequently been noted that the surest result of brainwashing in the long run is a peculiar kind of cynicism, the absolute refusal to believe in the truth of anything, no matter how well it may be established. In other words, the result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth, and truth be defamed as lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world - and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end - is being destroyed.

We are all now, more and more, drifting into "a peculiar kind of cynicism". That is the measure of the problem. And it is extremely unhealthy. If, on the other hand, Clinton does resign, that will help to rehabilitate truth-telling as an essential public and social cement. Of course, the President can be forgiven by God and his wife. Let us pray that he is seeking that forgiveness. King David, in the Old Testament, was in a similar situation after his affair with Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11 and 12). He genuinely repented and was forgiven (Psalm 51). But he still suffered. Being King he could not resign. He had to stay and experience the consequences of his sin in the form of Absolom's rebellion and worse. Bill Clinton, however, is not a King and can resign. For his own good and the good of others, surely he should.


Classical Christian doctrine

The classical Christian doctrine on lying that we need to return to today was articulated first by Augustine:

But every liar says the opposite of what he thinks in his heart, with purpose to deceive. Now it is evident that speech was given to man, not that men might therewith deceive one another, but that one man might make known his thoughts to another. To use speech, then, for the purpose of deception, and not for its appointed end, is a sin. Nor are we to suppose that there is any lie that is not a sin, because it is sometimes possible, by telling a lie, to do service to another (The Enchiridion).

Augustine was supported by John Wesley:

If any, in fact, do this - either teach men to do evil that good may come or do so themselves, their damnation is just. This is particularly applicable to those who tell lies in order to do good thereby. It follows, that officious lies, as well as all others, are an abomination to the God of Truth. Therefore there is no absurdity, however strange it may sound, in that saying of the ancient Father "I would not tell a wilful lie to save the souls of the whole world" (Sermons).

But their opponents ask: "what about the case, cited by the philosopher Kant, of a would-be murderer who inquires whether 'our friend who is pursued by him had taken refuge in our house' and mere silence or evasion will not work?" Samuel Johnson, for example, said:

The General Rule, is that truth should never be violated; there must, however, be some exceptions. If, for instance, a murderer should ask you which way a man has gone.

However, Cardinal Newman took issue with Johnson saying it wasn't as simple as that:

As to Johnson's case of a murderer asking which way a man has gone, I should have anticipated that, had such a difficulty happened to him, his first act would have been to knock the man down, and to call out for the police; and next, if he was worsted in the conflict, he would not have given the ruffian the information he asked at whatever risk to himself. I think he would have let himself be killed first.

Kant himself supports Augustine and Wesley. He argued that there was a duty of truthfulness in all situations. He said that a lie always harms mankind generally. And it harms the liar himself by destroying his human dignity and making him more worthless than a thing: "by a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man" (Doctrine of Virtue).


The tragic situation

Augustine knew of the problem cases. He knew of the cases in the Old Testament where deception seems to achieve good results. He denied, however, that there was such a thing as justifiable falsehood. True, he argued that some lies are worse than others. He had, in fact, an eightfold distinction, with the worst being lies in teaching about God and ending up with lies that do no harm but seem to help someone:

It cannot be denied that they have attained a very high standard of goodness who never lie except to save a man from injury; but in the case of men who have reached this standard, it is not the deceit, but their good intention, that is justly praised, and sometimes even rewarded. It is quite enough that the deception should be pardoned, without its being made an object of laudation.

What this analysis points to, is this. If a good person does lie in an impossible situation, that is not to be seen as a "right action". Rather the whole situation is to be seen as a tragedy. That is because all lies are evil. The individual is being caught up in a totality of evil. So a good person, according to Augustine, is, and should feel, guilty if they lie to save the life of another. But God will forgive, if there is repentance. Augustine believed the way he did, because he had a clear belief that this life is not all there is. Heaven (and hell) awaits. He knew that death killed the body, but lying kills the soul. He argued, therefore, that to lie to save the life of another is a foolish bargain: "Therefore, does he not speak most perversely who says that one person ought to die spiritually so that another may live corporally?"

Augustine also believed in the sovereignty of God. To lie in the hope of helping another presupposes that your information is correct, that you have a level of omnipotence, and that there is no other way out. Nor was all this an academic exercise for Augustine and his generation. Many of the early Christians were given the opportunity to lie to save their own lives. The question some of the authorities wanted to know from them was this: "did they believe in Jesus Christ?" If they admitted it, they were martyred. If they didn't, they were freed? Should they tell a lie or act a lie? Some did. Many did not. They refused to give in to Caesar. And through their commitment to the truth, the world has enjoyed a culture of truth for centuries. In time this has allowed so much to develop and evolve in terms of scientific achievement and democratic institutions, all of which can only work on a basis of truthfulness. So this classical Christian tradition of never lying has been an important part of Western civilization.

Today we could be seeing that civilization beginning to unravel. Not, of course, that the gates of Hades will prevail against the church. Jesus taught that that would never happen. But the centre of gravity for the church, with enormous long-term consequences, can well change. It changed in the early days of the church when it moved from Jerusalem to Antioch. It then moved from Antioch to Rome. It then moved from Rome to Northern Europe and the US (and Australia). Why could it not now move to a new location? The recent Lambeth Conference has indicated that the guardianship of Christian doctrine and the Christian moral tradition could now be relocating to Africa, South East Asia and parts of South America. Time alone will tell.


Objective truth

But the classical Christian tradition is not just about truth telling at all times. It underlines objective truth and the importance of loyalty to objective truth in a way we have so forgotten in the 20th century. Modern views of lying focus on the discrepancy between the lie uttered and the thought in the mind. But the classical Christian tradition is just as concerned with the discrepancy between a statement uttered and reality or fact - what is objectively true. Today there is a leniency if something false is said in ignorance, but not if it is intentional. So denying God and affirming immoral behaviour are acceptable, even though they are ignorant lies. Previously it was said that ignorance was culpable because it caused others to suffer. But the common view today is that we are entitled to ignore truth but not to pervert it.

The bible does not allow us to think that ignorance automatically means we are morally acceptable. Nor does Roman law or our own legal system simply allow ignorance of the law to be an automatic grounds for escaping the consequences of an act. While attaching to them lesser degrees of guilt, the Old Testament certainly refers to sins of ignorance (eg Lev 14; Num 15.22-32). Similarly, on the one hand, Jesus suggests that ignorance modifies responsibility - Luke 23.34: "Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." And Paul suggests the same in 1 Timothy 1.13: "Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief." But on the other hand, Jesus also taught the parable of the two servants in Luke 12.47-48: "That servant who knows his master's will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows. {48} But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows."

Whatever the level of guilt, Christians have always seen it as a duty to dispel falsehood. And not only today but throughout the centuries falsehood with regard to divine truth is, and has been, the greatest problem the church of Christ has to face. John asks (1 John 2.22):

Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ.

And, as a postscript, the classical Christian tradition linked truth-telling with justice. Bishop Butler in the 18th century linked falsehood with injustice and unprovoked violence as a cardinal vice. He said that "veracity [truthfulness] as well as justice is to be our rule of life." Today justice and "social justice" have high moral status, but truthfulness (and sexual morality that is linked to truthfulness through "fidelity") has become dispensable.


Conclusion

So we come full circle. A concern about lying should mean not only an attempt to re-establish and teach what the bible calls "the law" - God's requirement for truthfulness (and we must pray and work to that end). But then we need to evangelize and work to re-establish "the gospel" - the truth that is hidden and concealed because "the god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." Lying will remain a problem until God causes, by his Holy Spirit, his light to shine in human hearts - "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ" (2 Cor 4.4,6). That alone will bring new moral strength.