Is Lying Ok?

Ok, so, obviously lying is a sin (9th Commandment), yet if a Nazi asked me if I were hiding Jews, and I was, the better thing to do is lie. But that's a sin, and you can't do that. So is the Bible wrong? Or is the Nazi story wrong?

- Elise

Hey Elise,

What is a lie? I'm guessing a common definition is the withholding of truth or deception. And I think this is, for the most part, right. However, as you point out in your story about the Nazi's, we do seem to run into trouble. So, I add this qualification: lying is the malicious withholding of truth or deceit.

I think the Bible does add this qualification to other things. For example, the commandment not to kill, which is the sixth commandment. However, some translations make the fine distinction between murder and killing. Killing is fine, yet murder is not. If a burglar breaks into my house with the intent to kill my family, I would say I am obligated to kill him first. I may not have any malice in my heart, but the action driving my killing, and ultimately self-defense, is my love for my family, whom I am trying to protect. The same idea is applied in war. However, murder, which includes malice, is not justifiable. And indeed, the Bible does seem to be ok with such justifications.

I propose the same is happening with lying. So long as there is no malice in lying, such as leaving the lights on at home when you are gone to deceive potential burglars, or deceiving a basketball player that you're going one way and you turn the other and shoot, or when a soldier wears camo to deceive their enemy that they are merely part of the background, these are all are fine justifications for lying or deceit. Another example of what some might call a "white lie" is in Joshua 2:3-7.

In fact, we see Jesus using deceit without malice in John 4:1-17, with the woman at the well. He asks her to call her husband, which he knows she doesn't have. So he lead her to believe that he was ignorant of this fact, yet this is perfectly fine because there was no malice behind this. He did this to illustrate a point, one which ultimately saved her life.

So we need to make this distinction in lying, and detecting malice. In fact, when you read the 9th Commandment, it doesn't say, don't lie, but rather not to bear false witness against your neighbor. This certainly does imply malice. However, there are a few more things about your question I want to point out. It seems to me that you're assuming that all moral commandments carry the same weight.

See, I am what you call a Moral Objectivist, which basically says I believe that what is right and what is wrong is independent of what anybody thinks or believe. I think a lot of people hold this position, even though they don't know it's called that. However, this position is often caricatured as Absolutism, which says that all morality holds the same weight. But in Moral Objectivism (not to be confused with Ayn Rand's Objectivism), some morality can be contingent upon the situation. There is still an objective way or correct approach, but it just depends on what the circumstances are. Absolutism doesn't have this kind of flexibility. Be a moral objectivist, not an absolutist.

Finally, in the case of Nazi's, we can argue that we must only tell the truth to those who are entitled to it. It is thus conditional. Then we argue that the Nazi's are disqualified from the truth because of their own malice, which is the murder of the Jews. So we aren't obligated to tell them the truth.

Hope that helped!