Do we live in a world of NECESSARY deceit and lies?

[Robert_Sock]

If controlling society is coming from the government it’s discretion, but if it’s from Satan it’s deceit. Either way, we are being duped .Isaiah claimed that he was duped by God.

 

[dshix]

If controlling society is coming from the government it’s discretion, but if it’s from Satan it’s deceit. Either way, we are being duped .Isaiah claimed that he was duped by God.

When government holds back information that is necessary to hold back for national security, it is discretion, because they have a good reason to hold it back.

If they are holding back information that would cause the public to rise up and call for justice, that is deceit, because they are holding back knowledge the public has a right to know.

 

[Robert_Sock]

If controlling society is coming from the government it’s discretion, but if it’s from Satan it’s deceit. Either way, we are being duped .Isaiah claimed that he was duped by God.

It’s actually Jeremiah 20:7,9:
“You duped me, O LORD, and I let myself be duped;
you were too strong for me, and you triumphed.”

 

[PolarGuy]

dshix, you are just making this up as you go along. You are arbitarily defining what is deceit and what is discretion, in order to fit your preordained belief that “some falsehoods are discretion when they are good, and some are bad when they are bad.” I am not going to “save face,” because I don’t need to! If anything, YOU need to quit before you fall further behind, because you’ve made up a slew of definitions – then claimed they are from some “morality textbook.”

You can quote whatever you like, but words like discretion and deceit are not like terms like “oxygen” or “hydrogen,” where they can refer to only one thing. “Deception” and “deceit” can be defined in a host of ways, and you are defining them the way you want to.

 

[Publisher]

Publisher, is it really so moral to “live in truth,” if doing so involves offering up my daughter to the drunk male caller? I’ll pass on that. Your statement sounds so nice, yet has little applicability to the real world.

What would cause you to think living in truth requires you to offer your daughter to a drunk male caller? Our word is our bond…if we do not speak the truth, if we live in deceit, we’ve lost more than we could hope to replace. If the world cannot trust us to speak the truth about worldly things…how could they possibly accept our words about spiritual things?

 

[JimG]

When I meet an acquaintance in the grocery store and say , “Good morning! How are you ?” I expect to hear “Just fine, thank you!” I don’t expect to hear a litany of woes. If I do, I’ll rephrase the greeting.

And if a woman should ever ask, “Does this dress make me look fat?” the only acceptable reply is, “you look great!”

 

[catholictiger]

this has been discussed a couple times on the board but let say you are a German and a NAzi comes up to your house and asks you “are you hiding jews in your house?” how could you possibly answer this question truthfully, if you try and use a dodging question the nazi will pick up on it and ask you “yes or no question are you hiding any jews in your house.” IF you don’t answer he will search the house and find them. The only possible way to save lives is to flat out lie wouldn’t you be obligated morally to do it? I would say yes

BTW in this case the I think its possible for principle of double effect would apply, the only question is do you ever partake in the act of lying, or can you say that by saying what you are saying you are protecting people, and that is your main goal.

 

[Publisher]

this has been discussed a couple times on the board but let say you are a German and a NAzi comes up to your house and asks you “are you hiding jews in your house?” how could you possibly answer this question truthfully, if you try and use a dodging question the nazi will pick up on it and ask you “yes or no question are you hiding any jews in your house.” IF you don’t answer he will search the house and find them. The only possible way to save lives is to flat out lie wouldn’t you be obligated morally to do it? I would say yes

BTW in this case the I think its possible for principle of double effect would apply, the only question is do you ever partake in the act of lying, or can you say that by saying what you are saying you are protecting people, and that is your main goal.

Luckily no one on this board has been place in that position. One confronted with saving a life by their words is not equal to lying to a caller on the phone “Is so and so there?” or
“Does this dress make my butt look big.”…oor “Do you like my new hair do?”…IMO such comparisons do not free me from speaking truth in my daily life.

One does not have to be “brutally honest” but simply “Let your nay be nay and your yeah be yeah”…good advise from a very Wise Teacher.

 

[nuntym]

+JMJ+

this has been discussed a couple times on the board but let say you are a German and a NAzi comes up to your house and asks you “are you hiding jews in your house?” how could you possibly answer this question truthfully, if you try and use a dodging question the nazi will pick up on it and ask you “yes or no question are you hiding any jews in your house.” IF you don’t answer he will search the house and find them. The only possible way to save lives is to flat out lie wouldn’t you be obligated morally to do it? I would say yes

BTW in this case the I think its possible for principle of double effect would apply, the only question is do you ever partake in the act of lying, or can you say that by saying what you are saying you are protecting people, and that is your main goal.

Did you promise to the Jews hiding in your house that you are going to protect them? Yes? Well, in that case, by saying the truth to the Nazis you lied to the Jews; conversely, by lying to the Nazis, you spoke the truth to the Jews.

In this scenario by telling the truth to one party you are denying the truth to another party. So which party deserves the truth more?

 

[LittleDeb]

No one has addressed the terms used by the Church. We are free to use broad mental reservation. Using strict mental reservation is a sin.

The difference between the two can be hard for some to understand. I will try to be brief. Broad mental reservation is similar to what some here are referring to as “discretion.” It is similar, but it is objectively defined, whereas discretion is not. Broad mental reservation is that everything you say and do is truthful independently of the thoughts and actions you do not reveal. The examples have been given specifically of those who hid the Jews. By using broad mental reservation, the person speaking is able to answer completely truthfully and still not reveal everything he knows. (On a side note: I did some research on the very topic of lying to Nazis, and I found out that those who never lied were the most successful in keeping the Jews safe.)

To give the above definitions some concrete examples I can try to use the previous examples in the context. The drunk who asks the questions of the whereabouts of the daughter is not entitled to the truth. That doesn’t matter for the person being asked. All that matters is that the person being asked is truthful. But he does not have to reveal everything he knows. The father can honestly answer the drunk with a question, “why do you want to know?” The father has many options in broad mental reservation all the way to, “that is none of your business and I suggest you get off my porch before I fill you with lead!”

Strict mental reservation is lying. It means that what the person is saying or doing is only truthful if something kept back is revealed. There hasn’t been a great example given to explain that. I will try to explain it using the, “does this dress make me look fat?” that JimG jokingly referred. Strict mental reservation would be an answer that needed the part left out to be true. “No! That dress doesn’t make you look fat!” is what you said out loud. What remained in your head was, “your fat makes you look fat, not the dress.” That is strict mental reservation. That is a lie. That is sinful. (And on the same side note: I discovered in my research, that those types of lies do hurt the person they are intended to help.)

An answer to that question that is truth would be along the lines of, “it is not as flattering as other dresses I have seen, but it still looks nice.” She asked about her dress. To lie about her “fat” would be using strict mental reservation. To talk about her dress, is broad mental reservation, therefore is not a lie.

Summed up, it means: Everything you say must be the truth. You do not have to tell everything you know.

It is clear in answering the, “How are you doing?” question honestly as well. If I am not doing well, I honestly say something like, “I am not doing great, but I am as well as can be expected.” Or a simple, “I’m okay. Thanks!” always suffices. I never say, “I am great!” unless I am. Saying ‘I am okay,’ is using broad mental reservation, and that is acceptable in Church teaching.

Based on the above, obviously my answer is that lying is never necessary and always harmful. By lying, we are making God work around us to bring about the good. By using broad mental reservation, we are open to The Holy Spirit and can answer in words that are not our words, but God’s.

 

[LittleDeb]

When government holds back information that is necessary to hold back for national security, it is discretion, because they have a good reason to hold it back.

If they are holding back information that would cause the public to rise up and call for justice, that is deceit, because they are holding back knowledge the public has a right to know.

I disagree with this assessment, while I agree with where you are going with it. The Church has said that everyone is entitled to the truth, just by being a child of God. But none of us is required to reveal all that we know, (sadly, even the government.) Just because we have the right to know, doesn’t mean they are morally required to tell us. They are only morally required not to lie.

The difference can be ascertained by knowing the difference between broad and strict mental reservation. Lies from the government to prevent a mob is a lie, even if the intention is safety. (And it can be argued that withholding truth is a sin of omission.) A lying government will eventually crumble from within or be destroyed from the outside. This exact topic is why The Church is still standing. While Her members have lied since the betrayal of Judas’ kiss, to the present day Curia mess, the Church Herself, has only and always told the Truth.

 

[LittleDeb]

The drunk who asks the questions of the whereabouts of the daughter is not entitled to the truth. That doesn’t matter for the person being asked.

Sorry. That should read IS entitled to the truth. My added “not” makes it not make sense. Polar guy is correct in that. The drunk is entitled to the truth. But the distinction is that his right to all information is not required of anyone else. No one is required to teach him quantum physics. But he has a right not to be lied to, about quantum physics, or any other topic.

 

[PolarGuy]

LittleDeb, although I respect what you are trying to articulate, I just respectfully disagree that “lying”, or “strict mental reservation” if you will, is always sinful.

If it is…are the police sinning when they lie to a suspect? Am I sinning when I “hold back” my best price to the shady car salesman? Am I sinning when I refuse to tell my aunt that her (awful) cake is just fabulous? I don’t think so, and I feel not the slightest qualms for doing so. “Being Catholic” need not equal “being a dupe just waiting to be taken advantage of.”

Another issue I take with the whole concept of “necessary deceit” relates to your comments that “research indicates that those who didn’t lie to Nazis had the most success.”

Above and beyond the fact that I would question how such scientific research could even exist, the problem I have is this: Morality is complex. Moral judgments are not made as we sit in our warm kitchens drinking our hot coffee, which, as an aside, is exactly where I am now. Such judgments are made in seconds…such as when the gestapo is at your door, in wartime, and your “leader” is Adolf Hitler, and civil law in your country recognizes that the Gestapo can shoot you for basically looking crosseyed at them, and the Nazis ask you, “any jews here?” Under those circumstances, none of us can really say that answering, “no!” is a sin. Many really crucial moral judgments we make, involving lying/“discretion”/whatever, do not afford us the luxury of considering all possible responses, gauging how we may phrase a response to not constitute a lie, etc.

We are confronted with a choice and we don’t have an hour or 2 to think about it – if I hem & haw while the Nazis stand there, they push past me, ransack the house, find the jews, shoot them, then shoot me. So I deceive them – and I made my moral choice, and, quite frankly, I made the right one.

 

[LittleDeb]

PolarGuy,
I appreciate your response. It was articulate and well thought out. I completely agree with you that those who lied to Nazis were not in a state of sin. There is no way they were culpable. They did what they did under horrific stress that none of us can judge. But that doesn’t change the facts that lying is still sinful, objectively speaking.

So, to your first part, objectively speaking, it is sinful to lie. You telling your aunt her cake is wonderful doesn’t help her. There are repercussions for people who were lied to about skills or talents. It doesn’t help them. Many of us have witnessed that person who gets completely destroyed because the person was told he had a talent or a skill he did not have.

The concern though, is really for the individual doing the lying. Maybe her cake was wonderful, and your tastebuds were broken. The point is, you have drawn an arbitrary line for what is okay. How is that moveable line good for your soul? Our culture has a name for it, “white lie.” How is a lie that has more light a better lie? How is it helping others? Please know, I have not said to be brutal with the truth. I always emphasize truth with all charity.

Lying about your best price doesn’t make you a better haggler. It just makes you possibly less trust-worthy. Saying, “this is my offer,” even if you are willing to go higher isn’t a lie. Saying, “this is my best offer,” does. The salesman knows that the next time he does business with you, he can charge you more. If I were to lie about my best offer, what does that say about me? If I ask and haggle, while keeping my private information, private, I have kept my word

You give the example of law enforcement. Officers don’t need to lie. They can use broad mental reservation and get to the results just as easily, and the criminals would have fewer grounds for appeal when the officers are honest. We have no reason to believe that lying works better. I have yet to be given a circumstance in which a lie really is the right thing to do. I have yet to encounter an occasion where a lie helped someone more than the truth did.

 

[Robert_Sock]

What about deception? Is it sinful? Perhaps I should have said: “Do we live in a world of NECESSARY deception?” Deep deception at that!

 

[PolarGuy]

LittleDeb, your points are interesting. There should be more discussions like this!

You say some interesting things:

1. As to “How is a lie that has more light a better lie? How is it helping others?,” I’d say this: Some deception simply falls under the category of “being polite” or “being civil” or even “being kind to others.” There is a big difference between telling someone, “you should pursue a baseball career” when they are an awful player, and telling Aunt Martha her cake was good when it wasn’t. As was asked above, when someone says, “how are you?,” I’m being rude if I respond, “Well, I have a suspicious lump in my breast.” NOTE: A man actually said that to me when I asked him how he was; no joke). As to where to draw the line, it’s always different, and that’s why I keep saying “morality is complex.”
2. In that respect, one aspect of deception that implicates its morality is the intent of the deceiver: Am I lying to harm you? Or to be nice?
3. You actually make a good point that “Lying about your best price doesn’t make you a better haggler. It just makes you possibly less trust-worthy.” That is true! However, I think one response is that if I am in a situation where another person will lie to me to harm me, i.e., a salesman trying to con me – I may be entitled to lie back in order simply to protect myself. For example, one known tactic car salesmen use is to ask, “what do you want to pay for this,” to try & elicit your top price, so they can sell X at that price, even if X actually costs a lot less. I am under no moral compunction to tell him what I really want to pay. The fact that there are some answers I could give that do not involve lying doesn’t make me morally culpable if I give a lower price.
4. As to law enforcement: As to whether officers don’t need to lie, the fact is that we live in a cold world where bad people do bad things to others, and will lie to police to escape justice. Civil law recognizes that police may lie to suspects. As to having no reason to believe that lying works better, I can only say that it clearly works to some degree, since the law expressly allows it, and police will use whatever lawful tactics are proven to be effective. I see no reason why police should not have the right to lie simply as part of the arsenal they possess with which to investigate crimes.
5. As to whether there are circumstances in which a lie really is the right thing to do, I can only say: The “jews in the attic” scenario surely happened, and IMHO would be such a situation.

 

[LittleDeb]

So, one of the points that I have taken from this discussion is that it can be argued, very successfully, that not all deceit are lies. The terms are not interchangeable. I joined the discussion because I wasn’t seeing the examples of the clearly defined terms of broad and strict mental reservation being used. My personal errors come from not separating the term ‘deceit’ from ‘lie.’ Not all deception is a lie. If it were, “I’ve got your nose!!” means that I have been regularly lying to young babies. That is not even sort of possible for me. Sleight of hand is deceiving, but not a lie.

I firmly believe that the Church has had to define Her own terms specifically because of this problem in our secular culture. And if I really look at the issue, it isn’t the secular culture that is the problem. It is our fallen nature. I have to keep my private information private because of sin. I can use broad mental reservation to deceive those who might seek to harm me. On that I do completely agree.

But, I do stand by the assertion that it can be done without lies. From there, the argument can be made that what I view as broad mental reservation, another person sees as strict reservation, aka, a lie.

There is the (possibly urban legend) story about the police officers who put a suspect near a copy machine with wires to a colander on his head. Every time they suspected he was lying, an officer pushed ‘copy’ where a paper with the words, “You’re lying!” would print. The criminal was convinced by the deception and confessed. Did the officers lie?

I say they did not. I say that they used broad mental reservation. They did not take an actual lie detector test and give him false results. But even if the legend is not true, this same ruse could still be used with a real test. If, even once, the criminal had shown a tendency toward a lie, the officers can say that, even if it was actually that the suspect lied about what he had for lunch. The scene in the movie (and the play), “A Few Good Men,” uses a similar ruse. The attorney identifies potential witnesses. In the end, those witnesses would have actually had nothing useful for the prosecution. The line of questioning the attorney uses is a brilliant example, in my opinion, of effective use of broad mental reservation. He asks each question as a “what if I were to say…?” point of view.

This is precisely what I mean when I say that not lying is more effective. For an example close to my heart; the best way I have seen to bring the abortion clinics down, is to give them enough rope to hang themselves. The truth is what will win in the end.

 

[JimG]

Strict mental reservation is lying. It means that what the person is saying or doing is only truthful if something kept back is revealed. There hasn’t been a great example given to explain that. I will try to explain it using the, “does this dress make me look fat?” that JimG jokingly referred. Strict mental reservation would be an answer that needed the part left out to be true. “No! That dress doesn’t make you look fat!” is what you said out loud. What remained in your head was, “your fat makes you look fat, not the dress.” That is strict mental reservation. That is a lie. That is sinful. (And on the same side note: I discovered in my research, that those types of lies do hurt the person they are intended to help.) . . . . .

It is clear in answering the, “How are you doing?” question honestly as well. If I am not doing well, I honestly say something like, “I am not doing great, but I am as well as can be expected.” Or a simple, “I’m okay. Thanks!” always suffices. I never say, “I am great!” unless I am. Saying ‘I am okay,’ is using broad mental reservation, and that is acceptable in Church teaching.

I had to comment on this part of your post, because it brought to mind a couple of real life examples I have known.

I used to work with a woman who really was obese. She was single, and I figured she always would be. One Monday after the weekend she said that she had met a guy who was really interested in her—he was the skinniest guy I have ever met. A few weeks later they were married, and the marriage has lasted. They are invariably kind to each other and show greater affection than most married couples I know.

I think if she ever asked such a question as “does this dress make me look fat?”, he would undoubtedly reply, “honey, you look gorgeous!” And it would be the truth. It would be the truth for him. And it is a far better truth than trying to objectively quantify her looks by comparing them with anyone else. Who could say that he was lying?

I am also reminded of my wife who answered every question in the nature of “how are you?” with “Just fine!” exclaimed with great enthusiasm. That was even the case when she was in the hospital for a serious condition. Each morning the physician would come into the room and say, “how are you today?” “Just fine!” she would reply, with great enthusiasm. He would stay for a minute or less and then leave.

One day I told her, “You know, he charges you $10 every day to hear that you’re just fine!” She just smiled. (Doctors were cheap in those days, even specialists.)

Would it have been more truthful to go through the past 24 hours worth of medical charts, or to analyze every passing pain that she’d had? I don’t think so. I think that dwelling on the less than fine would have made her feel worse, not better. As far as she was concerned, she was just fine, and I certainly couldn’t say she was lying. She never lied.

I had another relative who would respond to the same type of question, every single time, with something on the order of, (after heaving a big sigh), “Oh, as well as could be expected, I guess.” One could feel the weight of the world in her words and the way they were expressed. To tell the truth, this person WAS just fine! There were no insurmountable problems, nothing more than any ordinary mortal had to bear. But saying “just fine” out loud would have deprived her of being able to reach for the sympathy card, of being able to recount some troubles if you were willing to listen.

The fact is, words and actions cause feelings. Negative words make for negative feelings. Positive words make for positive feelings. So maybe our definition of truth ought to take into account that sometimes we create our own truth.

 

[JimG]

. . . .There is the (possibly urban legend) story about the police officers who put a suspect near a copy machine with wires to a colander on his head. Every time they suspected he was lying, an officer pushed ‘copy’ where a paper with the words, “You’re lying!” would print. The criminal was convinced by the deception and confessed. Did the officers lie? I say they did not. I say that they used broad mental reservation.

Hmm. This troubles me, even though I’m sure it is an urban legend. There have been cases where police did in fact lie to suspects in order to get a confession.

But often, police don’t even need to lie. They just tell the suspect over and over again, repeatedly, for hours on end, that he did the crime, and they state how he did it, filling in all the details from the way they believe it may have happened. There have been several famous cases wherein police have obtained false confessions in this way. The suspect, though innocent, simply wrote a statement to match what the police told him, just to make the browbeating come to an end.

The police didn’t lie to him; they just suggested, over a course of hours, what he must write down and sign in order to make all this stop and allow them to ‘help’ him.

 

[LittleDeb]

I had to comment on this part of your post, because it brought to mind a couple of real life examples I have known.

I used to work with a woman who really was obese. She was single, and I figured she always would be. One Monday after the weekend she said that she had met a guy who was really interested in her—he was the skinniest guy I have ever met. A few weeks later they were married, and the marriage has lasted. They are invariably kind to each other and show greater affection than most married couples I know.

I think if she ever asked such a question as “does this dress make me look fat?”, he would undoubtedly reply, “honey, you look gorgeous!” And it would be the truth. It would be the truth for him. And it is a far better truth than trying to objectively quantify her looks by comparing them with anyone else. Who could say that he was lying?

I am also reminded of my wife who answered every question in the nature of “how are you?” with “Just fine!” exclaimed with great enthusiasm. That was even the case when she was in the hospital for a serious condition. Each morning the physician would come into the room and say, “how are you today?” “Just fine!” she would reply, with great enthusiasm. He would stay for a minute or less and then leave.

One day I told her, “You know, he charges you $10 every day to hear that you’re just fine!” She just smiled. (Doctors were cheap in those days, even specialists.)

Would it have been more truthful to go through the past 24 hours worth of medical charts, or to analyze every passing pain that she’d had? I don’t think so. I think that dwelling on the less than fine would have made her feel worse, not better. As far as she was concerned, she was just fine, and I certainly couldn’t say she was lying. She never lied.

I had another relative who would respond to the same type of question, every single time, with something on the order of, (after heaving a big sigh), “Oh, as well as could be expected, I guess.” One could feel the weight of the world in her words and the way they were expressed. To tell the truth, this person WAS just fine! There were no insurmountable problems, nothing more than any ordinary mortal had to bear. But saying “just fine” out loud would have deprived her of being able to reach for the sympathy card, of being able to recount some troubles if you were willing to listen.

The fact is, words and actions cause feelings. Negative words make for negative feelings. Positive words make for positive feelings. So maybe our definition of truth ought to take into account that sometimes we create our own truth.

I agree with you, 100% here!! That is putting well what I mean.