William H. Willimon - "To Tell the Truth" (November 15, 1998)
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| - | When President Clinton admitted that he had lied to a | 0:12 |
| grand jury, the surprising thing was, | 0:16 | |
| we were not surprised. | 0:21 | |
| On news broadcasts, when his lying was mentioned, | 0:24 | |
| there was always someone present to say, hey, he wasn't | 0:26 | |
| the first president to lie, what is the big deal? | 0:31 | |
| True, President Bush lied about his pardon | 0:35 | |
| of President Nixon who lied about his role in Watergate. | 0:39 | |
| President Regan lied about his arms for hostage deal | 0:43 | |
| with Iran, and of course we voters find it difficult | 0:48 | |
| to be too negative about presidential lies. | 0:52 | |
| We voted for them in great part because of their lies, | 0:56 | |
| not despite them. | 1:01 | |
| They told us they wouldn't raise taxes. | 1:03 | |
| They told us they were model husbands. | 1:06 | |
| We knew they were lying and we loved it. | 1:08 | |
| A recent poll found that 91% of us lie regularly. | 1:13 | |
| Most of our lies are told to friends and relatives. | 1:19 | |
| 31% of us believe that we've been lied to by our doctors. | 1:24 | |
| 42% of us believe that lawyers have lied to us. | 1:28 | |
| The University of Virginia psychologist had his subjects | 1:32 | |
| keep a diary recording the lies that they tell each day | 1:37 | |
| and says, people tell an average of two lies a day | 1:42 | |
| or at least that is how many they admit to. | 1:47 | |
| Maybe by the time we reach adolescence we have been | 1:52 | |
| bombarded with so many advertisements claiming wealth | 1:55 | |
| and peace and happiness and instant joy | 2:00 | |
| that we just stop expecting the truth. | 2:03 | |
| At the same time, we curiously live in a tell-all culture, | 2:10 | |
| at least on TV. | 2:15 | |
| What was once reserved for the priest's confessional | 2:18 | |
| becomes standard fare on daytime television, | 2:20 | |
| on Jenny and Sally Jesse, before millions. | 2:24 | |
| We appear to live, Donald McCullough says, in a kind of | 2:28 | |
| schizophrenic environment where we are stretched between | 2:31 | |
| wide-scale pervasive deceit on the one hand | 2:35 | |
| and tell-all TV confession on the other. | 2:40 | |
| We're not very adept with the truth. | 2:47 | |
| Aristotle said that telling the truth | 2:51 | |
| is a difficult matter | 2:55 | |
| because truth-telling is often a matter of relationship. | 2:58 | |
| Aristotle says true honesty is more than simply | 3:05 | |
| spilling our guts, unloading everything we think | 3:09 | |
| about somebody on them. | 3:12 | |
| Rather, true honesty, Aristotle said, is speaking | 3:15 | |
| the right truth to the right person | 3:18 | |
| at the right time | 3:23 | |
| in the right way for the right reasons. | 3:24 | |
| There may be truths which I know, for instance, | 3:30 | |
| which are not really mine to tell. | 3:33 | |
| If you tell me something in confidence, asking me | 3:36 | |
| to keep a secret, if I tell that secret, | 3:39 | |
| I have stolen something precious from you. | 3:42 | |
| Not every person has a right to know all truth that we know. | 3:46 | |
| One of the reasons that we enable counselors and attorneys | 3:52 | |
| and others to keep confidence | 3:55 | |
| is it when you tell a truth | 3:58 | |
| to a stranger, how do you know that that stranger will not | 4:02 | |
| use the truth against you to hurt you? | 4:06 | |
| Truth, truth is power, and so Aristotle stresses | 4:12 | |
| how the truth is used as an important matter. | 4:17 | |
| Timing is important with the truth. | 4:23 | |
| There are some things which are true which don't need | 4:25 | |
| to be told at this time. | 4:28 | |
| When my friend's son is just flunked out of college | 4:30 | |
| is not the time to tell him the truth | 4:34 | |
| that my daughter's on the Dean's list. | 4:36 | |
| Truth, even so noble a thing, can be used as a weapon | 4:39 | |
| to hurt and to wound. | 4:43 | |
| When I was attempting to help reform my own denomination. | 4:46 | |
| On a number of occasions I said that we were being poorly | 4:52 | |
| lead that our current crop of bishops were uncreative inept. | 4:55 | |
| I still believe those judgments to be true and yet I learned | 5:00 | |
| that there are lots of different ways to say the truth. | 5:04 | |
| You can say the truth in such a way that it just silences | 5:08 | |
| all communication, the other person is so overwhelmed | 5:11 | |
| by the severity of your judgment, | 5:14 | |
| it really doesn't help to say, well, my judgments are true. | 5:17 | |
| So Aristotle stresses, the wrong truth or more specifically, | 5:23 | |
| the wrong person telling the truth at the wrong time | 5:28 | |
| or truth told in the wrong way for the wrong reason, | 5:32 | |
| does damage to truth. | 5:35 | |
| Honesty and cruelty bid quite well together, | 5:38 | |
| but I suppose that few of us | 5:45 | |
| are guilty of great, big, obvious lies. | 5:47 | |
| More frequently, our downfall is the so-called white lie. | 5:52 | |
| I hate that term. | 5:57 | |
| The lie which is allegedly told out of compassion. | 5:58 | |
| When you thrust your simian newborn in my face | 6:04 | |
| and say, isn't this the most beautiful baby you've | 6:08 | |
| ever seen in the world? | 6:11 | |
| And what's the harm of my indulging in the white lie? | 6:14 | |
| Why yes, of course, your baby is beautiful. | 6:18 | |
| Trouble is, it's not so much the lies that we tell others, | 6:22 | |
| but also the lies we tell ourselves. | 6:27 | |
| So when I say, I was not completely honest with this person | 6:30 | |
| because I didn't want to hurt her feelings, be suspicious. | 6:35 | |
| A good test of our allegedly innocent lies is to ask, | 6:41 | |
| does this lie protect the other person | 6:48 | |
| or is it mainly protection of me? | 6:50 | |
| I'll admit it isn't always easy to tell the difference. | 6:55 | |
| I've had doctors justify their lack of candor with a patient | 6:59 | |
| saying, I know that his disease is terminal, I know that he | 7:02 | |
| is beyond medical cure, but why tell him, what is the point | 7:06 | |
| of destroying all of his hope with the truth. | 7:10 | |
| On the surface that lie appears to be protecting a sufferer | 7:14 | |
| from additional pain, however, on closer examination | 7:19 | |
| it also serves to protect the doctor from being in the | 7:24 | |
| discomfort of being in the presence of someone | 7:28 | |
| who's just heard bad news. | 7:31 | |
| We all know the tendency of people | 7:34 | |
| to associate bad messages with the messenger. | 7:35 | |
| President Clinton said that he lied because he wanted | 7:40 | |
| to protect his family. | 7:43 | |
| We do well to be suspicious of such claims. | 7:46 | |
| Most of the time, when I tell you, look I'm only saying | 7:49 | |
| this to you for your own good, what I mean is | 7:54 | |
| I do most things for my good, | 7:57 | |
| therefore the truth | 8:02 | |
| becomes important to cling to despite my reasons. | 8:04 | |
| For instance, in my experience, | 8:11 | |
| medical lies are terribly insidious. | 8:12 | |
| To give a patient false hope is to deny that patient | 8:15 | |
| opportunity to make important decisions, to put affairs | 8:19 | |
| in order, to do whatever that person needs to do | 8:22 | |
| with the truth. | 8:24 | |
| Besides, who am I to assume that a person doesn't have | 8:27 | |
| the moral resources to handle the truth? | 8:31 | |
| More typically, it is I who do not have the resources to say | 8:35 | |
| painful things to other people and risk their reaction. | 8:40 | |
| There are lies which you tell, so called white lies, | 8:46 | |
| which do seem to lubricate the friction | 8:52 | |
| which is inevitable in relationships. | 8:54 | |
| A person called you and says, we thought it would be | 8:58 | |
| just great if we could go out to dinner next week. | 9:01 | |
| Wouldn't you love to go out to dinner with us next week? | 9:04 | |
| And you think to yourself that you would love to do anything | 9:06 | |
| but go out to dinner with these people. | 9:09 | |
| You've been out to dinner with them before. | 9:11 | |
| All it means is a large check in an expensive restaurant, | 9:13 | |
| a couple of hours of being exposed | 9:16 | |
| to their Neanderthal politics, | 9:18 | |
| but you say, | 9:25 | |
| of course, I am sure that we would love | 9:27 | |
| to go out with you to dinner. | 9:30 | |
| Now admittedly that lie hides some of your true feelings, | 9:34 | |
| and yet what harm does it do? | 9:38 | |
| You may through this lie be forced out into a dinner | 9:41 | |
| that may turn out to be better than you thought, | 9:44 | |
| and why bring unnecessary hurt to another? | 9:48 | |
| I chalk that sort of lie up to simple courtesy, | 9:52 | |
| and yet in the present context, maybe it's time for us | 9:57 | |
| to admit that even these occasional white lies, | 10:00 | |
| in which we fail to tell the complete truth to one another, | 10:04 | |
| that even these are dangerous. | 10:10 | |
| Aristotle stressed that lying is always a political matter. | 10:15 | |
| It relates to the whole social fabric. | 10:21 | |
| We are utterly dependent as a society upon | 10:25 | |
| people's word being trustworthy. | 10:29 | |
| If we can't be counted upon in most of our inner actions | 10:34 | |
| to be truthful, we will end up in fragmented isolation. | 10:37 | |
| It would be an untrustworthy, extremely frightening world | 10:42 | |
| if you couldn't count on the trustworthiness | 10:47 | |
| of people's speech. | 10:50 | |
| Truth is a bridge that we keep building to other people. | 10:52 | |
| Telling the truth to another demonstrates not only | 10:56 | |
| that you are a person of truth, but it's also a gift | 10:59 | |
| in which you trust the other person | 11:04 | |
| to be the sort of human being who can be truthful. | 11:06 | |
| A student asked me to spend a perfectly good Saturday | 11:13 | |
| working on a Habitat For Humanity house. | 11:16 | |
| I responded that while nothing would make me happier | 11:20 | |
| than to spend my Saturday morning on a roof of a house | 11:24 | |
| loading shingles and nailing them down, I really needed | 11:27 | |
| my Saturdays to prepare for my work on Sunday. | 11:31 | |
| She persisted, is there another day of the week | 11:35 | |
| that you could prepare so that you could join us | 11:38 | |
| at the Habitat project on Saturday? | 11:41 | |
| I told her that my week was much too filled, that there | 11:44 | |
| would be no way that I could rearrange my schedule. | 11:47 | |
| Wouldn't it be more true to say | 11:51 | |
| that you simply don't want to give up a Saturday? | 11:53 | |
| I can understand that, she said, after all you're busy. | 11:57 | |
| I know that you think Habitat is an important undertaking, | 12:02 | |
| but you do not think it's important enough to rearrange | 12:05 | |
| your life for, okay? | 12:07 | |
| Her words hurt, she took an ax out and slashed through | 12:12 | |
| all my justifications and alibis, and it was painful. | 12:16 | |
| Precisely because it was true. | 12:22 | |
| Duke's Bill Poteet used to paraphrase Jesus. | 12:26 | |
| The truth will make you free, but before it does, | 12:30 | |
| it will make you miserable. | 12:35 | |
| And if there is no one in your life to tell you the truth, | 12:40 | |
| you are a sad person, you're growth is stunted. | 12:43 | |
| If someone cares enough about me to tell the truth, | 12:50 | |
| I am enabled to make an accurate assessment of my life, | 12:53 | |
| an accurate assessment of who I am in the world. | 12:57 | |
| I can grow. | 13:01 | |
| In Ephesians four, it's interesting that Paul says, | 13:03 | |
| we are to speak the truth to one another in love, yeah, | 13:06 | |
| so that we can grow up into Christ in every way. | 13:12 | |
| There's an interesting linkage not only with truth, | 13:16 | |
| with love, but truth with growth. | 13:19 | |
| It's sad that most of the lying we do is done to friends | 13:23 | |
| and family because lies are the death of relationship. | 13:27 | |
| If you can't know the truth about someone, | 13:33 | |
| you're only related to their false image. | 13:36 | |
| Real joy of friendship is being appreciated | 13:40 | |
| for who you really are, and the great joy of being a friend | 13:44 | |
| to someone is the courage to be in relationship | 13:47 | |
| with that person as that person really is. | 13:50 | |
| In fact you might take that as a definition of friendship. | 13:54 | |
| A friend is someone to whom you are able to tell the truth. | 13:58 | |
| Maybe more importantly, a friend is someone from whom you're | 14:02 | |
| able to receive the truth without hating the person for it. | 14:06 | |
| Still, speaking the truth in love, maybe there is something | 14:12 | |
| to be said for not always blurting out the truth. | 14:16 | |
| I think Donald McCullough gives some good guidelines. | 14:21 | |
| First, the truth needs to be pertinent to the situation. | 14:24 | |
| I expect a doctor to tell me the truth about my health, | 14:29 | |
| not to make a judgment about my personality. | 14:33 | |
| In preaching, you ought to expect a pastor to tell the truth | 14:37 | |
| about the gospel, but the pastor doesn't need to tell | 14:41 | |
| you how she feels about the church board. | 14:45 | |
| I've known people who pride themselves on being honest, | 14:48 | |
| totally honest, but many times that meant that this was | 14:52 | |
| a person always offering to other people their opinions | 14:56 | |
| and judgments even unsolicited. | 14:59 | |
| I suspect that they were always telling this truth because | 15:01 | |
| it was their way of keeping other people at a distance. | 15:06 | |
| There are times when we ought to refrain | 15:11 | |
| from telling the truth, but that doesn't mean to lie. | 15:13 | |
| Rather the time honored, no comment, ought to be recovered. | 15:18 | |
| It's better to say nothing than to lie. | 15:23 | |
| Second, the truth oughta be used to build up | 15:28 | |
| rather than tear down relationship. | 15:32 | |
| I take this from Saint Paul, who when discussing some | 15:34 | |
| particular worship activity in the church, always had | 15:38 | |
| this test, does it edify, does it build up the church? | 15:42 | |
| As we said, the truth can be used to hurt. | 15:47 | |
| It can force somebody into silence or submission. | 15:49 | |
| It can take away a person's dignity. | 15:53 | |
| Those who truly care about the truth ought to practice | 15:56 | |
| custody of the tongue. | 15:59 | |
| Truth is power, that's why Aristotle stresses, | 16:03 | |
| truth always ought to be spoken in relationship. | 16:06 | |
| Power must be used responsibly. | 16:10 | |
| Again, Aristotle said that telling the truth is not just | 16:13 | |
| a matter of telling it like it is, but rather, telling | 16:16 | |
| the truth in the right way to the right person | 16:19 | |
| at the right time for the right reason. | 16:21 | |
| We are greatly dependent upon God to tell us the truth | 16:25 | |
| about ourselves, and most of the time, | 16:29 | |
| God tells us the truth through other people. | 16:33 | |
| We won't come to see ourselves accurately | 16:37 | |
| or to see the world as it is unless there's somebody | 16:40 | |
| to tell us the truth. | 16:44 | |
| As your preacher, you ought not to expect me to be | 16:47 | |
| entertaining or innovative, but you ought to expect me | 16:51 | |
| to tell you the truth as God gives it to me. | 16:57 | |
| Anything less is a waste of your important time | 17:01 | |
| and a cruel disregard of the demands of discipleship. | 17:04 | |
| Here at the university, this is an important topic | 17:08 | |
| because we have a particular | 17:12 | |
| responsibility to tell the truth. | 17:14 | |
| One thing I love about the sciences for instance | 17:16 | |
| is their exceptionless view of truth telling. | 17:19 | |
| A biologist is always, in any circumstance, obligated | 17:24 | |
| to tell what she knows about biology. | 17:29 | |
| Whether you like it or not. | 17:32 | |
| I'm concerned about universities. | 17:35 | |
| We've developed large offices of public relations | 17:38 | |
| where people write carefully crafted news releases, | 17:41 | |
| and periodically engage in various forms of spin | 17:45 | |
| in order not to tell the truth | 17:49 | |
| about some embarrassing episode at the university. | 17:50 | |
| All these buildings and all these people are here | 17:54 | |
| for one major purpose, to tell the truth. | 17:59 | |
| Truth is our only commodity here | 18:03 | |
| and so a college is particularly under obligation | 18:06 | |
| to nurture, honor, and encourage truth telling. | 18:10 | |
| Alas from what I've seen, we intellectuals are prone | 18:15 | |
| not toward better truth telling, but toward particularly | 18:19 | |
| skillful forms of deceit. | 18:22 | |
| As recent chair of Duke's United Way campaign, | 18:25 | |
| my most discouraging experience was not only | 18:28 | |
| how little faculty give to the United Way, | 18:31 | |
| 'cause I've been around here too long to expect faculty | 18:34 | |
| to be generous, but what got me was the | 18:36 | |
| silly deceptions given for not giving. | 18:39 | |
| "I have certain ideological reservations about the" | 18:43 | |
| "United Way and some of their philosophy of philanthropy." | 18:45 | |
| Look, spare me, it would be refreshing to hear from you, | 18:48 | |
| look, I'm at Duke, I'm well paid, I believe that whatever | 18:52 | |
| I have is mine to keep and you're not gonna get any of it | 18:56 | |
| for the United Way, that would be refreshing. | 18:58 | |
| (audience laughs) | 19:01 | |
| It is a sad perversity of a university education | 19:03 | |
| when intellectual resources enable us more skillfully | 19:07 | |
| to evade the truth rather than tell and to live the truth. | 19:12 | |
| In a discussion with a faculty member of our law school, | 19:19 | |
| I was moved when he said, "Listening to the president's" | 19:22 | |
| "performance before the grand jury, as a lawyer," | 19:26 | |
| "I felt ashamed, here was someone who'd been" | 19:30 | |
| "the beneficiary of the very best legal education," | 19:34 | |
| "only to utilize those forensic and rhetorical skills" | 19:38 | |
| "in order to lie about something as trivial as sex." | 19:41 | |
| all I wanted to say today was, those of us who dispense | 19:47 | |
| and acquire the very best education, here, | 19:53 | |
| we ought to ask ourselves, how well has my education enabled | 19:57 | |
| me to serve and to receive | 20:03 | |
| or to evade the blessed truth? | 20:07 | |
| As we sing in the next hymn, | 20:11 | |
| we tell the truth | 20:15 | |
| as a way of praising God, this is our way, | 20:19 | |
| every time we speak the truth of testifying that | 20:23 | |
| the God of truth makes possible even for us | 20:28 | |
| to be people who can be trusted with the truth. | 20:31 | |
| Amen. | 20:37 |