Reflections #2

“No one could live with an habitual truth-teller; thankfully no one has to.”

Are lies part and parcel of our daily lives?

Little Mischa crouches together with the other seven members of her family in the dark, cramped space between two walls. Her heart beats painfully, loudly, against her emaciated chest. Her breath is ragged and, to her, sounds deafening. She squeezes her eyes tightly shut, desperately willing her heart, her breaths to be quiet.

She can hear the loud tramping of army boots on the road outside, the imperious pounding on the door downstairs and the harsh guttural questions of the officers at the door. What will their hosts tell the soldiers? The truth or … ?

“Nein Juden! Nien Juden!” Frau Muller cries anxiously, “No Jews here!” Will the Nazis take her word for it, or will they search the house, tap on the walls, listening to the hollowness that will give away the Rosenburgs’ secret hiding place? After what seems like hours, there is a knock on the wall and Frau Muller whispers to Mischa’s parents that it is safe to come out again. The nine-year-old girl bursts into sobs of relief.

As children, we were often told never to tell lies, and that ‘honesty is the best policy’. I do subscribe to that most of the time but there is a place for lies in our daily lives too. We usually lie to lubricate the social process; for example, if I did not like the food served by a friend, I would never say so! It would be rude and hurtful to my hostess. I might sometimes not tell the truth in order to save my skin, as when I tell my boss that his proposal is much better than the one I thought of, but I would do this with a sense of shame and unease.

However, if I were to lie because the consequences of telling the truth would be much worse than the lie itself, then I would be dishonest with no qualms and feel fully justified in being untruthful. For instance, in Nazi Germany, many brave Germans hid their Jewish friends and neighbors to protect them from a genocidal regime of terror. The famous Oskar Schindler insisted that each of the Jews in his factory was a skilled craftsman without whose expertise to make ammunition, the German war effort would be much hindered. With his blatant lies, he saved more than a thousand Jews from a gruesome death. But, who among us would chastise Schindler for his dishonesty in this respect? Instead, he is today celebrated, by the thousands of descendants of the Jews he had harbored, as a courageous, if crafty, hero.

Hence, I believe it would be naïve and simplistic to assert that one must NEVER lie. Although dishonesty should not be second nature to us, it does have its place in making smooth social relationships and in ensuring our own survival; sometimes, a lie can even be the moral thing to do!

By:
Carole Chung