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

Item Info

Title:

William H. Willimon - "To Tell the Truth" (November 15, 1998)

Description:

Sermon start time: 00:12. Sermon end time: 20:38.
Sermon start time: (Part 1) 00:12. Sermon end time: (Part 1) 20:38.
The preacher talks about truthfulness and falsehood in this sermon. He identifies various forms of lies, arguing that not telling the truth cannot help people grow, does not build true friendships, and causes death of relationship. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4wh2dv5n

Date:

November 15, 1998

Speaker:

Willimon, William H.

Liturgical Calendar:

Ordinary Time

Biblical Book:

2 Thessalonians

Chapter and Verse:

2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-0932
ref10015_7up
uachapelsermaud
duke:320958
dcrau001576
ark:/87924/r4wh2dv5n
ac95d90f-582c-47b5-80d0-6927ef24a4ab

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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William H. Willimon - "To Tell the Truth" (November 15, 1998)

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