Truth Paradox, Part VI

Truth Teller's Paradox, Part VI

By John Taylor; 15 December, 2005

Let us revert to our earlier discussion of truth telling and lying.
The other day as I was preparing my bean salad I heard a pounding on
the door. It was a neighbor woman, the mother of a tyke named Isaac.
She was furious that my 6 year old son Thomas had bit Isaac on the
finger on the playground. I asked if he was hurt and she said no but
made it an unpleasant confrontation. After further questioning from me
she stormed off saying, "I know that what he said is true, Isaac would
never lie to me." Since she had demanded that I punish Thomas so
fervently I asked Thomas what had happened as soon as he got home.

"Isaac was sitting on me and I could not breathe. He would not get off
me no matter what I said, so I bit his finger. That got him going."

It seemed then that she was right, Isaac was telling the truth to his
mother. Just not the whole truth. Since his teacher had brought up
other issues with Thomas's behavior during the day, I duly sentenced
him to a "time out" to cover the whole day. I then ordered him to
avoid Isaac in future, since a kid whose mother does his fighting for
him is dangerous to everybody -- except perhaps to the kid he is
fighting. Later I summarized the kafuffle to my sage-like friend Stu,
a retired primary school teacher, and his answer was a sort of
combination of Karma and the Golden Rule.

"We get what we dish out in life. If we are angry and lash out, that
is what will come back to us. If we love and send out positive
vibrations that will ultimately be our recompense."

My thought was that in a competitive or confrontational situation,
telling the truth must perforce be impossible because the whole truth
itself is not whole, it is smoked out by hatred, seething with
poisonous wrong. This is the nature of truth, it is as much love as it
is correspondence to reality. In a battle everything becomes hate, not
love. Truth is then a weapon, whether said for purposes of contention
or not. Even true statments get caught up in strife's flames and are
consumed as war materiel. This is the sad reality: telling the whole
truth is impossible in a competitive situation.

"Do not let kindness and truth forsake you. Bind them around your
neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart." (Prov 3:3)

There is no dichotomy between love and truth, both are essential to
truth telling. This seems to be the intent of the wording of in the
King James Version the 9th Commandment, forbidding both lies and
truths that harm others. "Neither shalt thou bear false witness
against thy neighbour. (Deut 5:20) This choice of words portrays a
witness testifying in court. Bearing false witness against a neighbor
in a court case may include lies and calumny, of course, but a "false
witness" can still be false without deviating from truth. For example,
he might expose embarrassing, confidential or compromising
information. It is possible to betray friendship any number of ways
without deviating in the slightest from the "truth, the whole truth
and nothing but the truth." A Psalm warns against those,

"Whose mouth speaketh vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of
falsehood." (Psalms 144:8)

The press over past weeks has been covering an interesting
demonstration of this "bearing false witness" at a provincial enquiry.
It seems that a friend of former Ontario Premier Mike Harris happened
to be present when he gave his notorious order to expel Native
protesters from a provincial park. Harris's noble aim at the time was
to build picnic tables or a parking lot in the park and peaceful
Native protesters were objecting to the choice of location on sacred
burial grounds. Harris's friend revealed that the Premier's exact
words in giving an expulsion order that lead to the police shooting a
protester dead were:

"Get those f-ing Indians out of my park!"

The friend of Harris was evidently upbraided by the commission of
inquiry for not revealing this information earlier and his defense was
that he did not wish to betray his friendship with Harris. Thus he got
the worst of three worlds, he spoke the truth but too late to help
much. In spite of the delay he was still false to his powerful friend.
And most of all, the majority got the short end of the stick. His
delay in testifying betrayed the honor of the people of Canada --
since that killing we were placed on Amnesty International's list of
nations with bad human rights records.

So telling the truth means not only speaking kindly and veraciously
but also speaking promptly, at the correct time. Like food, speech
must come in the right amount at the right time, when it helps and
does not harm the health of the body politic. But most of all, telling
the truth is building an atmosphere of loving consultation where lies
and strife cannot breathe.

"But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God
perfected: hereby know we that we are in him." (1 John 2:5)

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com