A Lie For Love

There is a well-known moral dilemma called the Murderer At The Door (MATD). It asks one to consider the following scenario: A friend bursts into your home screaming that someone is trying to kill them. You tell them to hide in the closet. Moments later an axe-wielding murderer knocks on the door and upon answering it the murderer asks you if your friend is inside. The question is whether it is permissible to lie to this murderer at the door?

The dilemma was presented as a critique of Kantian Ethics in the late 18th century when Immanuel Kant said justice dictates that you have a duty to tell the truth to the murderer. In response a vast amount of literature, reaction, and theories over the intervening centuries has cast doubt on whether the ethics that bear Kant’s name truly prescribes such an absolute truthfulness. Some have said that Kant was just wrong. Others have said he was speaking in terms of legal responsibilities rather than moral responsibilities. Regardless there appear to be few people today that ascribe to Kant’s moral absolutism.

There are many simple moral statements such as “Thou shall not lie” that can be broadly applied but not, I believe, absolutely applied. The sphere of human morality defies most such prescriptions. Attempting to apply absolutes to an action such as lying that has many different motives and complexities is bound to produce outliers. We are left with only general rules that can be applied to the vast majority of situations but then there are a small subset of cases where we need to look elsewhere, away from the generalities in order to make progress. It is here where our rational selves must dance with our emotional selves. It is here where we must look to the love in our hearts for guidance and not just the rules prescribed by religious text, secular laws, or philosophical reasoning.

To provide a rationalization for why we cannot lie to a murderer at our door requires one to take a general moral principle against lying to absurd extremes. It is an example of reductio ad absurdum. To protect a friend, or say our partner, or our child, from such a criminal what would you not do? Lie, assault, threaten, I dare say even kill for the sake of our loved ones. And would we be morally wrong to do so? No. So what is the difference? When is lying defensible and when is it not? Kant deferred to the absolutist position on this question, perhaps because the answer reveals an uncomfortable truth: that in moments of crisis it not only can be our emotions that guide our moral choices, but that it should be our emotions. The problem occurs when the emotion we are basing our decision on is not love and when all those impacted by our decision are not taken into account.

I believe our love must form the bedrock of our actions. In times of doubt, ambiguity, or confusion, we must stand confidently on this bedrock to ground our actions.

Yes there are secular laws of the land that will guide many of a citizen’s actions but when those laws contradict the love in one’s own heart it is their heart that must win the day. For example voicing dissent against a government’s autocratic prohibitions towards free speech and public protests.

Yes there is religious doctrine that for the faithful will guide many of their actions but when that doctrine contradicts the love in one’s own heart it is their heart that must reign supreme. For example finding acceptance of your same-sex marriage outside of a church which does not accept it.

Yes there is moral and legal philosophy that for adherents will guide many of their actions but when those rationalizations contradict the love in one’s own heart it is their heart that must supersede the mind. For example disapproval of Kant’s absolutist stance on never lying to even a murderer at the door.

What happens when a heart is depraved? You are in a dangerous place where you cannot trust your own moral compass. Somehow, some way your love has been twisted and malformed beyond recognition from which it originally entered into this World with. Fortunately I believe such cases are rare and it is in such cases that the people and society that surround such individuals must help heal or, if necessary, isolate this heart.

But my purpose here is not to focus on the depraved hearts. It is to focus on the loving ones and how they decide to lie or not lie. I believe lying in general cannot be so neatly classified as right or wrong. In nearly all cases lying is incompatible with love but in rare cases, I believe, love can direct us to lie. The murderer at the door is just one, albeit contrived, example. It is an example of lying to protect those we love.

In general, I believe, we can rightfully lie to bring about a necessary result in the name of love. And I believe this is done by parents through to presidents, and a great many others.

Consider the parent who soothes their child’s nervous thoughts from tornadoes to tarantulas by saying “nothing will happen” when in fact they cannot know such things with certainty.

Or consider the American President Franklin D. Roosevelt who garnered favor with the isolationist American public by voicing his reluctance to enter the war in Europe all the while secretly preparing his nation for the eventual conflict.

But, I believe, lying in the name of love has a higher practitioner. The highest practitioner. I believe The Greatest Love lied to one of Their greatest prophets, Jesus Christ, in order to help Christianity flourish after his death.

That lie was the Second Coming of Christ.

Various denominations of the Christian and Islamic faiths have different dogma surrounding the Second Coming but I believe all are based on a lie. A divine lie told by God to His prophet Jesus Christ. A lie Jesus believed to be true but a divine lie nonetheless done in the name of love. That lie was that Jesus would come again as the Son of Man during an end time to judge the living and the dead. Predicting such an event would help galvanize followers of Jesus around his message of love. It would be instrumental in the fervency by which those disciples spread the Christian gospel to all corners of the World.

However the passage of time without a Second Coming despite Jesus’ assertions that it was imminent¹ help to reveal its fallacy. But moreover such a Second Coming would require a binary separation of all people between the wicked into “eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. (Matthew 25:46)“. This separation would be determined by Jesus, as The Son of Man during the Last Judgement. A segregation that, as discussed in previous posts, I believe is contrary to love.

I believe Jesus was certain of this spoken destiny for himself. Jesus was not lying. Such a great lie told by such a great prophet makes little sense. Nor do I believe Jesus was delusional. Instead I believe he had a profound connection to God and God, via direct revelation, lied to Jesus for a greater good. That greater good was the establishment of the Christian church and the instilment of hope in his Second Coming as a means to receive salvation during an end time. A greater good that would cause Christians to take Jesus’ message of love around the globe.

It was a lie for love. A lie that The Greatest Love deemed necessary in the name of love.

I understand that lying goes against the nature of The Divine as described by scripture. The apostle Paul in the New Testament makes this clear as follows:

in the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time, – Titus 1:2 (NIV)

But I do not believe in the inerrancy of scripture. Instead I believe any declarations of absolute Divine truthfulness overlooks Their primary nature as revealed to me. Namely Their love. And I believe there are times, for us, as well as The Divine, when love dictates that falsehoods be told. To say that They will never lie even when love dictates that They should is prioritizing absolute truthfulness over Their love, and that, I believe, cannot be.

But if The Greatest Love can lie how can we trust anything that They reveal to us? It is here where I place my faith in Their love. If love is Their primary nature then, I believe, all Their revelations serve a purpose in furtherance of Their Divine Plan which is based on that love. And, I believe, The Greatest Love looks to us to treat all such revelations implicitly as truth, until such time as those truths become untenable.

And for me, the truth of The Second Coming has become untenable. It was a message for an ancient people yearning for a great savior to deliver them from occupied Roman rule. It provided hope to such people during an era dominated by apocalyptic visions of the future. But today a more hopeful message in the second vision is available to take its place. A message that requires us to come together and believe, not necessarily in a common god, but in our common humanity and what it is capable of.

Our common love.

¹ From Matthew: “For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” – Matthew 16:27-28 (NIV)