The truth will
set you free.
John 8:32

The truth makes us free
but first it makes us miserable.
Sandra Wilson
Released from Shame

On a rainy autumn Monday too gray for hiking or other alpine pleasures, I rummaged through the library of an old Austrian castle that had once served as a ski lodge for the European elite. Half-hidden between tall textbooks I found a slim memoir written by an American Civil War veteran. How H. Clay Trumbull's book came into Schloss Mittersill's collection is still a mystery to me. Embossed on the cover in gold-leaf script lettered by an old-fashioned hand was this title: A Lie Never Justifiable. No question mark followed the author's titular declaration.

As I read those four ornate, gilded words, a sliver of guilt shivered from some deep recess of my conscience, poking out a memory ahead of it. The incident happened the day I left for Europe.

Minutes before I was to leave for the airport, I dialed my favorite kennel to let them know that my Yorkie would be delighted to bunk with them while I was abroad. An unfamiliar voice answered the phone, a new kennel staffer.

"Are Babu's immunizations up-to-date?" she asked.

Nuts! I thought. Nuts, nuts, nuts!

Babu would have been the very model of canine medical compliance if my car hadn't broken down three days before. Just when the pup was due at the vet for his next round of baby shots, we were cooling our paws waiting for AAA to tow us to a repair shop. In the hectic days following that missed appointment, I never found another free moment to chauffeur Babu for his immunizations. In the competition between the dog's needs and other pressing chores, Babu lost out.

Five minutes before an airport taxi was due to arrive at my house, this new dog nanny had the nerve to upset my delicate pretravel balance. If I had answered her truthfully, the kennel would have denied my dog admission until Babu got her shots. So close to flight time there seemed nowhere else to turn, no other choice to make. "Yup," I lied. "Babu's up to date." I intended to deceive.

The cab driver honked impatiently in the driveway, so I grabbed the dog and my suitcase and ran for the front door. At the kennel, I noticed a bold new sign on the wall in very large print. if your dog is not immunized, we will do it at your expense. A second chance, Babu's reprieve. But I didn't take it.

At the kennel that day, my personal priorities seemed more important than the welfare of a loyal little Yorkie and the sensible policies of a kennel. I could have told that young girl the truth. I just would not. How could I admit to her that minutes before on the telephone the venerable Doctor Komp had told her a bald-faced lie?

Sandra Wilson wisely observes that although the truth may ultimately set us free, first it makes us miserable. At Schloss Mittersill, with that accusing book title burning in my hand, I felt wretched. There was no justification at all for the lie I had told. A reason, yes. But no excuse. The initial phone fudgery was for my convenience. My later silence at the kennel was for the sake of my pride. All of this was at Babu's expense. If there would be a penalty for my prevarication, it would be the dog, not I, who had to pay with his health. My lying could also affect the health and safety of the other pets and kennel workers.

Perhaps there were other reasons why that time—and others—I haven't measured up to a standard that I have accepted for myself: always to be truthful. That's my standard, but it's not always my reality. Despite my best intentions (and other than the fact that none of us is perfect), why do I sometimes tell a lie? I wanted to know the answer to that question, even it if cost me my pride.

Thankfully, Babu outlived the experience, but it was something of a watershed event for me. Along with the lessons I learned from the book I discovered in the Austrian castle, my "harmless" lie prompted me to look deeply inward. Why, I asked, would I, a generally honest, Christian woman, ever tell a lie?

During the rest of that trip through Europe and for the four months that followed, I kept a journal in which I logged all the times I failed to tell the truth or was even tempted to consider a lie. I paid attention not only to what I found in my heart but also to what was happening in the world around me. This project became the lens through which I viewed television, read newspapers, magazines, and books, and listened to my friends. How do we value and devalue truthfulness in our culture today? What I learned was startling.

My work as physician, writer, and speaker brought me face to face not only with the truth that I intended to tell but also with the potential for falsehood that shadows me wherever I go: in that Austrian castle and the American heartland, at a convention in Germany and my office at Yale, on the telephone with friends and at home in front of a roaring fireplace with Babu and a PowerPC competing for my lap.

I saw as never before how the world cries out for truthfulness and how often we are betrayed. Worse yet, after we've been betrayed, we throw up our hands and say, "What else could we have expected?" I saw firsthand how we demand the truth from others but in turn deceive ourselves. I wondered how often my own little lies contribute to the poisoning of our culture's well. My journal grew quite quickly.

As I write these truthful words about a lie, there is a part of me that secretly hopes you don't believe a word that I have said. A corner of my heart prefers that you overlook Babu's predicament and put your trust in my credentials instead: prominent doctor, trusted author. Recite my titles. (Don't listen to my words.)

If that glittering image of Dr. Diane Komp guides your judgment, you will interpret Babu's saga as a saintly example of dogged self-deprecation. But if you can't trust a doctor (or a saint) always to tell you the truth, if you can't trust yourself always to do the same, you will understand why I had to pursue this investigation.

In a world where headlines honk about perfidy in high places, there is something almost ludicrous about beginning a systematic inquiry into lying with a little dog and a little lie. In fact, you may find yourself troubled that I mention both you and me in the same paragraphs as the major malefactors we read about in the press. But please hear me out.

I have little to say here to pathological liars or those who think that lying makes the world go round. There are prophets in our midst to deal with the likes of them. In fact, I believe the big-time liars distract us by making us feel as if our occasional lying is not so bad. I am writing for people like me: people who don't want to tell lies but find themselves too often doing just that. I want to help myself—and you—live by the standards we've accepted for ourselves.

Remember the book I found in the castle? A Lie Never Justifiable was too handsomely bound to be a textbook. The elegant format hinted that a personal story, rather than detached principles, rested within. What I found between its covers was both personal and instructive; it told the fascinating memoir of a Yankee army chaplain who was held captive in a Confederate jail during the summer of 1863.

Today, we most often recall the American Civil War through romantic ballads like "Aura Lee," heroic anthems like "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," and nitty-gritty marching ditties like "Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! The Boys Are Marching" and "When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again." In a Brooklyn elementary school, my classmates sang those tunes as theme songs for our prepubescent gender war.

The fifth grade rallied round competing flags, dividing off as North and South. The boys were Rebs; we girls were Yanks. Across the playground, we shouted songs and slogans at each other. "The Union forever! Hurrah, girls, hurrah. Down with the traitor"—that would be Richie Schmidt—"up with the star"—hoisted by Betsy Mitchell, as I recall.

But the first modern war was neither a child's game nor a sentimental songfest. In his best-selling novel, Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier calls this miserable era "a time that carved the heart down to a bitter nub."

More than a century ago, our nation was in tears as both armies claimed that truth was marching on their side. America, not Bosnia nor Rwanda, was rent in two. At the Battle of Gettysburg alone, 15,000 lives were lost. Some say the wounds are still fresh.

Captives sat in dank prisons dreaming of their final liberation. Better to die of typhus in freedom clutching your flag than to breathe your last surrounded by the foe. Prisoner H. Clay Trumbull must have had such dreams as well, including the day he found himself in the ethical emergency that inspired his book.

Being forced to consider … the possible justification of the so-called "lie of necessity," I was brought to a settlement of that question in my own mind, and have since been led to an honest endeavor to bring others to a like settlement of it.

That is how this former army chaplain opened his narrative when he sat down decades later to write about his fellow federal captives' blueprint for escape.

When his friends first described their escape plan to him, Trumbull realized that the success of the entire scheme depended on telling a lie to their Confederate guard. His moral sense recoiled at the prospect of lying to an enemy soldier. Trumbull was unable to go along with the plan.

Trumbull's fellow prisoners argued that war had suspended their obligation to tell the truth to those who had "forfeited their social rights." Trumbull, on the other hand, felt that irrespective of the circumstances, a lie was always necessarily a sin against God and was therefore never justifiable. Never.

Officers and gentlemen all, Trumbull and his sidekicks debated the dilemma. Would it not be more moral, one friend argued, to preserve that enemy soldier's life by telling him a lie than to sacrifice the man's life on their hasty path to freedom? Trumbull replied that he would not hesitate to kill that guard in an escape any more than he would have vacillated in battle if the same Confederate soldier had come up against him. It may not surprise you that Trumbull's comrades had some difficulty understanding this point of view.

My friend then asked me on what principle I could justify the taking of a man's life as an enemy, and yet not feel justified in telling him a lie in order to save his life and secure our liberty. How could it be claimed that it was more of a sin to tell a lie to a man … than to kill him?

Trumbull was convinced that God and truth were on his side's side. At the time, however, he had to admit that he based his certitude about truthfulness more on his innate moral sense than on a single concrete principle that he could cite to his friends.

So this "Johnny" did not go marching home again with the others. At least not then. Trumbull chose to remain in prison until he could gain his release without dishonoring his deeply held beliefs about telling a lie.

What began in that Confederate prison under "circumstances that involved more than life" became a lifelong study for Trumbull when he returned to civilian life and the Congregational ministry. Thirty years later he put words to the principle he felt so instinctively and adhered to so passionately during that awful summer of 1863. Trumbull grounded his ethical principle in what Scripture says about the character of God:

The powers that be are ordained of God. … In the case then in question, we who were in prison as Federal officers were representatives of our government, and would be justified in taking the lives of enemies of our government who hindered us as God's agents in the doing of our duty to God and our government. On the other hand, God, who can justly take life, cannot lie.

Few of our own moral choices allow us to study for a lifetime before we must respond. In a sense then, most of our ethical choices are "emergencies." Compared to the question before those imprisoned soldiers, the moral moments of my own life and the lies that I contemplate seem somewhat trivial. In my own lifetime, for example, I cannot think of a single time that I put either my own life or someone else's in jeopardy by telling the truth. But Trumbull's book intrigued me.

Whether or not my life's circumstances bring me to such unusual challenges, H. Clay Trumbull and I both base our ethical choices on guidelines laid down in Scripture, and, like Trumbull, I long for the character of God to be reflected in my life. I respect the depth of his scholarship, but like him, I must search Scripture for myself to answer that question: Is a lie ever justified? If that question gets under your skin the way it has under mine, you may find yourself more sharply conscious of lying and the temptation to lie than ever before.

Diane Komp is professor of pediatrics at Yale University School of Medicine. This essay is adapted from her book Anatomy of a Lie, just published by Zondervan. Copyright 1998 by Diane Komp.

Copyright © 1998 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture Magazine. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or e-mail bceditor@BooksAndCulture.com.