When Lying is Justified

“Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord.”  My mother made me memorize that verse from Proverbs when I was a boy. Perhaps while sitting in the corner, caught red-handed for lying to her.

But is lying ever acceptable? Is lying ever the right thing to do? If so, what might possibly justify lying in the eyes of God? Most importantly, how does faith play into this question?

Before opening this Pandora’s box you must understand that I know full well I will step on many, many toes. Some people see sin only as black and white, right and wrong, punishable by death, so help me, God. If you are one of these then you should stop reading now or you will only become angry and adversarial.  And I do not want to make enemies of my friends.  I just want to answer a question that has always lurked in the back of my mind.

Here’s the issue. We have several instances in Scripture where various people lied, and God seemed to honor it, not condemn it. Puah lied about the baby Moses in the reed basket in Egypt (Ex 1:15-21).  Rahab lied about the spies in Jericho (Joshua 2). Abraham lied about his wife, Sarah, being his sister, not once, but twice (Gen 12:13; 20:2). In modern times we have the example of Corrie Ten Boom lying about harboring Jews in her “hiding place” to keep them from being arrested and deported. And then there are the Bible smugglers, who lied to the border guards to get Bibles behind the iron curtain.

On the flip side we have the story of Ananias and Sapphira in the very early days of the church in Jerusalem (Acts 5). God punished them for lying to the Holy Spirit. They dropped dead on the spot.

Philosophers who study and write about ethics suggest a theory for justifying Rahab’s lying. She was faced with a dilemma and she chose the lesser of two evils. In essence, her lying is justified in that it saved the spies from a greater evil, being captured and killed. If you like that theory, then use it. But I have a different way of looking at it, from faith, rather than from moralistic ethics alone.

Here is my theory.  Lying is always wrong when it is done to deceive a trusting person for evil gain. On the other hand, lying is justified when it is used to detract an evil person for good gain. That’s the simple version. As a Biblicist, and one with a deep reverence for God, let me expand on the second part of that theory. Knowing and trusting in God’s plans and purposes is the bedrock of faith that would determine when detraction is not mere deception, when a questioner’s motives are evil and need to be thwarted, and when my lying might actually be glorifying to God’s great plan.

With that theory, based on faith, it is understandable, and almost easy to justify Puah, Rahab, Corrie Ten Boom, and the Bible smugglers. But Abraham raises the question to a higher level of debate. And I seldom ever win anyone over to fully justify Abraham’s lies in light of his faith. Some call him a wimp, one who was willing to lie and give his wife over to another man to save his skin.  

But God honored Abraham as a man of a faith, saying repeatedly of him, “Abraham believed the Lord, and He credited it to him as righteousness” (Gen 15:6). His faith was far greater than we can even imagine, and it is held up throughout all of Scripture as an example (Rom 4:11). Only our moralistic black and white judgment of the situation condemns Abraham. Not God, though. In fact, God even praises Sarah for obeying her husband (I Pet 3:6). And this is the only instance in the story of Abraham and Sarah where obedience is at the core of the story, when she went along with his plan of lying. Abraham lied because He knew and trusted that God wanted to make a great nation of him. He knew that he somehow needed to escape the sword of these two kings.

I write this not trying to justify lying, but rather to increase our understanding of faith. Faith is not demonstrated by obedience to rules, but rather by knowing and trusting the Living God.