THE FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH OF HONOLULU
A Unitarian Universalist Congregation
HOW MUCH TRUTH DO YOU WANT TO LIVE WITH?
Part Five of the Series on the Ten Suggestions
Sermon by Rev. Mike Young
The First Unitarian Church of Honolulu
February 7, 1999I want to begin this morning with the reminder to you that when someone comes up to you and says, "Hello, how are you?" they are not asking for your medical records.
For several months now I have been spending the first Sunday of the month on the Ten Commandments. The thesis I have been defending is that these Ten Commandments, at least at their outset as they were used by the Children of Israel, were not intended to be a set of absolute laws of God. Rather, they were a part of a larger plan for how a community chose to live its life together. The Ten Commandments came to represent symbolically that whole larger corpus of community agreement. What we have done to them over the years is to take those ten symbolic representations of that larger agreement and to absolutize them and, far too frequently, turn them into hammers to whack each other with.
We've distorted them in some interesting ways. The Judeo-Christian heritage has wormed its way into virtually every aspect of our cultural existence in the west. We all have been taught that the Ten Commandments says you are always to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
I used to appear on my own cases when I was a juvenile probation officer. I did it partly because I enjoyed it and partly because I didn't trust those sons of guns in that fancy building to see to the interest of my kids. The lawyers would rarely let me tell the whole truth. Oh, I stood up and took the oath every time. "Do you swear --(I usually got them to change that to promise )-- to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?" I even got them to leave out "so help you God" because I gave them an argument too often. But they would not let me tell the whole truth. They only wanted the truth that would put that particular juvenile delinquent in what they had concluded was the correct box. Once that task was done they were not interested in any of the rest of the whole truth.
One of the things that I learned in dealing with the court in those days, was that I often had to lie to tell the truth; especially the truth that this kid is not just another case number. The truth must be spoken in a way that can be heard. To tell the truth in away you know will not be heard and accepted is to lie.
I'm often amused when I see the American flag worn in all kinds of ways by people these days. Do you know that, back in the 60's and 70's, they actually arrested people and charged them with a violation of law for wearing the American flag? How things change. One of my juvenile delinquents was hauled up before the court, charged with desecration of the American Flag, a violation of a section of the California Veterans' Code, because she was wearing a blouse that the police officer alleged was made out of an American flag. She was charged, arrested and detained in Juvenile Hall. When the case finally came to court the poor judge was in a sad situation. The judge was a reasonably intelligent person, not terribly interested in simply enforcing the laws as they were written. He really did intend that there should be some sanity in the ways in which law is enforced. He said to her, "Where did you get the blouse?" She started into a long, rambling explanation of where the blouse came from, and he stopped her. He said, "No, no, I want you to tell me one of two things: either tell me that you went and bought a flag and cut it up and made that blouse (she had mentioned that she had made the blouse herself) or I want you to tell me that you went and got some red, white and blue cloth, and made the blouse." I whispered in her ear -- I wasn't supposed to do that but I did -- and bless her heart, she gave the correct answer; buying a flag being the simplest and easiest way to buy the correct amount of red, white and blue cloth. And the case was dismissed.
What is the whole truth? When my son Jot asks me questions about his heritage, when he asks me who his father is, why he doesn't live with his mother, shall I tell him the whole story? Jot is the son of our last foster daughter and the story of how Jot came to be and how he came to be in our home is a story which, if it were on "As the World Turns," all of you would say that somebody had a pretty wild imagination. This is not a very believable tale. When he asks those questions at five, six, and seven years old, shall I tell him the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
You all know the story of the youngster who came to Mommy and said, "Where do babies come from?"
Mommy said, "Go ask your father."
The child said, "No, I don't want to know that much about it"?
The whole truth. To tell the whole truth would ultimately amount to a recapitulation of the whole history of the universe from the beginning until now.
If we ever manage to get the video film festival that we'd like here effectively started , one of the films I would love to show is "Rashoman." It is a film I think we need to see every now and then as a constant reminder. If you're not familiar with "Rashoman," it's the story of a robbery, a rape, a murder, told in successive versions from the point of view of each of the various people involved. The stories bear almost accidental relationships to one another.
Every true statement is a selection from the available facts. Whether subtly or in a more gross fashion, each of us when we attempt to speak the truth speak it always from a point of view. That point of view that is inescapable. It can be compensated for within limits but cannot be ultimately escaped from. When I say how it is for me, it is useful to remember that I speak that truth from a point of view, the point of view of a white, educated, affluent, male American, with my particular peculiar autobiography.
When I hear women complaining about being sexually "hit on" I have to engage in a leap of imagination to imagine what that feels like. In the first place, even if we are not comfortable with it, males are not supposed to complain about being "hit on." We don't get any sympathy from other males. It is a different experience from the experience of women in a similar situation, given the prejudices of this culture.
Truth-telling is an incredibly difficult kind of thing for humans to even seriously contemplate doing. There are so many pieces handed to us by the culture that we have not yet even discovered. We have taken them for granted, assumed them, let them become a part of that unconscious baggage that we carry in the back of our minds. The moment we launch upon the enterprise of trying to say the truth, it is always infected, diluted, distorted by all of those pieces jumbled back there.
Truth-telling. Gossip. The degree of truth in gossip changes not one whit the fact that it is invariably vicious, destructive, an invasion of someone else's privacy. When accused of gossip, most of us are so quick to inform people, "Well, it's not gossip. It's the truth!" And the intent of the speaking does not mitigate that viciousness one whit.
Truth-telling. If I tell Joe, whom I know to be a bigot, that the person over there is a (fill in the blank), I should not be surprised when he makes assumptions that are not true based on the categorical thinking that I know characterizes him.
Who here has failed to tell the truth? We are, in our interactions with one another, even in our interactions with ourselves, constantly engaged in information management. We must decide how much of what we know or think to be true is going to be spoken. Can that process be used to excuse vicious, mean and inappropriate behavior? Yes. Can it be used viciously, self-righteously, deceptively, even self-deceptively? Yes. But to pretend that we are not managing information, guarantees that we will do it badly. To not pay attention to the selection we make of what information we share almost guarantees that we will, in fact, behave in ways that will be hurtful and damaging to another, and, at the very least, likely to be embarrassing to ourselves.
Those who, like ministers and lawyers and doctors, regularly know the intimate details of people's lives have an experience that is sometimes strange. This experience is called "confidentiality." My wife regularly has the experience of one or another of you walking up to her and launching into a conversation with her as if she knew exactly what you were talking about. She has learned to behave as if she were not dense, and gently let you know she doesn't really know what you're talking about; because you have assumed that since you have said something to me, she knows it.
I am relatively compulsive about confidentiality. The things that are said to me where confidentiality might even be implied or assumed by someone else, whether or not it's actually stated, are not shared. Which means that I am regularly having to engage in that exercise of information management. As I speak with other people, I must remember which things that I know were learned in places that, if I say them out loud, the confidence is likely to be violated. It is a useful exercise for me. It is a constant reminder of the fact that, indeed, I am always engaged in information management. I'm always having to decide how much of what I know I tell.
When somebody says, "Gee, what's a Unitarian Universalist?" one of the first pieces of my response often is, "Just how much do you want to know? Because I'm liable to keep talking after you stop listening."
But it is also true that I am quite capable of telling a lie by assembling the truth in a pile of accurate information calculated to all but guarantee that you will be led to the wrong conclusion.
Truth-telling. But the commandment is not to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The commandment is, "Thou shalt not bear false witness," which is a very different thing. To bear false witness. The image here is of the trial. In Jewish law two witnesses are required to convict.
But the injunction here is not that you tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The commandment here is that you not speak in damage to another what you know to be false. The commandment is to do no harm. Indeed, the commandment recognizes the fact that you and I regularly engage in information management. It places the responsibility on us to be attentive to how what we do and what we say injures another.
St. Paul rightly says, in the book of Romans, that "the letter of the law kills, but the spirit (of the law) gives life." If the letter of the law kills, the letter of law turned into an abstract principle and absolutized kills indiscriminately. In our information management, as we deal with the necessity of sharing with one another what we know, what we see, what we experience, let the commandment clearly float there at the back of our heads that we harm none.
Thou shalt not bear false witness. You are responsible for the consequences of your own information management. Just telling the truth comes nowhere near the full acknowledgment of the ways in which we are indeed interdependent, one with another, in these communities we share together.