Rabbi T has a post up discussing wanting to fit in, wanting to please others and telling lies to do so.
http://rechovot.blogspot.com/2010/03/big-orange-splot-and-high-self-monitors.html
I have mixed feelings about those social lies. Giving a carte blanche to someone to tell a lie for social or esteem purposes seems to me to be a journey down a really slippery slope. Where do you draw the line?
If a wife asks her husband "How do I look in this outfit?" and he answers "Terrific!" he may or may not be telling the truth. But I don't think that most wives will care. For most women that question is not so much about objective truth as it is about eliciting a positive answer, one that shows "Yup, I still like you and of course if you are wearing it it will look terrific." I believe that this example is what is meant when many people will tell you that it is permissible to lie for shalom bayis.
But what about other lies? On the extreme opposite of the above example you have the wife who asks her husband, arriving home way late from the office, "How come you are so late coming home?" And the husband answers "A project deadline got moved up and I had to stay late to finish." Only just maybe he wasn't in the office at all. Maybe he was out having drinks with the "boys." Or maybe he was hunched over a betting slip at an OTB shop playing the ponies. Or maybe he was at a specialist's office getting a "something" checked out that he doesn't want to worry his wife about.
My feeling is that a lie should be the exception, not the social rule. A lie should be something we think about and yes, maybe worry about.
8 comments:
Note to the young husbands out there:
Before answering "You look great!", remember to turn and look first.
The issue of what are acceptable or even good white lies and what is just plain deception is so complex that it is hard to make general rules. Even the husband telling the wife she looks good in something might not be the right thing to do, particularly if she really wants an objective opinion -- sometimes its better to say "you are gorgeous, but blues and reds flatter your coloring more than that bright yellow blouse does", or "I'm sorry sweetie, but those horizontal stripes don't work on you." I know I want my husband's honest input -- after all, who else can you rely on (other than a teenager)to tell you that you really need to trim your nose hairs or that you shouldn't eat so much garlic.
There's a difference between fibbing about things that are subjective or matters of opinion -- i.e. "you look great", "the cake is delicious," "that was a terrific speech", and distoring the truth -- "I'm 25" if you are 30, "the basement has never leaked" said by a homeowner trying to sell his house after painting the basement walls to hide the water stains, etc.
When you say that lies should be the exception, what about lies/ half lies for not offending someone's religious sensibilities? What about people who do not believe everything (or even most) of what their denomination or sect teaches, but pretends to believe or agree for the sake of their family or to fit in or to not offend others? What about the chasidic gay man or woman who doesn't tell his/her prospective spouse of his/her sexual orientation because they are taught not to talk about such things? Do you believe that honesty is the best policy in all of these situations?
Anonymous 11:09,
I'm not sure that one could come up with an objective ruling for which lies may be the exceptions and have it apply in every case.
I would say this: what harm may be possible if I do tell the lie and/or what harm may be possible to me or to others if I don't tell the lie. Your first example may be one of telling the lie because it avoids harm or distress to others, it keeps them from being offended as you say. Your second example is the one that troubles me. Such a person, one with a gay orientation where this is not accepted or spoken about, wants to avoid harm to himself, so he lies by omission, does not tell his future spouse about his orientation. But what about the harm to the spouse if he lies in this way? He has chosen to put his concerns above those of his spouse's--a lose-lose situation all around.
Thanks for link! Definitely a complex issue. And I don't know that motivation really ought to be a justification at all, even though we do contend that deception "for the sake of peace" may be justified...
ANON 11:09:
that gay example is 100% wrong.
The bedrock/default position in Yiddishkeit is Emes. Anything else, deviations from emes whether white, black, red, brown, purple or yellow, need special heterim, like eating chazir or eating on Yom Kippur.
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