In 1988 Britain’s Prince Andrew said that Buckingham Palace attendants would stop lying to the press. For the past two decades, the prince admitted, place attendants and royal spokesmen had "routinely" lied to the press. In the interview with reporters, Prince Andrew said the royal family was trying to make things better now, and that means telling things the way they really are, not necessarily the way the palace would like them to appear. Prince Andrew recognizes that this is no small task. "The difficulty," he said, "is trying to convince you...that what you are being told is the truth."
I waited to hear William Jefferson Clinton say the same thing–that he was turning over a new leaf and promising to tell the truth. The week that the American President’s videotaped appearance before the Grand Jury was released, Zondervan Publishers released the book The Anatomy of a Lie, by Dr. Diane Komp, a children’s cancer specialist at Yale University’s School of Medicine.
In her book’s prologue, Dr. Komp quotes the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky who wrote, "When we lie to ourselves, and believe our own lies, we become unable to recognize truth, either in ourselves or in anyone else, and we end up losing respect for ourselves and for others. When we have no respect for anyone, we can no longer love, and, in order to divert ourselves, having no love in us, we yield to our impulses, indulge in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behave in the end like an animal, in satisfying our vices. And it all comes from lying–lying to others and to yourself."
What prompted a gifted and recognized oncologist to become interested in the anatomy of a lie? Dr. Komp started thinking about the whole issue when she ran across an old, handsomely bound book written by a Yankee Army chaplain who found himself in a Confederate prison in the summer of 1863, when the United States was being torn apart by civil conflict. Chaplain H. Clay Trumbull was a pastor who believed God said what He meant and meant what He said. He also knew that he and some of his friends could probably escape from prison, provided he would lie to his jailer.
Trumbull refused to do this. "Why not?" chided his fellow prisoners, telling him people have no obligation to tell the truth to the enemy in times of warfare. Trumbull didn’t agree, stayed in prison, and eventually was freed to write about his experiences.
In analyzing her personal and professional life as well as what she is observing in society today, Dr. Komp concluded that the problem hasn’t only started at the White House and Buckingham Palace and worked down. She believes it started at the bottom and worked up. She writes, "No wonder our world is such a mess when we reap the effect of dishonesty trickling down from exalted positions into our ordinary lives. If the facts prove that our leaders lie, how can we expect our children to value truthfulness?" But then she goes on to ask, "What if the cultural trend towards lying begins the other way around? What if the trickle works from the bottom up to the top? What if my own lies make a difference to the world? What if, instead of shaking my finger at those in public life, I examined my own half-truths, puffery, and little white lies?"
Shakespeare wrote, "Vice is a monster of such frightful mien, as to be hated needs only to be seen. But seen too oft, familiar with her face, we first endure, then pity, then embrace." It’s true in the mansions of the rich as well as in the shacks of the poor. - Resource reading: Ephesians 5