Is it ever right to lie?

The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, “When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. 

Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?” The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.” So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own. Exodus 1:15-21

Is it ever right for a child of God to lie?

In the Bible the “snake” (Satan) is depicted as telling the first lie (Genesis 3:1-5), and Jesus describes “the devil” as “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). You would think that’s pretty decisive, wouldn’t you? – God hates lies, end of.

Yet here in Exodus 1 we find a story which puts a rather different slant on things…

The people of Israel are in slavery in Egypt, but they have grown greatly in numbers, to the point where the Egyptian king, the Pharaoh, is worried and decides something must be done. Putting it simply, all the Hebrew baby boys are to be killed at birth. But to achieve this, he needs to recruit the help of two midwives, Shiphrah and Puah.

Unknown to him, the midwives refuse to do as they are told - an act of rebellion against the most powerful man in the land which is surely very impressive.

But what about the next act in the drama? When the Pharaoh takes them to task for disobeying him they seem, on the face of it, to tell an out-and-out lie: “’Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive’” (verse 19). Whereupon, we read, “God was kind to the midwives…”

You can’t help wondering: God’s hatred of lies seems to be not quite absolute!

There are other occasional Bible examples of people lying in the service of God. A clear one is Rahab the harlot (Joshua 2), who hid two Israelite spies from the pagan King of Jericho, lied about what she had done – and was honoured for doing so (Joshua 6:22-25).

What should we make of examples like this?

There is, of course, a difference between a lie told by a basically good and honest person in order to achieve a good end - and when there really doesn’t seem to be any alternative -  and a deliberate attempt to deceive in order to do something malicious and harmful. And there are what used to be called “white lies” – harmless untruths told as a joke or even out of genuine affection.

But, well, a lie is a lie, and God is the God of truth.

Probably most Christians would agree that under some circumstances a lie may be justified. An extreme scenario… You’re strolling through a wood one day and a child comes down the path followed a couple of minutes later by a man with a blood-stained knife, asking “Which way did that child go?” Would it be wrong to point in the opposite direction?

But even that is strictly a lie, and there are Christians who would refuse to tell it. The story is well known of the Dutch ten Boom family who ran a jewellers shop in Amsterdam during the second world war. They used their shop to shelter Jewish people who were being hunted by Nazi soldiers.

One of the daughters, Betsy, was a very committed Christian. One day when the soldiers came unexpectedly, and several Jewish refugees had been hurriedly ushered under a table with a cloth that reached down to the floor, she replied to a soldier’s demand “Where are the Jews?” with complete honesty: “Under the table”. Whereupon the soldiers failed to look, thinking Betsy might be trying to make fools of them.

Well, I suppose you can only admire such breath-taking faith. But I think many Christians would have been tempted to go down the same road as Shiphrah and Puah! And would anybody be entitled to condemn them? (Quite apart from anything else, taking such a massive risk of faith presumably isn’t quite so hard when it’s not your own life that is at stake...)

We live in a world which is awash with lies – or with “fake truth” as it’s called. For many people lying is completely routine, and they feel not the slightest pang of conscience. But, setting aside the morality of it, once you’ve been detected in a lie, why should anybody ever believe you again? You gain a reputation, and so it becomes a self-defeating tactic.

The reputation of the Christian should be one of spotless truthfulness, and that means not only “speaking the truth” in the most basic and obvious sense, but being an utterly reliable, solid and faithful person. Such a reputation is precious beyond words.

As for those really tricky situations, well, surely we can entrust them humbly to the tender mercy of God, do what we feel we must, and let him do the judging?

Father, you tell us that you love “the one whose way is blameless, who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from their heart” (Psalm 15). Please help me to never be content with anything less than that. Amen.