The boss was angry. She just had an argument with a board member. She then told me not to sign documents the board member forwarded me for my signature. But I had already signed the documents. When she asked if I did, I said, “no.” Meanwhile, I put away the documents in my desk drawer.
My boss would have gone ballistic if I told her I had signed the documents. Rather than let her high blood pressure go up, I decided to mislead her.
Did I lie?
Roman Catholic doctrine dictates it is “never allowable to tell a lie, not even to save human life.” Lying is evil and because nothing good ever comes from evil, “we are never allowed to tell a lie.”
On the other hand:
We can lie but only if it’s absolutely necessary such that it is for good (“justice”).
The Catholic Church calls it mental reservation. My Jesuit English teacher from high school called it equivocation. The more common term is the white lie.
An example is a homeowner who gave sanctuary to Jews in his house as Nazi soldiers during the Second World War searched for them to ship to concentration camps. When the Nazi soldiers asked the homeowner if there were Jews in the church, he said “there was no one here.” The Nazis left.
The homeowner did not lie. He said the Jews were not here which to him meant they were not available. But the Nazi soldiers took it to mean the Jews were not there physically so they left. The priest deliberately misled the soldiers. But he did it to save the lives of the Jews and that was enough to justify the white lie. The homeowner did not sin.
But in my case of not telling the boss I signed the documents; the Catholic Church would say I had no compelling justification to equivocate. No life was at stake, only my career. My boss would have just gotten madder and I would have had to suffer a long scolding.
The Catholic Church would say I lied when I shouldn’t have.
In this complicated world we live in, people lie a lot. The people who lie would say it’s for good reasons. We don’t want to hurt other people’s feelings. We don’t want to aggravate a crisis. We want to avoid conflict.
When my boss cooled off and finally said I could sign the documents, I then took them out of the drawer and sent them, already with my signature, on their way.
Since the issue was resolved, I did not bother to tell the boss what happened. I rationalised that it would just be for naught if the boss found out, got mad again, and subjected me to a scolding. The case was closed, that was it.
The Catholic Church would warn that my behaviour can lead to abuse. It was already lying, first of all. Doing it as a habit and excusing it as mental reservation, equivocation, or white lying, and saying it’s for good reason may result in more long-term harm than any perceived benefit whatsoever.
It’s like the motorist who is driving home in the middle of the night and decides to run a red traffic light. There’s no other vehicle around at the intersection so the motorist rationalises that there’s no harm to disobey the red light.
Over time, however, the motorist does this more often. He runs red lights every night and even during the day whenever he sees no other vehicle around. It becomes a habit that one day, he doesn’t notice an oncoming vehicle and he gets into an accident.
To many of us, honesty is not always a best policy. Being too honest can get us into trouble, so we bend the truth. We spin our speeches, avoid addressing questions, or just plain lie. We see many people doing it (e.g. politicians, executives) so we believe we can do it too.
It is true that religions like the Catholic Church give us some leeway to lie. But it’s more of the exception than the rule. We should realise the more we bend the truth, the more likely it will break. And more harm will come than good as a result.
Honesty is still a best policy, exceptions notwithstanding.
Ellery's Essays 