A Different Word for It.

In the movie, The Invention of the Lie" there is a society in which every one says one the truth. Everything anyone says is the truth so everyone believes what a person says. In the movie, if you told the bank you had 800 dollars in your account, the clerk believes you and give you 800 dollars. There is one man who when his mother is dying in a hospital cannot stand to see his mother so upset and troubled about the thought of dying and just disappearing. One moment you are and the next moment you are nothing. So he begins to tell her a vision of what happens after death. He paints for her the standard vision of heaven with mansions, golden streets, and banquets for all. She believes him and dies happily.

It turns out that all the nurses and doctors have been listening to him and they also believe that he is telling the truth. They want to hear more. The word spreads and people flock to his home to hear about mansions in the sky and the vision of heaven. He comes forth with his complete version of Judaism and Christianity. Man in the sky, who controls things, who has a good place and a bad place, and he judges. It is a wildly amusing scene as he tries to deal with all the questions and ramifications. Of course, at the end of the movie he has to tell his "girl friend" that he does not really know, that he made it up. That it was a lie.

My sadness is the word "lie." We are using that word so much now. The South Carolina Congress man who yelled at Obama during the State of the Nation speech. The different sides of the health care debate are calling each other liars. It is a loaded word and a painful word.

Those in the political world know very well that issues are much too complex and complicated to be able to be described in right or wrong, yes or no categories. The reduction of future benefits is not a cut in current services. To stop the rate of growth in a thing is not to reduce the present rate of something. To increase the number of people covered by a law does not increase the burden on those already covered by that law. To say that the health care program will not cover illegal immigrants is not the same as saying that they will not get emergency health care in emergency rooms. Issues are so multi layered.

Those who express their faith in all religions are speaking of things that are not verifiable in the scientific sense but they are not speaking untruths in the scientific verifiable sense either. The professions of faith in the realities of religion are not, it seems to me, in the same category as "is it raining." If the sun is shining and I tell you it is raining, it must be a joke or it is a lie. But for me to tell you that there is a new and better reality prepared for us after death is a hope and faith proclamation that
can not be discredited as untrue any more than I can "prove" that it is true. But it does not seem to me that those faith statements should be described or attacked as lies. The Muslims who die in holy wars have been promised that they would be greeted by seven virgins as their reward. Who knows? As Blood Sweat and Tears once said, We will never know by living, only by dying will tell." I will not call it a lie. It is a version of a hope that I do not share, but I will not insult the faith by calling it a lie.