Are we deceived about deception?

Matt Walsh’s Am I Racist? mockumentary has provoked a wide-ranging discussion about the ethics of deception among evangelical Christians. Not having seen the movie, I’m in no way qualified to speak to Walsh’s methods (for his part, Walsh denies that he used deception to secure the interviews). However, the larger discussion of the ethics of lying is a recurring one and worth some clarification.

On the one hand, the Bible repeatedly insists on the importance of truth-telling:

• “Lying lips are an abomination to the LORD, but those who act faithfully are his delight” (Proverbs 12:22).
• “Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another” (Ephesians 4:25).
• “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Colossians 3:9–10).
• “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Exodus 20:16).

On the other hand, the Bible is filled with examples of God’s people engaging in various types of deception. David feigns madness to the Philistine king to escape from danger (and writes Psalm 34 in the midst of it, in which he exhorts others to “Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit”). Abraham twice deceives a pagan king about the identity of his wife Sarah (and his son Isaac follows in his footsteps). At his mother’s urging, Jacob deceives his father Isaac to secure his blessing. Joseph conceals his true identity from his brothers to test them. Jonathan lies to his (mad) father to preserve the life of his friend David.

Theologians debate the moral goodness of some of these actions. Was the sister-wife deception an act of faithless cowardice or faithful shrewdness? Was Rebekah and Jacob’s deception of Isaac an evil act or an attempt to overcome Isaac’s sinful preference for Esau (which was contrary to the promise of God)?

But other examples of deception include commendation of the deceivers within the Bible itself. The most obvious examples are the Hebrew midwives and Rahab the prostitute of Jericho. The former fear God and preserve the lives of Jewish boys in the face of Pharaoh’s bloodlust, dissembling to Pharaoh about the reason for the boys’ survival, and as a result are blessed by God with families. The latter conceals the Hebrew spies and then tells an outright falsehood to the state officials who are seeking them. As a result of her actions, she and her family are preserved from judgment, and Rahab is commended as an example of someone whose faith led to good works.

And then, of course, there are instances where God Himself conceals the truth as an act of judgment upon particular individuals: giving Samuel a cover story to tell King Saul when the prophet is sent to anoint David as the new king and sending a “lying spirit” in the mouths of the prophets to destroy King Ahab.

All of these examples complicate a straightforward equation of deception with sin. And we must allow for different types of deception in these passages. We might distinguish between stating outright falsehoods (as Rahab did) and stating partial truths (as Abraham did when he called Sarah his sister). In the latter case, the deception was in the concealment of a fact. Frequently, this kind of dissembling is designed to encourage the hearer to draw a false conclusion (as when the Israelites feigned a retreat at the second battle of Ai to lure them into an ambush).

My own conclusion from these stories is relatively straightforward, even if it remains controversial. Just as we distinguish between righteous killing (such as self-defense and killing in war) and unrighteous killing (murder of innocents), we should also distinguish between righteous deception and unrighteous deception.

What distinguishes the two? Two factors stand out in the Biblical stories. The righteous deception occurs either under conditions of open warfare (as in the feigned retreat during battle) or to prevent great harm (such as the murder of innocents). And this fits with the passages on truth-telling we explored earlier. Neighbors—those with whom we live at peace—are owed the truth. Open enemies who intend harm to us or others are not.

Thus, those who lied and dissembled to Nazis to protect Jews were acting righteously. I believe that David Daleiden was also justified when he went undercover to expose Planned Parenthood and the sale of aborted baby parts. The same would apply to the use of spies and camouflage in war, as well as undercover sting operations by law enforcement targeting pedophiles, in which officers masquerade as underage children to expose and arrest the wicked.

There are, of course, reasonable questions about limiting principles. Deceiving to save a life (or to expose the gross evil of taking lives) may be permitted. But what about deceiving to expose false ideologies? How do we determine if someone is an open enemy (to whom it would be permissible to lie to prevent grave evil)?

Such questions are beyond the purview of a short essay. But they ought to send us back to the Scriptures to better understand God’s standards so that we can wisely—and righteously—apply them in our own day.