Is “owning the libs” a justification for lying?

Matt Walsh’s film Am I Racist? was released in theaters across the country on Friday, and it was one of the top five films of the weekend, grossing $4.7 million at the box office. The “mockumentary” cost $3 million to make, earning the filmmakers their investment and then some in just three days. The film lampoons diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and features Walsh posing as a DEI expert to expose and ridicule actual DEI experts in a Borat-style subterfuge that engages DEI proponents who are unaware that Walsh is not who he says he is.

A day before the film hit theaters, one of the duped DEI experts released a statement about her part in the film. Robin DiAngelo, who became a minor celebrity after writing The New York Times bestseller White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism (Beacon, 2018), claimed that Walsh lied to her to get her to take part in the film. Walsh said he didn’t actually lie to her but simply told her that he was making a documentary about anti-racism, adding that DiAngelo was well paid for her appearance.

I wasn’t there for the conversation between DiAngelo and Walsh, so I obviously am not privy to what was actually said to procure her participation. Did Walsh outright lie? Or did he simply give part of the truth without giving all of it? According to Walsh, it was the latter. According to DiAngelo, it was the former. I’ll leave it to others to sort that out.

Nevertheless, the release of the film has opened up a conversation about the ethics of deception and lying when doing so for an ostensibly good cause. And let me just say up front: Exposing and lampooning DEI lunacy is a good cause. I want to see the demise of this woke ideology as much as Walsh does. But still, is it OK to use lies in service of the truth?

Walsh received pushback on his tactics over the weekend, and his response was dismissive. “Everyone in the film signed waivers agreeing to let us use the footage,” he wrote, “Many of them were paid quite handsomely. They are not victims. But they do have many victims of their own—all the people who fall into the toxic, evil ideology they espouse. If any of them feel horribly embarrassed right now, they did it to themselves. I have no regrets about the methods we used and would happily do it again.”

He added, “The real dividing line is between those of us who are willing to do what it takes to win the culture war and those of us who are not.”

But this surely isn’t an adequate answer to a serious question about the ethics of lying. Again, I’m not saying that Walsh lied in his interactions with DiAngelo. I wasn’t there, and he has not responded to my request for comment. Perhaps he didn’t lie. Still, doing “what it takes to win the culture war” suggests that the end justifies the means no matter what they are. Surely, that is not what Walsh believes.

In any case, Christians who take Scripture seriously understand that we have a duty to tell the truth, as the following passages tell us.

“These are the things that you shall do: Speak the truth to one another … do not devise evil in your hearts against one another, and love no false oath, for all these things I hate, declares the LORD” (Zechariah 8:16–17).

“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).

Nothing could be clearer from Scripture than our obligation to speak the truth. Over the centuries, Christians have thought long and hard about what our moral obligation is if speaking the truth conflicts with another moral duty. I happen to hold the view known as non-contradicting absolutism, which says that moral norms only come into apparent conflict but never into actual conflict. If we understood the situation and our duties correctly, we would see that there is a way of escape no matter the situation (see 1 Corinthians 10:13).

But even if one held an alternative view concerning moral conflicts, there is no moral conflict at stake in lying to someone to manipulate them to appear in a documentary. This sort of lie is simply someone’s attempt to do evil so that good may come—something that is roundly condemned in Scripture (see Romans 3:8).

This means that our obligation to tell the truth cannot be set aside merely to “own the libs” or even for the noble purpose of taking down the DEI regime. As Romans 3:8 tells us, those who employ evil means to achieve a noble end are worthy of condemnation. This is not a path that Christians can take, even as they otherwise cheer for the dismantling of destructive woke ideologies. And I say three cheers for those fighting the good fight, but let’s honor the truth when we do.