Honesty and humility

'We can do anything if we don't have to lie about it.' That could be useful as a rough guide to morality.

There are exceptions to this, of course, if people have become so morally insensitive that they are not ashamed to openly admit or even flaunt duplicity. But the principle is sufficient as a moral guide for anyone walking in grace. We can do anything as long as we can be honest about it.

But that covers a lot of ground. Could we cheat someone, be unfaithful, slander someone, or commit a sin of any kind and feel comfortable in sharing that openly with those who are closest to us? The need to hide some action from others is a strong moral prompt. If we are walking essentially in grace we don't need any other commandment: We can do anything as long as we don't have to lie about it.

When we do something wrong and then cover it up and lie, it is not so much the particular thing that we did wrong that harms us, it's the lying about it afterwards that does the real damage. We are all weak, we all fall, we all commit sin. God understands this and it is not so much the sin itself that harms us.

What causes the real harm is lying, covering up, living a double life. Why? Because the human spirit is not made to live in dishonesty and duplicity. When we do wrong, we either have to stop it or, at least in honesty and contrition own our weakness. Otherwise our spirits will automatically begin to harden and to warp. Such is our human nature; it cannot tolerate moral duplicity for long without hardening and warping.

Indeed that is how the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit, the one sin that cannot be forgiven, can happen. It begins with lying, rationalization, cover-up, and dishonesty. When we sustain a lie for any length of time, we begin to warp our own insides and the sin can become unforgivable not because God doesn't want to forgive but because we no longer see any need to be forgiven.

Lying, especially to ourselves, hardens and corrupts the spirit. That's why Satan is called the prince of lies rather than the prince of weakness. That's why Luther said 'Sin bravely!', meaning that, if we do sin, we should have the courage of honesty so as not to lie or rationalize about it after the fact.

The presence of family and community around us can be a powerful moral watchdog on our behavior. We need the humility and honesty to admit that sometimes this is necessary for us. If we lack that kind of humility and honesty, we may well find that we do have things to hide, little or big secrets which we keep hidden and which keep us from full moral health.

When he was falsely accused of sexual abuse, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin was able to stand before the world and say, with credibility: "Everyone who knows me also knows that this accusation is false because my life is an open book." Everyone who knew him believed him precisely because of the transparency evident in his life, the honesty and humility so obvious in his person.

Peter Knott SJ