***This is a three-part series on Living the Truth in Politics. Part 1 sets the stage of how truth is treated in the political realm. Part 2 looks at how the Bible treats truth, especially for the Child of God. Part 3 examines the obvious conflict and attempts to answer a question: how does the Christian engage in politics in a truthful manner? The answer is much more than simply, “tell the truth.”***

“Is it of the very essence of truth to be impotent and of the very essence of power to be deceitful?” (Hannah Arendt, “Truth and Politics”)

“So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, ‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’” (John 8:31-32)

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life…” (John 14:6)

“Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.’ Then Pilate said to him, ‘So you are a king?’ Jesus answered, ‘You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.’ Pilate said to him, “What is truth?’” (John 18:34-37)

“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)

“Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil of the day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness…” (Ephesians 6:13-14)

Even a cursory reading of the Bible shows the importance of truth to the Christian faith. God is truth. Christ came to offer truth to set us free. We are called to be people of truth as we live in the unfolding Kingdom of God. Even for those who are skeptics or unbelievers, it is clear the Bible claims to value truth and admonishes God’s children to be truthful. In this way, truth is an integral element of the Christian faith. In contrast, truth seems disconnected from, or in opposition to, the pursuit of politics. There is an obvious tension between the commonality of the political lie and the Christian faith’s emphasis on the value of truth. Several questions must be answered before we arrive at a reasonable understanding of the importance of truth in relation to Christian political witness. What is it about politics that makes lying normal? What does the Bible say about truth? How does the Christian pursue truth within the political world?

Truth and Politics
Sissela Bok defines a lie as “any intentionally deceptive message which is stated” (1978, 13). Some have criticized this definition as too narrow, since there are many ways of deceiving others, sometimes by not saying anything at all. Newey argues for a broader definition of a lie as that which “aims to induce false beliefs in its intended victim” (1997, 94). No matter how we define it, lies are a common part of the human condition because those who lie have something to gain from lying. Within a political setting, the things to gain are frequently power and influence.

The political lie is so pervasive that a literature and vocabulary have grown around the practice. Ancient political thinkers wrestled with politics and the truth. Plato, in the Republic, advances the “noble lie” or “magnificent myth,” which has two essential purposes: to bind citizens together and establish a hierarchy in society. The lie establishes some foundational “truths” and is necessary for civic health. Citizens must see themselves not as disparate individuals, but as brothers and sisters joined together for a common cause. The noble lie roots the people together in a particular place, which is critical for the perpetuation of the people and the state. The noble lie would vary based on time and place, but it fulfills the same purpose of forging the bonds of fraternity to distinguish a society from its neighbors. The lie provides a love of country that cannot be arrived at through reason.

Though it performed a general function, the noble lie ultimately strengthened political elites. Leaders sometimes need to coax citizens to perform their duties and occasionally must call upon them to make sacrifices. The noble lie achieves these ends by providing a rationale for both the mundane and the heroic. In the end, the noble lie establishes the leaders themselves as the top of the social, political, and economic hierarchy within society.

Machiavelli, in The Prince, was also interested in the maintenance and use of authority. One acceptable means to that end was to lie. Shrewd leaders, he reasoned, must be of two natures, both of man and of beast. Men achieve things through the law, while beasts fulfill their goals through force. Both are necessary for the skilled ruler to reach his aims. Leaders are not obligated to keep their word when conditions change. An effective ruler, said Machiavelli, needs to be a “great pretender and dissembler; and men are so simple, and so subject to present necessities, that he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived.” Machiavelli understood, however, that leaders could not last long if they were known to be liars unworthy of trust. People want to think well of their leaders. They want to think of them as “merciful, faithful, humane, religious, [and] upright.” But, Machiavelli added, “it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them.” The ability to lie as necessary, while appearing truthful, or be cruel, while appearing merciful, would demonstrate superior leadership in Machiavelli’s framework. The ability to do one thing while appearing to do something else maximizes beastly effectiveness while cultivating perceived legal virtue.

Plato and Machiavelli were writing about leadership in governments ruled by elites. Plato was describing an idealized state ruled by “philosopher-kings” fit to rule by ability, while Machiavelli was appealing to those who ruled mostly by the accident of birth. Popular governments are a different animal. Plato was no stranger to democracy, and he saw the perpetual need to lie in order to move the masses to gain, keep, and maintain power. Popular forms of government require the people, as the ultimate reservoir of power in the system, to hold their leaders accountable for their conduct of affairs. The people need to know enough, and use discernment, to hold their leaders responsible, while the leaders will want to shape and mold what the people know. Voters within a democratic system do more than vote. They are parts of family, social, and communal networks. They engage other citizens on political matters. Not only are politicians tempted to lie, but citizens, as they persuade one another, may have a motivation to hedge the truth. This gives lies a peculiar kind of potency within a democratic setting.

Lies, no matter how we encounter them, take on many different forms. “Spin” entered the public lexicon during the 1992 presidential election. James Carville, the indomitable campaign manager, embodied the concept and became famous while doing so. Carville did not always lie, but he had a spectacular talent for re-arranging information to the ultimate benefit of his boss, the soon-to-be President of the United States, Bill Clinton. After debates, reporters would flood into what was eventually called “the spin room” so campaign handlers like Carville could “spin” the media in his campaign’s favor. Washington, D.C. became a black hole of spin, swallowing any truth that dared get too close. As one wag commented, “There is so much lying in Washington that its residents had to invent a new word for it to feel better about themselves: spinning. None of the town’s most prominent spinners…have been there long enough to remember when what they do was called lying” (O’Donnell, Jr. 1998).

Spin is an overt scheme to project falsehoods and it often feels like an obvious lie. Today’s politics are still full of spin, but the lie has taken on a different form. “Fake News” does not always attempt to establish something false, but it is most often deployed to disestablish an uncomfortable truth. The label is designed to destroy the integrity of the messenger and the impact of the message she carries. It is an unartful dodge, but it must be effective or politicians, especially Donald Trump, would have ceased using the label. Perhaps the summit of Fake News was scaled on Twitter, Dec. 30, 2017. David Clarke, Jr., a fire-breathing Trump supporter, wrote:

“LYING Lib media spreads FAKE NEWS about me and @realDonaldTrump to fool their liberal followers into believing LIES because as Mrs. Bill Clinton once said, ‘Look, the average DEMOCRAT VOTER is just plain STUPID. They’re easy to manipulate.’ Classic!”

He employed FAKE NEWS to discredit a report and then attempted to use the existence of the story, and the fact it was believed by so many “libs,” as evidence to support a quote by Hillary Clinton that Democrats are stupid. The problem is that Clarke’s tweet challenged a verified court document as FAKE NEWS and the quote he attributed to Mrs. Clinton was also fabricated, so he used FAKE NEWS to offset the impact of someone else’s alleged FAKE NEWS (Silverman 2017). It was like watching two fencers with rubber swords, or a pitched military battle where all the guns are loaded with blanks. Something, even to the casual observer, was not quite right.

Whether “spin” or “fake news” are being wielded, the goal is still the same. Politicians are assumed to have a relaxed relationship with the truth and their supporters typically wink and nod along when it is on display. All know the game being played and are aware of the rulebook that seems full of only blank pages. The spectacle is tolerated so long as preferred candidates or ideologies benefit, but caterwauling ensues when rivals do the same.

There is a long, well-established tradition of politicians, and their surrogates, bending the truth to the breaking point and beyond. The lying politician is a cliché, an uninteresting truth that is, ironically, universally embraced regardless of the nature of the regime. Lies are the currency of totalitarian dictators and the bait aspiring democrats use to lure voters into their dens camouflaged to look like palaces. Lies are expected in politics.

Politicians are prone to lies because their power rests on opinion. No person can rule alone, for even a dictator needs a coterie of sycophants to carry out his will. The unceasing necessity of propping up or expanding that power makes information, along with currency, weapons, or any other resource, a commodity to buttress the government. That information may be truthful or it may be false, but it is used for one primary purpose.

Put in its starkest terms, politics may not only be the province of the lie, but actively opposed to truth. Socrates was executed by government because his hard questions led to harder truths that rankled the regime. The philosopher and the purveyor of revealed religion that rests on inflexible truth claims are often cast as political villains. As Hannah Arendt notes,

“Throughout history, the truth-seekers and truthtellers have been aware of the risks of their business; as long as they did not interfere with the course of the world, they were covered with ridicule, but he who forced his fellow citizens to take him seriously by trying to set them free from falsehood and illusion was in danger of his life” (Arendt 1967, 296)

This seems fanciful by today’s standards. Can anyone imagine a truthteller fearing for his life or a philosopher in danger of being publicly executed? The notion springs from every marginal blogger’s fever dream of relevance. In the mostly comfortable West, such thinking seems backward and out of step with liberal tendencies. The probabilities shift in places like China, Russia, and in large pockets of the Middle East. Liu Xiaobo was a leader in the democracy movement in China. He was imprisoned in 2008, awarded, in absentia, the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, and died in jail in 2017 (Nordlinger 2017). Since 2000, at least 34 journalists have been killed in Russia (Deloire 2018). From 2011-2015, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government executed at least 5,000 political prisoners to consolidate power and destroy opposition (Sly 2017).

Truth, by its existence, is dangerous. Opinions are in flux. Preferences for policies, candidates, and parties are somewhat variable. Truth does not change, and once established it stands in judgment over competing assertions and is beyond persuasion and discussion. “The trouble is that factual truth, like all other truth, peremptorily claims to be acknowledged and precludes debate, and debate constitutes the very essence of political life” (Arendt 1967, 302). Arendt sees this clash between truth and politics as heading in both directions. Politics is a threat to truth, but truth is a danger to politics. This is why totalitarian regimes blot out truth and replace it with claims of their own. History gets airbrushed as people disappear. Lies are sold as true because those lies further the regime’s goals, and truth becomes a dangerous enemy to the state.

But even Arendt, an understandably harsh critic of the bloody political conflicts of the twentieth century, sees truth as playing a vital political role; truth cultivates the ground upon which politics is built. There are widely accepted truths that make politics possible, for without them, there is no opportunity for persuasion or discussion. Truth shapes the political system even when it is not always welcome within the system itself.