Lies are always mean and indecent
A quick response to a columnist about a politician
On a black background on the back window of my 1985 Jeep Cherokee in college, I made a statement with a sticker. Everyone behind me could see what I believed, in simple white, block letters: “Abortion is mean.”
I was thinking about that sticker as a New York Times column from David French made the rounds over the weekend. I was disappointed to see French offer a glowing description of Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico. Talarico is a theologically and ideologically progressive politician, who has argued that “God is non-binary,” and that the story of the virgin conception of Christ teaches that a woman must consent to pregnancy, thereby justifying abortion.
French spoke of him in glowing terms, despite deep theological and political disagreements. But French believes that Talarico embodies a needed “decency” and “kindness” in political life.
I’m not a David French hater. I have appreciated him for a long time. In fact, I got into an online disagreement with a Christian nationalist provocateur over French one time. That person said that he would prefer that the men in his church be discipled by Tucker Carlson on Fox News than by David French. He also said that the key way to know if your pastor is “woke” is to ask your pastor’s opinion of David French. Both of those things seem pretty absurd to me, even now.
That said, French has said some troubling things recently, and this recent column is one of them. While French didn’t endorse a radical pro-abortion, pro-LGBT candidate, he did endorse Talarico’s decency, along with that of Republican Senator John Cornyn. I agree decency has been corroded by the influence of Donald Trump (and others).
But I disagree with French, because he confuses style and substance. To say it another way, he confuses being “nice” and being “kind.” His point about decency underplays the destructive and corrosive nature of catastrophically untrue things.
I’ve said over and over that neither political side is “God’s side” or fully aligned with the gospel. The kingdom and theological truth transcend politics and partisanship. So when French argues that the real divide in American life isn’t between left and right, he’s correct.
He says, “If the primary American divide is between decent and indecent, then the equation changes. Talarico shines.” Decent and indecent does divide Americans and American politics, and indecency has corroded both left and right. Decency is better than indecency.
Yet French misdiagnoses what that fundamental divide in our culture actually is. The more basic divide in American life is between truth and untruth. Untruth has infected both the right and the left. Lies (whether conscious or not) flow from the mouths and tweets of both the “indecent “and “decent” politicians of our era. And untruth said brashly and obnoxiously or smoothly and sweetly is still untrue. And in fact brash lies are easier to spot than subtle ones.
Scripture points us toward “truth and grace” (John 1:17) and “truth with love” (Eph. 4:15). Love and grace go together like a human skeleton and human skin. Truth is the skeletal structure of life, giving shape and a frame to things. Truth and grace are the soft tissue. Both a skeleton without skin and skin without a skeleton are a horror show. So too are kindness without truth, or truth without kindness. Or a political victory without either one.
Christians should oppose deception, lies, murder, and sexual immorality from every side, “decent” or not. Someone telling lies (but being nice about it) isn’t kindness. It’s just being polite. Yes, let’s make our politics more “polite” again, but politeness is not the same as truth. Choosing a mechanic or a doctor prioritizes competency over personality. We put up with gruff technicians or physicians if they do their job well. But we also tend to find those who have both a decent personality and a good track record of performance.
Too many evangelicals have dismissed coarse and foul language as “locker room talk.” I’ve been disappointed by many justifying lies, coarse language, and general unkindness for the sake of political expediency. But we can also make the opposite mistake, minimizing truth simply because someone is tender, nice, or smooth.
To put it bluntly, if you could go to heaven and interview the millions of babies aborted in our nation, I don’t think that they would find Talarico‘s rhetoric particularly nice or kind. If something is untrue, it is unkind. Even if it sounds nice.
Lies are mean. And a lie that sounds nice is even more dangerous. That is Sunday school 101. That’s an apple in a garden promising knowledge of good and evil.
Truth with love and grace. Both.
Anything else is mean, indecent, unkind. And wrong.