A number of comments have been emailed to me or posted online about Lying for Life? and Lying for Life, Continued – some in support, some in protest.  To those who supported the argument:  Thank you for your thoughts and encouragement.  To those who protested:  Allow me one more post to explain why I think your arguments faulty.

My argument was a surgical strike, but some of its critics seem to have misidentified the target.  I criticized only lying -- deliberately saying what one knows to be false with the intention to deceive.   An ambush deceives, a silence withholds information, a statement about the time of day in the context of a stage play may be known by the actors to be false, but these are not lies because the other conditions of lying are not met.  So my criticism of lying is not refuted by pointing out that these other acts are sometimes right.

A variation on that mistake was posted by a reader at the excellent online journal MercatorNet who commented, “It's my understanding that the pro-life people in the videos were paid actors. Pretending is what actors do.  It is very different from lying.”  Yes, it is different, but from the fact that what actors say in a play isn’t lying, it doesn’t follow that what they say offstage isn’t lying.  That is like suggesting that if a locksmith burglarizes a safe, it isn’t theft because opening locks is what locksmiths do.

Quite a few critics object that if lying is wrong, then we must also condemn all “stings” and exposés, which seems to them extreme.  But the inference is mistaken.  Since there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in the commission of an illegal act, one may certainly make a secret video of the people who are committing it.  There is no obligation to announce “Look what I am doing!”

Other critics propose false analogies.  Yes, I know about the plot to kill Hitler, but the ethical question in that case was assassination, not lying.  False analogies have also been urged from Scripture.  One writer asked, “Was Nathan the prophet wrong to tell King David a made up story -- a lie -- so as to open David’s eyes to his sin?”  But the very wording of the question explains why Nathan wasn’t lying.  He wasn’t trying to shut the king’s eyes but to open them; he precisely described David’s sin in the form of a parable.  That is why it was so devastating when he declared to his ruler, “You are the man!”

I have also been offered the famous “dirty hands” argument, “Don’t moral obligations sometimes come into conflict, so that one way or another, we are compelled to do wrong?”  Certain moral rules have exceptions.  For example, in most cases I should return property which has been left in my keeping when the owner demands it, but it wouldn’t be wrong to hold onto his car keys when he is falling-down drunk.  Other moral rules have no exceptions.  Such are the prohibitions of the Decalogue.  The prohibition of lying has traditionally been understood as a rule of the latter kind.  Rules of the former kind can come into conflict, but acting contrary to a rule in a case to which it does not properly apply is not disobeying it.  Rules of the latter kind can never come into conflict, so we can never be compelled to disobey them.

The “sin boldly” argument is just the dirty hands argument with a Christian veneer:  “Doesn’t our sinful brokenness imply that sometimes we do the wrong thing?”  Certainly, but that doesn’t make it right.

The most chilling lines of reasoning are the consequentialist one, “How could anything that does so much good be wrong?” and its close cousin, “In war, all things are permitted.”  I ask:  Are there intrinsically evil acts or are there not?  If we suppose that we may do anything whatsoever for the sake of results, then the contest is already lost.  We have become our opponents.  There is nothing left to defend.

St. Paul remarks, “And why not do evil that good may come? -- as some people slanderously charge us with saying.  Their condemnation is just.”

I am going to have to stop calling Mondays student letter days, because I make so many exceptions.  But the Canadian author of this letter was a student not too long ago.

Question:

Can you please define "contentment"?  What does being content look like in our daily lives?  Does striving for increase (career advancement, higher education, a better car, a bigger house, etc) narrow contentment?   Is there something as spiritual contentment?  Would contentment be a good thing or bad for our spiritual lives?

Reply:

Most people take for granted that a good life is a life that contains good things.  Whether this is true depends on which kinds of good things we are talking about.  Have you noticed that each of the kinds of good you mention is at best a conditional good?  Having a bigger car, for example, would be helpful if you needed the extra room to pack in all your children, but it would be bad for you if you were going to use it to flee from the police in a life of robbing banks.  To put it another way, the conditional goods can’t make your life a good life – but if you are living a good life, some of the conditional goods might become good things for you.

The goods that do make life good are called intrinsic goods – these are the goods that are good in themselves, the goods that are unconditionally good.  One example of an intrinsic good is virtue, epitomized by wisdom, courage, justice, temperance, faith, hope, and love.  Another example is friendship – not just any kind of friendship, but partnership in a good life, because good is diminished if it can’t be shared.  Such things literally can’t be bad for you.

I am sure you can add to the list of intrinsic goods.  Be careful, though, because we often mistake conditional goods for intrinsic goods.  Consider career advancement.  If I had a calling for administration, then to accept a so-called promotion to an administrative position might be a very good thing.  For me personally, though, accepting an administrative position would be a betrayal, because my calling is teaching and scholarship.  So career advancement, as conventionally understood, is a conditional good, not an intrinsic one.

You might now be expecting me to say that contentment is simply having the intrinsic goods.  Not exactly.  One can have friends, family, and meaningful work in a life of virtue, and still ask “Is this all there is?”  There is only one good so complete and perfect that it leaves nothing further to be desired.  This good is the vision of God, which nobody experiences fully in this life, but which the blessed experience in heaven.  All of the other goods finally come into their own in this beatific vision.  For example, just because it is the perfection of friendship with God, it carries with it perfect friendship with all of His friends.

You close with the question, “Would contentment be a good thing or bad for our spiritual lives?”  Let me put it this way:  To be on the path toward the vision of God is the whole point of our spiritual lives.  But to settle for anything less – to imagine that we can be ultimately contented by anything in this life -- would be the greatest possible calamity; it would be to trade our ultimate good for eternal unfulfilled desire and unrest.

I might add that the very fact that nothing in this life fully contents us forms one of the arguments for the existence of God.  The argument goes like this:  There is exactly one longing that nothing in the created order that can satisfy; anyone who does not recognize it in himself does not know himself.  Assuming that each of our longings is for something -– what would be a point of a longing that nothing could fulfill? -– it follows that the object of this one longing must lie beyond the created order.  This is what we call God.

Hate crimes are crimes committed because of hatred for members of certain social groups.  The premise of hate crimes legislation is that crimes committed from such motives are worse than other crimes.  Consider.

A man beats up a woman because he hates women.  Hate crime.

A man beats up a woman because she was promoted and he wasn’t; because he tried to steal her purse and she resisted; because he derives pleasure from inflicting pain on others; because she was seen in public without a head scarf; because the wife of another man paid him to do it; because he was ordered to do it by the leader of his gang; or because he was rioting and got caught up in the moment.  Not hate crimes.

Each of these acts is despicable.  But how is the first one worse than the other seven?  Answer:  It isn’t.

Why Guilty Knowledge Leaves Telltales

I believe that the reason guilty knowledge leaves telltales is that the violation of the conscience of a moral being generates certain objective needs, including confession, reconciliation, atonement, and justification.  These are the greater sisters of remorse; elsewhere, borrowing from Greek mythology, I have called them the Furies.  Now if I straightforwardly repent of my deed, then I make an honest effort to satisfy these avengers of guilt.  I respond to the need for confession by admitting that I have done wrong; I respond to the need for reconciliation by repairing broken bonds with those whom I have hurt or betrayed; I respond to the need for atonement by paying the price of a contrite and broken heart; and I respond to the need for justification by getting back into justice.  But what happens if I am in denial?  The Furies do not go away just because I want them to.  What happens is that I try to pay them off in counterfeit coin.  I try to pay off the need for confession by compulsively admitting every sordid detail of my disreputable deed except that it was wrong; I try to pay off the need for reconciliation by seeking substitute companions who are as guilty as I am; I try to pay off the need for atonement by paying pain after pain, price after price, all except the one price demanded; and I try to pay off the need for justification by diverting enormous energy into rationalizing my unjust deeds as just.

Such behaviors are matters of everyday observation.  To be sure, they are difficult to study systematically.  Even so, much of the data about the psychological effects of abortion, from both law and the social sciences, are strongly suggestive, though of course, as one would expect in such a case, they are disputed.[11]

Someone might suggest that all these supposed telltales are imaginary, that the behavior I call “acting guilty” is more naturally explained in other ways.  If I think my behavior has been blameless, why not talk about it?  There is no need to think that I am engaging in some sort of displaced confessional urge.  If my friends unreasonably subject me to moral criticism, why shouldn’t I drop them and make new ones?  There is no need to think that I am trying to find a substitute for supposedly having hurt them.  If I am doing things that aren’t good for me, why shouldn’t we write my behavior to bad judgment?  There is no need to think that I am punishing myself.  If some people view my behavior as wrong, but I disagree with them, why shouldn’t I defend myself?  The argument that I am making excuses is circular; it assumes what it sets out to prove.

But when I speak of displaced confession, reconciliation, atonement, and justification, I have in mind cases in which these other explanations seem to fall short.  We turn to these in the next post.

Notes

11.  As to the law, see for example Sandra Cano v. Thurbert E. Baker, Attorney General of Georgia, et al., on Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, Brief of Amicus Curiae J. Budziszewski in Support of Petitioner, Section VI, “The Affidavits of Post-Abortive Woman Submitted to the District Court in This Case Confirm that the Violation of Conscience Has Destructive Consequences.”  (This was in support of a petition for reconsideration of  Roe v. Wade  and Doe v. Bolton.)  As to the social sciences, see for example David M. Fergusson, L. John Horwood, and Joseph M. Boden, “Abortion and Mental Health Disorders: Evidence from a 30-year Longitudinal Study,”  British Journal of Psychiatry 193 (2008), pp. 444-451.

Link to Part 10 of 14

A prayer frequently offered during worship:  “May our country’s leaders end their bickering and work to solve the country’s problems.”

No doubt this petition is innocently intended.  However, its premises seem to be as follows.

1.  Politicians quarrel not because they have fundamentally opposed views of what their job is and how to do it, but because they don’t want to do their job.

2.  Their job is not to govern – that is, to preserve a just order -- but to “lead” – that is, to solve all the country’s problems.

One might as well pray, “May the constitutional system of checks and balances continue to fail.  May the principle of subsidiarity continue to be violated.  May everything that needs to be done in our country be done by an omnicompetent government.  May fundamental disagreements be ignored.  May one faction crush all others so that only one view remains.”

Thy will be done, O Lord.  Please, please, not ours.