Okay, I am back and can see that a lot has been posted on this subject while I have been gone, and unfortunately most of it betrays shallow thinking on this subject. I will start with the more foundational issue before moving on to the Biblical text. When I had stated that the Bible teaches a hierarchy of morals (something that we all also know intuitively as true if we are honest) I made a point of saying that this position is not relativism or situational ethics. In response Hank had said:
This does not smack of situational ethics or relativism, it’s the definition of situational ethics and relativism.
This is absolutely (pun intended) and utterly
incorrect. The unfortunate thing is that most Christians have an unbiblical definition/idea of what it means to hold to moral absolutes, and thus cannot understand that there is a pecking order to moral decisions. Now how is this not relativism?? Let me make this clear, I am a moral absolutist, but more precisely a Biblical moral absolutist.
Relativism teaches that morals are relative to the
person. In any given
identical situation, what is moral for you to do, may not be moral for me to do. There is no absolute rule by which to objectively measure our actions. That is not at all what I have advocated here. I am applying an ABSOLUTE hierarchy of morals which would be applied ABSOLUTELY CONSISTENTLY. As Koukl has put it, “Moral relativism doesn’t have to do with relative circumstances, it has to do with relative people,” and this distinction makes a world of difference, i.e. the difference between Biblical and unbiblical moral functioning. Biblical morality upholds a standard that is outside of and binding upon all persons.
The next issue of course is exactly what is the “lying” that is condemned by the Bible as sinful. It is simply immoral deception. Not all deception is immoral. My points in my last post about sports players “faking” their opponents and about people altering their true physical appearance have remained unanswered (as well as my point about the “escape clause” for the command to obey the government). In another thread I graphically demonstrated to Cirisme that by the strict and unbiblical stand he has advocated here, that he would be sinning and be completely unrighteous by some of the jokes that he tells here since they involve an untruth, such as claiming that he has Knight’s password.
I see also that the implications of this strong stand have made even its would-be adherents internally uncomfortable by the splitting of the hairs that has gone on. If anyone wants to be strictly technical on this, equivocation would be lying and not being entirely forthright would be lying. Jesus was not always completely forthright, nor has God throughout the entire Bible. Why is this not lying??
On another front, even if all lying were a sin, not all sins are equal, something not only taught by the Bible, but also by our own basic common sense. Cheating on a math exam is not the same as sniper shooting people in Virginia.
To tie up some other loose ends, it was claimed by Altus that Rehab was not praised for her lying, but just for her faith. However, the fact is that her faith cannot be separated from her lie. She was praised for her actions in the whole situation, which cannot be parceled out into the good portions and the bad portions when absolutely no condemnation ever appears for her alleged immoral lie. According to some here, her lie demonstrated a complete lack of faith for, according to them, she should have told the truth and trusted God to deliver the spies. The same thing would go for the midwives, but again, before AND after mentioning their lie, the Bible praises them for their faith, which was demonstrated by their actions which is the only way that we can see a person’s faith as James has eloquently stated that we are justified by our works before men.
