What are the Signs that Someone is Telling the Truth?

To be believed, some people need to make promises or swear they are telling the truth.  Jesus has a better idea: Let your “Yes” always mean “Yes.”  If you do that, you won’t need to swear that you are telling the truth.

Image by EncMstr, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crossed_fingers_P1442-rot90.jpeg.

When I was in elementary school, some of my schoolmates thought that if they crossed their fingers, it would nullify any promise they made.  With fingers crossed, the promise would not be held against them if they were not being honest.

They always hid their crossed fingers behind their back so that the person they were speaking to would not know that the promise was not genuine.

The fact that they hid their crossed fingers demonstrated that they were fully aware of their deceit.  They knew they were lying, but they thought that it didn’t “count” if their fingers were crossed.

Once we saw this behavior in action, we learned who could be trusted and who needed to be inspected carefully for a hand hidden behind their back.

The irony was that a pattern soon became apparent: If one of these children voluntarily said, “I promise you I’m telling the truth” – it was an almost sure sign that they were lying.

This leads us to a simple question:

What are the signs that someone is telling the truth?

Lessons from Capitol Hill: Some people’s word is gold; others will say anything to get what they want

Back when I was working on Capitol Hill, truth was still a somewhat honored commodity.  The idea of “alternate facts” had not yet been endorsed by a White House official.  That doesn’t mean that everyone always told the truth, but people were usually uncomfortable defending other people’s lies.

Members of Congress need facts from experts so that they can speak accurately about the issues they are trying to address.  Those experts are often lobbyists representing organizations that have a lot of knowledge in their subject area.  But they also have their own interests.  Some lobbyists will say whatever they think will help them achieve their goals.  Other lobbyists believe they have a duty to speak the truth and also think that they will best achieve their goals by being recognized as trustworthy people who can be counted on to provide verifiable facts.  (I hate the idea that I have to add the word “verifiable” in front of “facts” in that sentence; I taught my students that if it’s not verifiable, it’s not a fact.)

When Matt Myers of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids gave me a statistic, I knew that I could count on it to be accurate and backed by documented evidence.  Matt and his group provided indisputable data regarding the health effects of tobacco, the tobacco industry’s decades-long campaign to deceive the public about the addictiveness of nicotine, and the industry’s tactics for luring children to start smoking.  His word was gold.

Similarly, I knew that the data provided to me by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities would be solid and unassailable.  This group provided clear data about poverty, the federal budget, and programs that addressed the nutrition needs of the poor.  I knew that people on both sides of the political aisle would agree that their data was accurate even if they did not agree on the policies they advocated for addressing poverty.  Furthermore, I knew that they would tell me the truth about what was politically feasible and where other members of Congress stood.  They did not sugarcoat the facts or tell me what I wanted to hear; they told me the truth.

Not all lobbying groups were so upstanding and ethical.  I was deeply distressed that one lobbyist who worked on my side on an issue that my boss cared deeply about could not be trusted.  He would provide arguments allegedly backed by evidence, but his “facts” were often exaggerated or twisted.  I had to double-check everything he said, because his words were not trustworthy.

(It’s as though he had a crossed-fingers rule: As long as it benefits our cause, it’s OK to play with the truth.)

This is a serious issue in American politics today.  Too many people are willing to shade or even ignore the truth if it benefits their party, if it makes them look good, if it helps them get their program passed, if it is what they think the “people” want to hear.

The people deserve more than that.  They deserve the truth.

The liars are not a mutation; they arise from within our society

The politicians of today have not emerged out of nowhere.

They come from the same tribe as those schoolmates of mine who thought that if they crossed their fingers, it would exempt them from the moral obligation to tell the truth.  They just have other versions of crossed fingers: It’s OK to say anything if the leader of my party is saying it.  It’s OK if it helps the people on my side get elected.  It’s OK if it drags down my opponents.  It’s OK if it brings in money.  It’s OK if it riles up my base.  It’s OK if it makes people feel good.

But in a broader sense, their lack of devotion to the truth arises out of a society that refuses to penalize leaders who play fast and loose with the truth, a society that has lost its moral outrage about lying.

People mislead their loved ones, lie to their friends, cheat on their taxes, forward social media posts they know (or don’t want to know) are not true, parrot the claims of their favorite politicians unquestioningly, consume “news” that is demonstrably one-sided and twisted, ignore the conclusions of courts and panels that are sworn to uphold the truth, invest in and support companies that allow dangerous lies to course through their platforms, and tune in to personalities who traffic in falsehood.

If we think that there is some part of our lives where we don’t need to tell the truth, we are contributing to the cascade that is slowly drowning our society in a cesspool of lies.

What is the signal that a person’s words can be trusted?

Jesus had a very simple test for whether people can trust that you tell the truth: “Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’  Anything more is from the evil one” (Matt. 5:37).

You should never need to reassure someone that you are telling the truth by adding, “I promise” or “I swear,” because everything that comes out of your mouth should be the truth.

If that’s the kind of person you are – always telling the truth in every circumstance – then people will know they can trust your word.  They won’t need an oath or a promise.  They won’t need to check whether you have crossed your fingers behind your back.

(This doesn’t mean you don’t need to fact-check what honest people say.  Even people who always tell the truth can make mistakes.  But if they have made a mistake, they will want to know it.  They will go back and correct the record with people they have misled, and they will stop saying the things that turned out to be false.  Liars will just keep lying, even after they have been fact-checked.)

Here are some questions to ask yourself, to see how close you are to Jesus’s model of truth:

• How often do you make promises, and how seriously do you take the promises you make?

• How quickly do you agree when someone asks you to promise them something?  And if you do promise, how certain is it that you will follow through?

• How often do you need to say, “I swear it” or “I swear to you” in order for people to believe you?

• Does the idea of being the kind of person whose “Yes” is “Yes” make you nervous because you think it would restrict how you operate in your everyday life?

• What would it feel like to be the kind of person whose “Yes” is so solid that no one would ever feel the need to question whether what you are saying is true?

Jesus said, “I am the truth” (John 14:6).  He wants us to live in the truth forever with him.  He said that “the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).  It is actually a privilege and joy to start living that life of truth with him while we are still on earth.

For more on what Jesus said about oaths and the importance of letting your “Yes” be “Yes,” see Matthew 5:33-37.