Theology of Work Project
Everybody ought to tell the truth, right? Especially Christians?
This is a statement most of us would heartily endorse. But telling the truth in the workplace can be difficult. What we affirm on Sunday is hard to practice on Monday.
Previous posts in this series have raised the questions of why telling the truth can be hard, what God tells us in the Bible about telling the truth, and why telling the truth is important in human relationships. Telling the truth is necessary for authentic communication, trust and cooperation between people, and preserving human dignity.
But on the ground in the workplace, there are many difficult cases and ethical head-scratchers. This article from Theology of Work Project talks about a few, and gives three guidelines for navigating the waters.
1) Financial statements should always tell the truth.
It is not enough that they follow the rules, or that they refrain from containing false statements. They have a higher duty, which is to convey an accurate picture of the true situation. This is the standard by which all of our statements should be judged. Do they give the listener or reader an accurate picture of the situation? If not, they are not telling the truth.
2) There are exceptions to truthtelling (but they are probably fewer than you think.)
Though it is clear that the default position is to tell the truth, even in Scripture, that is not considered a total absolute—there are some exceptions to the general principle. Of course, what the law allows for does not determine the standard for truthtelling. Another way to say this is that the law is the moral minimum, the moral floor, not the ceiling. What a person can get away with and yet not violate the law is not the standard.
These exceptions fall into three categories: “harmless puffery”/exaggeration, “white lies,” and bluffing. You can read more on the TOW site about how Christians should deal with each in cases ranging from writing advertising copy to avoiding unpleasant phone calls.
3) Sometimes people have no right to the truth (but again, that may be less often than you think).
For example, your employer generally doesn’t have a right to know what you do when you are off the job. What if you choose to do something that would make you unpopular with your boss or co-workers or reveal deeply personal information? If someone mentions she saw you at a casino last weekend, would it be okay to lie in order to deny it? What about a civil rights march? A church service? A workshop for survivors of domestic violence? It is difficult to find a general rule in scripture or elsewhere for this kind of situation. Instead we can note that growing spiritual maturity tends to go hand-in-hand with greater ability to disclose truth in situations that seem to threaten personal difficulty.
We’ll dig into this topic in more detail in our next post!
Some key Biblical texts on truth and deception can be found here.
Image: kxlly, Flickr.
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