As an interesting counter-point, when I was a teenager I read a Holocaust book, might have been _The Hiding Place_ by Corrie Ten Boom, maybe not. At any rate, her family was hiding a Jewish family. The door to the secret room was under the table. The SS arrives, and demand to know if they are hiding a Jewish family. All the family lies except for the smallest child, who says, "Yes, they're under the table." Since there was obviously no one under the table, the SS decide that they are being made game of by a small child, and leave. Or something. The moral of the story was that it is always wrong to lie, and that God will find a way. As an adolescent, I found this story profoundly disturbing and appalling, but was not in an environment where I could say so. It seemed to me that if ever there was a time to lie, that was it. And that it was awfully nice of God to manage a miracle like that, but that it was downright immoral to depend on it.
Oddly, I recently ran across a mention of _The Hiding Place_ by someone else, and they relate a very similar incident, but the person reporting it said that everyone lied. So, maybe I'm thinking of a different book, or maybe my memory is oddly variant. Possibly, there was a sermon about how they shouldn't have lied and how it could have all turned out, in which case, talk about spectacularly missing the point. Been 45 years, easy, so honestly, don't know anymore.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2013-10-27 12:45 pm (UTC)As an interesting counter-point, when I was a teenager I read a Holocaust book, might have been _The Hiding Place_ by Corrie Ten Boom, maybe not. At any rate, her family was hiding a Jewish family. The door to the secret room was under the table. The SS arrives, and demand to know if they are hiding a Jewish family. All the family lies except for the smallest child, who says, "Yes, they're under the table." Since there was obviously no one under the table, the SS decide that they are being made game of by a small child, and leave. Or something. The moral of the story was that it is always wrong to lie, and that God will find a way. As an adolescent, I found this story profoundly disturbing and appalling, but was not in an environment where I could say so. It seemed to me that if ever there was a time to lie, that was it. And that it was awfully nice of God to manage a miracle like that, but that it was downright immoral to depend on it.
Oddly, I recently ran across a mention of _The Hiding Place_ by someone else, and they relate a very similar incident, but the person reporting it said that everyone lied. So, maybe I'm thinking of a different book, or maybe my memory is oddly variant. Possibly, there was a sermon about how they shouldn't have lied and how it could have all turned out, in which case, talk about spectacularly missing the point. Been 45 years, easy, so honestly, don't know anymore.