Is it ever okay to Fib? We call God the God Emet, the God of truth. The bible is clear that your word should be your bond, but is it ever okay to tell a little white lie? There would have to be a countervailing value which will over supersede the value of telling the truth. The Talmud puts it this way: If an ugly bride says to you “How do I look?” What do you say? Well one rabbi whose opinion was defeated though you should tell the truth. Now, from the Torah portion that we happen to read the week that I am giving, making this video, Parasha Vayera, which has many wonderful stories in it, we have an example of how God helps us figure this out. God sends an angel to tell Abraham and Sarah that they are going to have a baby.
Now they are both in their 90’s and they are both, Sarah is beyond the years of being able to have a baby. So when the angel says to her “You are going to have a baby, she says “I am too old and my husband is too old.” Now, in the next scene, Abraham says, okay what did Sarah say? God basically had a choice there of telling the truth, in which case it would cause disharmony, it would be anti-Shalom bide, anti domestic harmony, or can tell a little fib.
So God basically told a little fib by omission by saying, Sarah said she is too old, she is too old. She did not say that she also said that he is too old. And so he learned that and in certain situations where peace is, the issue is okay to tell a little white lie, but those are the exceptions and in general, (foreign language), God is the God of truth, wisdom begins with truth, we need to tell the truth, nothing but the truth, but there are certain situations in life, like in this one where the obvious issue of peace over supersede is that of truth.
There is one little other piece to throw in here, I saw this actually from a Protestant evangelical preacher. I thought it was very interesting. The question was how did God Sarah and Abraham to be able to have babies? Now you could say here is a miracle but, is there anything psychological at work here? The Torah says that God changes their name, first it was Sarai and changed it into Sarah and then it was Avram, and changed it into Abraham.
Sarah means princes as and Abraham means father of nations. And so what this preacher was saying was that by hearing their name father of nations and princess enough, the self talk, the talk they did at themselves was able to change themselves enough to be able to be in a place where they could fulfill their goals and their desires and their dreams, and that was a little sacrament about how we need itself to work positively for our self and not negatively, another issue but very interesting for this week’s Torah portion.
