Judgements

St Clare.  Tuesday 11th August, 2020

It is sometimes difficult to know when to lie and when not to lie.

Yesterday I watched the film adaptation of Sebastian Faulk's Charlotte Gray. It is a film of a book set in Vichy France, for the most part, during World War 2. So much in the real circumstances of such a time must have been deceptive. The collaborators, the Resistance, those simply trying to live and eat and bring up children and do the right thing. So much pretence and betrayal as well as black market. To me to lie in certain moments is less heinous than telling a truth which might result in the death or the deportation to Germany of people. The higher principle wins in my opinion.

One particular incident remains with me because of a family experience years ago in Egypt when Nasser came to power. In the film two Jewish boys who'd been hidden were betrayed. They were sent with the old man housing and caring for them to a concentration camp. They had often in the script asked where their parents were and if they were safe. The dilemma of those caring for them was obvious to us all. What to say in reply.

Finally as they were embarked on the cattle truck train the woman who had been helping them was seen typing a letter. Somehow she was able to get to the train before it left and to hand the typed message through a slit to the elderly man going with the children. Then we had the scene of the elderly man reading the letter. It was purportedly from their Mother. We knew it was not. The content was that their parents were well, working in Germany and would be able to reunite soon. They were to be brave, to care for each other and to eat properly and hold hands when out walking. It was all the things a loving Mother would say. It was a lie. Yet as the boys touched the letter and acted such a poignant scene of love and hope I stood up and applauded. We never saw them again nor what happened so I do not know if it was for the better or not, for a greater let down may have been the result.

Only a film. Only a scene. Yet surely a situation which throughout history has presented itself again and again in reality. I hope that I would be brave enough to lie.

Of course I have said untruths for purely personal gain or ego or avoidance of pain. I have also lied for greater causes, as I judge them, and kindness and hope are for me greater causes at times. Judgements are so hard to make in many cases.

Would you have sold Jesus for 30 pieces of silver? As scripture noted would it be better for one man to die than for a nation to suffer? And again was the imposed ruler on an occupied country wrong to ask 'what is truth?'