Telling the Truth – Sunday, October 09, 1955
The time-honored custom of swearing in the witness has come to be a very commonplace occurrence—to “solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth . . . ” This solemn oath has served many a weighty and important purpose.
But in a sense, it is a tragedy to have to assume that a man must so swear before he can be counted on to tell the truth. One could fervently hope that when a person has simply said something without oath or embellishment it could be accepted as truth—whether in the courtroom or across the back fence, it really shouldn’t matter which, for telling the truth is simply a matter of presenting a picture or impression of things as they are. (It is so much more than simply saying the right words.).
And in the sense of giving an honest and accurate impression or picture a person hasn’t told the truth when actually he has told a half-truth and withheld the other half. He hasn’t told the truth when he has deliberately left a false impression, no matter what words he has used or how he has used them.
Men can mislead other men by the inflection of their voices, by insinuation and innuendo, by gesture, and by what they suggest as well as by what they say, and by what they leave unsaid. They can say so much and imply much more, In many ways men frequently falsify—and often we could not legally prove that they had “told” an untruth, yet morally we may know that they intended not to tell the truth, as they resort to slick legal loopholes and tricky terminology and ignore every intention of honor and honesty.
The whole intent of a man, what he means to do and what he means not to do, what he means to say and what he means not to say, what he thinks in his heart, what he is in his soul, are all involved in “telling” the truth—for which we are all accountable before our fellow men and before our Eternal Father.
God grant that we may hear and know and speak and write and live the truth—and not rely on tricky technicalities or legal loopholes or ambiguous utterance that is a mere mask for falsehood.
Whatever our words, whatever we say or leave unsaid, we shall ultimately have to answer for the very spirit and intent of our actions and utterances—for the mere appearance of truthfulness is not enough. *
*Revised
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October 09, 1955
Broadcast Number 1,364