Promising to Lie

Summer is a wonderful time to pursue interests that get squeezed out of my schedule the rest of the year. Over the past few months I have dabbled in everything from molecular biology to Russian history and fantasy fiction.

In July I discovered our local library has the first two books of Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain on CD. A little children’s fiction sounded perfect for a mental break. I checked them out.

The fast-paced plot had me looking for cooking or cleaning jobs to do so I could listen to another chapter. I’m attached to the characters—noble Adaon, loveable Gurgi, and the eager Taran, determined to win honor.

But one scene disturbed me.  Ellidyr agrees to help Taran with a crucial task on one condition: Taran and his comrades must swear an oath that they will lie about what happened. Isn’t that a contradiction? Can you trust someone who promises to lie? Can you trust someone who promises to help on condition that you lie?

On a deeper level, I wonder if Taran surrendered his most powerful weapon when he swore the oath. Solzhenitsyn, the Russian literary giant, faced the might of the Soviet Union with the weapon of truth. Václav Havel led the Czechs to freedom, relying on the same weapon. Os Guiness explained in a lecture at Stanford in 2005:

      …they were aware there were only two ways they could bring down the Soviets: either they had to trump Soviet power with equal or more power—they were a handful of dissidents—unthinkable, or they had to counter Soviet power with another type of power altogether. So that’s what they did, with the power of truth. “Truth prevails for those who live in truth.” And the unthinkable happened. They won.

I wonder if I were Taran, would I have the courage to live by the truth and refuse Ellidyr’s offer, even if it cost me my life? I may never know. But I can choose to live in the truth today.

As Solzhenitsyn said, “One word of truth outweighs the entire world.”