Friends
Peace be with you.
In a few weeks, a friend of mine is taking me to see the musical Dear Evan Hansen down at Hancher. I’m excited but I know it will be an emotional time. I’ve seen the play a few times and each time it has been. It’s not for everyone so please don’t read this homily reference as an endorsement. There’s no references to faith in it and it is a very postmodern morality play. Still, I appreciate it because, like many people who have seen this play, I can sympathize with the main character. Without giving away too much, the main character is named Evan and he is an awkward high school kid who doesn’t have any friends. Early in the show, he interacts with another kid who also has no friends because he a is very angry teenager. Evan is just really shy and awkward. When the angry kid ends his own life, the boy's parents find a note that seems to indicate he and Evan were friends, This leads Evan down a road of lies that seems to spiral out of control.
I think we need to talk about lying. I think it’s not something that priests talk about much anymore, or at least we don’t talk about it as the focus of our homilies. We may bring it up at the end as a kind of morality example but it’s something we should probably talk about more because it affects our integrity. Oftentimes people will distinguish between lies of commission and lies of omission but I was thinking of a couple of other distinctions as well. Lies of commission are when we actively tell someone a false statement. Most of the time we do this because we are embarrassed by our actions and we want to protect our reputation or we do it to get out of being punished. An example of a lie of commission would be telling your spouse that the kids returned the car empty instead of admitting to her that you forgot to stop at the gas station on the way home. A lie of omission, on the other hand, happens when we leave out important details or pretend we don’t know what happened when we do. An example of a lie of omission would be when you overhear an annoyed coworker talking about how someone left the door to the office unlocked last night and someone stole her computer and you realize you were the one who forgot to lock it but you don’t say anything because you don’t want to get in trouble. I was also thinking about lies of presumption, when we make up an allegation against someone or a motivation why someone did something when we don’t know the facts. For example, we may think that our spouse deliberately left their socks on the bathroom floor instead of in the hamper because you got in a fight the night and they did it spite you. I was also thinking about lies of convenience, which we do when we don’t want to admit to someone that we disagree with them or are not going to follow their advice. I find myself doing this when someone gives me driving directions to their house, I generally let them talk without paying any attention instead of thanking them but letting them know I’d prefer to follow my GPS. Lastly, how about lies to the self. A lie to the self is when we have an impression of ourselves that doesn’t match the choices we make to live our lives. For example, we may think we are a good person even though we tell a lot of lies or are racist or sexist or just a mean person in general. We may also have a deflated sense of self, though, where we believe we are worthless when, in fact, we are using our gifts and talents to the best of our ability but someone else just has more gifts and talents than we do.
As I said before, the challenge with all these lies is that they destroy our integrity. We are meant to be holy as God is holy and the word holy is related to the word whole or integral. Lies split us into a truthful side versus an untruthful side, a trustworthy side versus an untrustworthy side.
Jesus had a hard truth to pass on to Pilate today; that he came into the world to testify to the truth. It would have been easy to justify remaining silent in the presence of someone who had no way of understanding who he was but, instead, he speaks the truth knowing that it will be used against him by the man who will pronounce his death sentence. Can we have that same integrity and be people of truth?
