ENGRAVED on the walls of the church my grandmother attended for more than 50 years were the words ‘The truth shall set you free.’ St John 8vs32.
As a bored youngster accompanying my Nan to church, I puzzled over these words. I thought the truth was always obvious and while I didn’t think I knew any liars, Nan pointed out that very small children often protect themselves by lying – ‘it was the dog that drew on the wall, not me’ or ‘Teddy ate Mummy’s chocolate’. She said that lots of adults tell lies too, and for many reasons – fear, greed, anger, desire – but telling lies is always wrong because it stops us from facing our demons and growing and worse it can harm others and our world.
As I got older and started to learn some mathematics, history, science and religion and began to compare and contrast how newspapers told completely different stories about events, I realised Jesus and my Nan really had a point. People make mistakes, they think they know and understand more than they do, and as my Nan said they do tell lies. Telling lies may be a natural response of human beings to threat and fear but ultimately it prevents us from working out solutions to problems because we can’t get to the roots of what is causing them and what they really are. At least six of the Ten Commandments can be understood as being about the importance of truth and being honest, and Jesus makes it clear that lies and dishonesty must never be normalised. Yet lying is being normalised in UK society. The Koran instructs believers to tell lies to non-believers when it benefits followers of Allah; TV shows are built around the ability of participants to lie and not get found out; behavioural science is used to achieve desired outcomes; YouTube clips explain how to exploit the benefits system, and the human rights act promises all kinds of benefits to people with no requirement to tell the truth.
As a country, telling lies is costing us, the taxpayer, very dear. Our politicians rarely tell us that we spend more than we earn, we borrow more than we can afford and we regularly transfer taxpayers’ money to those too idle, afraid or entitled to work. Taxpayers also pay for companies and quangos set up to perpetuate and exploit lies that policy-makers say are facts, for example Net Zero; the response to covid; carbon dioxide causing dangerous climate change; all refugees and asylum seekers are who they say they are; DEI; mass vaccination; care in the community; social housing, and HS2 to name but a few. There is often a huge price to pay by those who dare to speak out against state sanctioned truths – potentially loss of friends, jobs and status, breakdown of families, social isolation or even huge fines and imprisonment. We may also be faced with uncomfortable facts about ourselves and our preconceptions.
If we focus on doing things based on truth and real data we have the opportunity to save a lot of money and make things better for ourselves and future generations. If we do things based on false assumptions, false data and manipulation of our natural tendencies to trust experts and believe misleading statistics we will at best waste lots of money and at worst cause untold suffering to people and the life we share our planet with.
Nobel prize winner Richard Feynman talks about error and dishonesty in his superb essay ‘Cargo Cult Science’. Feynman states that to do good work you must never try to fool anyone and must always clearly set out your purpose, your assumptions, your reasoning and any factors you are aware of that might influence the outcome of the test, model or experiment. That way you and the results can be challenged since as he pointed out ‘the easiest person to fool is always yourself’. We don’t always know all the details we need to do the right things and avoid errors but by being clear about our facts and assumptions those who come after us can be better enabled to correct the errors caused by our unknowns.
I urge all people of integrity to question their own and other people’s assumptions and seek the truth as best they can; if you work in a role where you develop or implement policies be brave and speak out and redouble your efforts to ensure they are based on truth.
