Telling the Truth

From Samuel Taylor Coleridge, this sentence suggests a subject: “Veracity,” he said, “does not consist in saying, but in the intention of communicating truth.” Too often it is assumed that the truth has been told if someone simply says the right words. Too often it is assumed that a person has told the truth when he has deliberately left a false impression, no matter what words he has said or how he has said them. Men might mislead other men by the tone of their voices, by innuendo, by gesture, by what they suggest rather than by what they say, and by what they leave unsaid. They might say a little and imply much more, and then hide behind the literal limits of their language. In many such ways men frequently falsify, and often we could not legally prove that they had intended an untruth, yet morally we may know that they intended not to tell the truth. There are those who, as Isaiah said “make a man an offender for a word,” those who resort to slick, legal loopholes, who insincerely rely upon the letter of the law and ignore every intention of honor and honesty. Whatever our words, we shall ultimately have to answer for the intent of our actions and utterances – and not merely for the technicalities, not merely for the letter of the law. 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. “Veracity does not consist in saying, but in the intention of communicating truth.” The mere appearance of truthfulness is not enough.