To lie or not to lie?

Over lunch today I was given the following scenario:

You are on a mission trip to China. You and many of the people in your group are smuggling Bibles to distribute to people there. You are stopped by the border guard and asked if you are smuggling Bibles. Do you lie?

The scenario was based on a real event encountered by a friend of hers on a mission trip with a neighboring church. She was very upset by the thought that the pastor in the group instructed the youth on the trip to lie. This situation is difficult and it poses some interesting questions:

• Are we being distrustful of God to lie in this scenario? After all, God could certainly arrange circumstances in such a way that you would be able to maintain your honesty and the Bibles would be delivered.
• If one were to tell the truth in this situation, would it be putting God to the test?
• Doesn't the greater good that would be accomplished by successfully smuggling the Bibles outway the harm done by a lie?
• What does lying do to Christian witness?
• How does Matthew 5:33-37 apply to this situation?
  

The good news here is that this is not the first time that a situation like this has been considered. Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1885) addressed this issue in Fear and Trembling . He introduced a concept called the Teleological Suspension of the Ethical. This was based on his reading of Genesis 22.

Genesis 22

¹ And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. ² And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. ³ And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him. ⁴ Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off. ⁵ And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you. ⁶ And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together. ⁷ And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? ⁸ And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together. ⁹ And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. ¹⁰ And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. ¹¹ And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. ¹² And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me. ¹³ And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.

Kierkegaard argued that having faith means moving into a realm in which one ceases to be in the universal or rational, in which one acts as an individual in a non-rational leap-of-faith out of the world of our everyday lives and into God's world of infinate wisdom.

To put it more simply, Kierkegaard believed that having true faith meant being willing to do what we consider to be unethical, if so directed by God.

Applying this reasoning to our scenario, it seems that the correct thing to do would be to lie. I realize that this is a pretty radical statement because this same reasoning could be used to justify all sorts of things. In fact, some people have done horrible things claiming that they are on a mission from God (David Karesh anyone?)

This has serious ramifications, especially when it is combined with a progressive understanding of social justice. Could we use this reasoning to justify overthrowing a corrupt government? by force? Sounds like liberation theology, but that is an issue for another time.