c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Dale Hanson Bourke is publisher of RNS and the mother of two sons.)

UNDATED _ At the school my sons attend there is something called The Honor Code.

The Honor Code says you must not cheat or steal. But even more difficult is the admonition that a student must not lie. Even if you didn’t do anything wrong yourself _ even if you were just trying to cover for a buddy _ lying is a violation of The Honor Code punishable by expulsion.

It sounds good in principle, but it’s a tough concept for an adolescent to totally understand. After all, if a teacher asks you a simple question like where your friend is, do you spill your guts about his whereabouts or do you mumble a simple,”I don’t know”?

Chances are the mumble will get you through, but if that buddy is in trouble and your answer could have shed light on his situation you could find yourself in a high-profile hearing over a simple little omission of information.

Truth-telling in its full glory can be pretty darn scary.

The school takes this standard quite seriously. By the time the boys are in high school they seem pretty clear that shading, deceiving, misleading or denying are all just synonyms for lying.

They are also pretty aware that there is something worse in their school than being called a snitch or a squealer or a rat. Being thrown out of school for lying is not considered noble, even if you did it to cover for a friend. It’s mostly considered stupid since the standard has been clearly set, regularly enforced and constantly upheld.

And a true friend would never ask you to lie.

It’s interesting to overhear the conversations of the boys as they discuss behavior. They seem to understand how someone could get carried away and do something dumb, how a guy could panic and react in a situation, even how temptation strikes. But they are amazed when someone they know tells a lie.

What is even more amazing is what happens when a guy tells a bold lie, hoping that if he denies something and there is no evidence, he won’t be punished. It’s a natural human reaction, one we have seen played out in courtrooms and on the television. If you are in big enough trouble, some would say it’s worth the gamble. What do you have to lose?

The fact is, sometimes it works. If a guy is bold enough and there is no evidence, the administration can’t do anything to him. But that’s when it gets interesting.

What I have observed is that he may escape the punishment of the school, but not the community. Boys stop respecting him. His violation of trust is taken seriously by his peers. Instead of being a macho hero he is considered a sneak. And to a teenage boy, this is probably worse punishment than expulsion.

Watching my sons and their friends learn to live by The Honor Code has been convicting to me. They value the truth far more than most adults I know. They are quite clear that all of the words we use to soften the meaning are still lying. They have even been known to listen to the television news and call out,”Honor Code violation!” Whatever my sons learn in school, I am convinced that they will go on in life with a very clear sense of what it means to tell the truth. I am not naive enough to believe that neither one will face a professional situation where his lawyer advises him to say nothing.

But I do believe that even in those moments a little voice in his head will say,”Honor Code violation.”Neither will be able to say with a straight face,”I really did believe that I was telling the truth.” The Honor Code works because it is part of the fabric of a community. It is respected and upheld, enforced and openly discussed. It doesn’t produce perfect kids and it can’t make up for moral values that haven’t been taught elsewhere. But it is a clear expression of what is valued.

Listening to the proceedings in Congress makes me sad for my country and my children. Wherever one comes down on impeachment, whatever one understands about legal jeopardy, the discussion of how we value truth-telling has been frightening.

Some pundits claim future generations will look back and wonder how we could have been foolish enough to let the impeachment question go so far.

Perhaps.

But I believe the next generation may judge us more harshly for our inability to distinguish truth from lies. I hope they will ask how we ever came to a place where our legal system required limitations on truth and intelligent adults could claim that misleading is not the same as lying.

DEA END BOURKE