When I was 18, I got caught in a lie.
I had attended a party as an underage person where there was alcohol. Eventually, the tenor of the party crescendoed to a pitch that caught the ears of the police. Almost all of us, underage, were ticketed and sent to court. I omitted this information from my parents, fearing the consequences.
A friend had come to visit me from Ohio that same summer, and we spent a lovely day playing tourists at The Art Institute of Chicago. When we returned home later that evening, there was a newspaper clipping on my bed. To my absolute horror, the names, addresses and ages of all those who got ticketed at that party had been printed up in the local press. Attached to the clipping was a simple sticky note. It read, in my father’s very distinctive handwriting, “We need to talk.” I broke down sobbing.
Alissia J. Thompson
Overwhelmed with shame and guilt, I approached my parents to talk. They sat me down at the kitchen table, at which point I began blubbering my apology. They laughed. I’ll never forget this moment, a master class in parenting. They responded, “Look, we’ve been there. You just happened to get caught. So what’s next?”
I was dumbfounded.
Weeks later, my parents and I went to court. I was the only one whose parents came. They stood with me in front of the judge, and because they were present, I got ‘sentenced’ to six hours of drug and alcohol classes. The judge commended me for bringing them (little did he know). Meanwhile, my contemporaries were all sentenced to several hours’ worth of community service. Again, I cried tears of guilt and relief.
When the Pharisees criticized the disciples for not washing their hands before eating, thus rendering them unclean, Jesus offered this rebuke: “It is not what goes into the mouth that makes one unclean, but what comes out” (Matthew 15:1-20). Although Jesus did not specify, I count my ‘lie by omission’ as equally unclean, simply because I did not tell the truth.
Lest we forget, the truth still matters and lying is morally and ethically problematic. Yet, the impunity with which the Trump administration lies, gaslights and deceives its constituency is not only breathtaking, but believed. Yes, lying has been hyper-normalized to the extent that, even when caught (see Fox News), people still take these unclean utterances as truth. And we cannot continue to normalize it.
The murder of Renee Nicole Good is yet another tragic and infuriating example of this administration’s wanton and vicious deployment of lying. Despite video footage and evidence to the contrary, Kristi Noem and the Department of Homeland Security insist the murderer, ICE Agent Jonathan Ross, acted in self-defense as Good was attempting to “run him over.”
This is simply and maliciously untrue.
The footage is clear. Renee Nicole Good was no “domestic terrorist.” She was a mother of three, a poet, a wife and a Christian. And how this administration is feeding its voracious propaganda machine with these lies is spectacularly unclean.
We must witness to and speak the truth.
Lies should have consequences.
Just ask my parents.
Alissia J. Thompson serves as pastor of The United Church of Granville in Granville, Ohio. She earned a master of divinity degree from the University of Chicago and is currently working on a doctor of ministry degree at Fordham University. She resides in Newark, Ohio, with her wife and flock of fur and feather.
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