With the Christmas cookies about to be officially put away for another year, people can get busy on a batch of everyone's favorite holiday treat — New Year's fudge.
Most will serve it up just after midnight tonight, heavy as a mud bundt cake, sweetened with promises to be better next year and an irresistible nougat center of excuses for why we won't be.
Fudging our way out of a new and improved self are as common as making New Year's resolutions, says psychotherapist, spiritual guidance-giver and popular cultural analyst Will Miller. It's like keeping our fingers crossed when we commit to recommit, the most basic form of kidding ourselves or our most intimate white lie.
Miller, whose latest book on American relationships is "Refrigerator Rights," says some of us dip a finger into the creamy excuses right away, "tailoring semantics and definitions and specifics, which of course just whittles away our resolve."
We'll pose questions, usually to ourselves, such as when exactly does a New Year's resolution begin — at midnight or on Jan. 2 or the first day back at work in the new year or the first day of February because January is kind of the recovery month needed to fully cleanse the residue of the bad habits of last year so as not to contaminate the improvements in the new, better year.
Miller and other observers of the human condition say while people shouldn't be too quick to let themselves off the hook, they agree white lies to ourselves or to others can be good personal politics — a kind of WD-40 in a sticky situation, as long as it is used sparingly, isn't harmful to others and doesn't turn you slippery.
They make for a smoother operating workplace and possibly better health. "Therapeutic fibs" for our own good are a common practice in medicine.
Is there anyone who really thinks they could withstand the friction of promising to go a year — or even a day — without a white lie? Is just being more cautious about telling white lies a worthy or even possible New Year's resolution for 2006?
Some church leaders say no and that it's actually ethical to tell white lies. Others say being totally truthful, especially with yourself, is the only acceptable rule and that people who believe white lies are OK in any circumstance believe that the 9th Commandment comes with a fine print loophole.
"Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits them all," an old adage states. Elder Gene R. Cook of the Quorum of the Seventy, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, repeated it in an 1981 talk — "Gossip: Satan's Snare." He also cautioned: "If you are one of those who think it permissible to tell white lies, you may soon find yourself color-blind."
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, there are three types of lies and only one does harm — "An officious, or white, lie is such that it does nobody any injury: it is a lie of excuse, or a lie told to benefit somebody. An injurious lie is one which does harm."
The Catholic faith lists a third type of lie — a "jocose" one — told jokingly for entertainment purposes.
Both in doctrine and in person, area religious leaders advise caution in any case.
"I don't know if I'd ever advise someone to lie," the Rev. Art Ritter of Salt Lake's First Congregational Church said earlier this week, adding that doing so creates a slippery slope. He added, however, that withholding information — if it's painful — is warranted at times.
"Truth is what every Christian ought to be committed to" and no Christian should ever deceive someone unless it involves protecting life itself or some other precious cause, said Rev. Mike Gray of Salt Lake's Southeast Baptist Church.
Gray believes there's always a way to find the positive in things — such as a wife's dress that a husband might dislike, or not shooting down a child's dismal performance — and thus avoid lying by taking a different approach.
The Rev. Tom Goldsmith of the First Unitarian Church of Salt Lake City said he believes a white lie is a kind of practical bending of the truth to spare feelings. "As long as nobody gets hurt."
Goldsmith said white lies can save friendships and relationships — critically important parts of life — and there's nothing wrong with that. "If you were honest about everything, you would not have a friend in the world."
The late Elder Howard W. Hunter, eventually an LDS Church President, was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve in 1978 when he asked church members: "Is there any difference in principle between a little white lie and the perjury of a witness in a court of law or before a congressional investigative committee under oath? Are there really degrees of dishonesty, depending upon whether or not the subject is great or small?"
The late Elder Delbert L. Stapley, a former member of the Quorum of the Twelve in the LDS Church hit on a key component of honesty in a 1971 talk: "It seems honesty must being honest with oneself; otherwise we could not recognize this quality in others. We see things not as they are, but as we are."
One former LDS bishop said white lies geared to avoid hurt feelings are all a part of being "tactful."
However, he said, the boundaries of tact are commonly pushed among some LDS Church members who know who a ward's next bishop or new area leader is but say they don't know when asked. "I can't say" is a more truthful response and it respects both the information until it is formally announced as well as those who will be affected by it.
Gregory Koukl, a radio host who discusses white lies and other deceptions on the "Stand to Reason" Web site, www.str.org, says that all sin is not the same to God — that even He makes distinctions. It's therefore possible or us to "solve ethical dilemmas. When stuck between two options, we choose the greater good."
Regarding white lies, Koukl said people should tell the truth unless they have a more weighty reason not to be totally truthful. He's also against avoiding awkwardness by telling an untruth. For example, telling someone after a date you will call when you have no intention of doing so is lying to two people and temporarily saves face for one at the expense of the other.
Quinn G. McKay, a former business ethics professor at the University of Utah and author of the book Is Lying Sometimes the Right Thing for an Honest Person to Do?. wonders if the seemingly harmless white lie of "Santa Claus" is the initial step onto a slippery slope of rationalization that truth-telling is not objective but merely based on one's own perception of what being honest means. Santa may be the first 'little white lie' that parents tell their children.
In a 2003 Deseret Morning News interview, McKay also said that his decades-long search for the realities of being honest brought him to one inescapable conclusion — "Lying is sometimes the right thing for an honest person to do."
McKay said, for example, he couldn't have in good conscience told Nazi soldiers that Jews were hiding in his home simply because it was the truth. And he suspects most people would be able to justify the same decision.
So, while McKay always told his students that he didn't approve of fraud, money-laundering or other types of crime, he does hold out to them the possibility that all of them might very well be dishonest — often without realizing it.
For example, McKay said think about when you praised a self-conscious child's performance, no matter how disappointing the result. Did you "state the true facts" and "convey a true impression?" Or did you "rationalize" and tell yourself that the child's tender feelings were the primary consideration in your effusive praise?
Overstatement or exaggeration is one of what McKay calls four "devilish devices of deception." The other three: outright lying; understatement; withholding information.
Because we don't live in a perfect world, McKay believes anyone who wants to be ethical and honest must "spend some conscientious effort in deciding when lying would be justified and then articulate meaningful and practical guidelines."
Just as you may mislead opponents on the basketball court by faking a jump shot, most businesses use some form of deception, McKay has noted. Examples include the way they price their merchandise at $9.99 (mental manipulation), the "extra" charges that aren't quoted up front or the puffery that makes small businesses seem larger or have more longevity than it does.
Contributing: Carrie Moore, Deseret Morning News.
E-mail: lynn@desnews.com