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The kind of community Bellah describes stands in stark contrast to the reality of totalitarian governments, which fabricate Potemkin villages of fake prosperity and false contentment and require their citizens to live within an oppressive web of lies.

Almost immediately after the President's Lewinsky-related lies, half-truths, and misdirections became public, sympathetic clergy and public servants called for forgiveness. But, as the New York Times editorial page was quick to point out, "[W]e can afford to be a nation of forgivers. But we must not become a nation of enablers." The nation must refuse to endorse the President's personal lies and our cultural ones.

Truth, as a way of life, is hard. It takes courage and commitment not to settle for the comfort of the lies we tell about ourselves, to have the darkness of our souls made visible. Being truthful is a countercultural, gospel commitment, coloring how we relate to government, to culture, and to ourselves. Being truthful recognizes the way sin shadows everything human and proclaims the need to shine the gospel light on every life and institution. Still, the gospel brings freedom to say no to lies and to live in reality.

All this attention to perjury and misdirection has created a moment, a providential parenthesis in history, in which we can have some kind of national intervention, telling the truth about our cultural denial, pretensions, and wishful thinking. May God give us the courage to seize the day.

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November 16 1998, Vol. 42, No. 13