Richard L. Evans wrote: There is a sentence from one of the writings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge that suggests a deeply significant subject: “Veracity,” he said, “Does not consist in saying, but in the intention of communicating truth.”(i)
Too often it is assumed that someone has told the truth when actually they told a half-truth and withheld the other half. But no one has told the truth when they deliberately left a false impression, no matter what words they used or how they has used them.
They might mislead others by the inflection of their voice, by insinuation and innuendo, by gesture, by what they suggest rather than by what they say, and by what they leave unsaid. They might say so much and imply much more, and then hide behind the literal limits of the language. In many such ways they may frequently falsify, and often it could not be legally proven that a lie was perpetuated yet morally they may know that they intended not to tell the truth.
There are those who, as Isaiah indicts them,”make a man an offender for a word,”(ii) those who resort to slick, legal loopholes, those who insincerely rely upon the letter of the law and ignore every intention of honor and honesty. Whatever our words we shall ultimately have to answer for the broad intent of our actions and utterances—and not merely for legal terminology or technicalities, not merely for the letter of the law.
The whole intent, what we mean to do or not to do, what we mean to say or not to say, what we think in our heart, what we are in our soul are all involved in “telling” the truth for which we are all accountable before our fellow men and before our eternal Father.
God grant in our time we may hear and know and speak and write and live the truth, and not rely on tricky technicalities or legal loopholes or ambiguous utterance that is a mere mask for falsehood. “Veracity does not consist in saying, but in the intention in communicating truth.” The mere appearance of truth is not enough.~Richard L. Evans, From the Crossroads New York, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1955). 187-88.
i) Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, 187
ii) Isaiah 29:21
The above has been modernized from the original.
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