Identity & Literature: Huckleberry Finn & Lies of Loyalty

I’m starting a new theme within my blog that fuses some of my favorite topics: classic literature and identity, viewed through a biblical lens. If that doesn’t strike your fancy, feel free to ignore any blog that starts with “Identity & Literature.”

“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot,” so orders Mark Twain before beginning one of the greatest American adventure tales ever written.

At the risk of being banished from the country whose folklore is now indelibly etched with Twain’s imagination, I want to pry around the moral edges of Huckleberry Finn. In the banter about Twain’s free use of the N-word, his take on racism and religious hypocrisy in the Civil-War-era South, and attempting to apply his vision of social justice in today’s world, there is a theme that goes unnoticed—Huck Finn’s compulsive fibbing.

It is the protagonist’s greatest weakness. But when located in such a likable character, and as the engine behind some of the funniest scenes in the story, Huck’s lying receives a light touch. But it is Twain’s cavalier approach to the truth that lays the groundwork for the secularist worldview so prevalent in 21^st century America.

You don’t have to do much digging on Twain to discover his dislike for Christianity. Yet, as you’d expect from any secularist today, that doesn’t mean he was without morals. His ethical grid becomes apparent notsomuch in any positive declaration of moral absolutes, but in hilariously shredding those he disagrees with—in short, he’s a perfect spokesman for our time.

Truth in the Eye of the Teller

Whenever Huck Finn gets into a jam, his go-to solution is to start lying like crazy. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s always funny. Two incidents reveal Twain’s moral reasoning when it comes to lying. On one occasion, Huck strikes out to turn in his friend Jim as a runaway slave, but has a change of heart, and then lies to protect Jim. On another occasion, Huck is trying to expose the work of some con-artists he’s fallen in with to a girl who’s in danger of falling as an innocent victim. He’s shocked to discover that, for once, he can find no better way of going about it than to actually tell her the truth.

For Huck (and for therefore the reader), truth and falsehood fall in the service of loyalty. It’s easy to pass over and enjoy Huck spinning his yarns because he’s helping his friend Jim get to freedom or he’s trying to stop the bad guys. This is how we prefer to see truth in our sinful nature, because then we’re the ones who get to decide—is this person a friend or a foe? Are they worthy of truth or lies?

We like to believe that the exact words we say are less important than the cause they serve. Does what I’m saying help or hinder? Specifically, does it help the people I want to help and hinder the people I want to hinder? Do these words make my friends feel good, and my opponents feel bad? Those questions carry more moral weight today than some stuffy, small-minded quibbling born out of your rigid, doctrinaire perspective on “objective truth.” In other words, experience trumps absolute.

The challenge with this moral math—loyalty determines truth—is that it’s not entirely off. It’s just that our loyalty belongs to God above everyone. We take our cues on what to say from God. Our words should always help his cause and hinder his enemies. Unfortunately, this does little to let us off the hook when it comes to truthtelling, because God has made his preferences perfectly clear: “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all” (I John 1:5).

Loyalty to God Means Truth

God retains mystery (Deuteronomy 29:29), but that’s an entirely different category than deceit. The closer to God you get, the closer you get to full and constant truth. Satan, on the other hand, does nothing but lie. “When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). Satan’s constant design is to exert his power by persuading people of his version of the truth rather than God’s.

Defining reality is God’s prerogative, which is why we’re so eager to keep trying to take that power for ourselves when we decide what we do or don’t present as true. One of our greatest acts of faith as Christians is to speak the truth even when we cannot see how it will help. That act of faith shows that we are creatures who live and depend on God’s Word of truth.

To be clear, truthtelling is not a God-like sense of certainty. We should admit the things we don’t know. We see through clouds and mist in places where God shines with radiant clarity. We can be honest about that. Neither is truthtelling license to be a jerk. Christians speak the truth in love. Remember what your mom told you, “If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all.” In personal relationships, you earn the right to speak in less guarded ways over time. But guarded speech still doesn’t mean deceitful.

Twain rightly implies that we should render truth in the service of loyalty. The righteous man “swears to his own hurt and does not change” (Psalm 15:4). You can see the beauty and dignity of this righteous man’s soul in the way his words reveal his loyalty to God above every other person, most strikingly, himself.