Saturday, January 31, 1998

Amid allegations of sex and lies, take time to heed Jesus' warning

By Lauren R. Stanley / Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service

Nearly 2,000 years ago, a young, itinerant teacher sat down on a mountainside and taught the people who were following him how best to live in ways pleasing to God. In the midst of his teaching, he warned the people:

"Do not judge, so that you may not be judged."

We would do well, in this day and age, to listen again to Jesus' lesson to the multitudes. Because we seem to be caught up in a frenzy, in a rush to judgment, over allegations of sex and lies in the White House.

If you read the newspapers and watch the television enough, you, too, could be convinced that the only things we care about in this country right now are sex and lying about sex.

We are rushing to judgment without learning the facts, condemning without considering the possibility of innocence.

This certainly isn't what Jesus taught those multitudes 2,000 years ago, or teaches us today.

To be sure, the furor that has arisen over these allegations of sex between President Clinton and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, and whether the Clinton asked her to lie under oath, raises a slew of questions.

But those questions, in and of themselves, raise another batch of questions, on another level, the level of which Jesus preached.

The fundamental question is this: Did Clinton and Lewinsky have sex? If the answer is yes, then the question that immediately must follow is: Did Clinton ask Lewinsky to lie about it? But let's be clear here: While the questions are about sex and lies, the issue Is abuse of power. If these two people indeed had sex, there could not have been consent, because Clinton is the president of the United States, and Lewinsky was but an intern. And if they had sex, and Clinton then asked Lewinsky to lie, that, too, is an issue of abuse of power, again because Clinton is president of the United States.

Of course, in our rush to judgment, we seem to be overlooking the fact that both people allegedly involved in these acts vehemently deny anything ever happened.

So what about the tapes? Well, ask yourself: Would you be more likely to lie -- or perhaps just "embellish" the truth -- with a friend, whom you do not know is taping your conversation -- or in front of a grand jury, under oath? Perhaps if more of us were willing to acknowledge that we sometimes fantasize about our lives, then more of us would be willing to hold off on our judgments until we had the facts.

There also are questions about independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, who was appointed, most of us thought, to investigate something called Whitewater down in Arkansas 14 years ago. Starr's excuse for delving into this issue is that he believes that any lie he can prove Clinton told on this issue would prove that, ipso facto, Clinton has lied about everything in his life. It's rather fallacious logic and certainly operates from the stance of guilty until proven innocent, rather than the other way around. Is there a chance that Starr, like so many others, is rushing to judgment?

And there are questions about Linda Tripp, the former White House aide, who broke the law to tape conversations with Lewinsky, and Lucianne Goldberg, the literary agent who urged Tripp to make the tapes. Why Tripp secretly would tape conversations with her friend is something we don't know. Goldberg seems a little easier to understand, because she is clear about her motives: She wants to "get" Clinton, any way she can. In at least one published report, she even went so far as to say that if her credibility were attacked, she'd "be on the lawn of the White House with a deer rifle." The rush to judgment -- the rush to condemn -- is clear here, which should raise questions for those of us who are afraid to judge without knowing the truth.

And, in the end, there are questions about all of us who make up this country. Those questions center on who we think we are, who we think our leaders are, and to what standards we are holding those leaders. We seem to feel that nothing in a public person's life is off limits, and that it is more than OK to accuse a public person of something, simply because he or she is a public person. But when this happens, do we even stop to think about the harm we are doing, not only to that person but to the country? Do we think about Jesus' warning -- "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged"? -- before we launch our first attacks?

Or are we so sure of our "right" to attack that we go ahead anyway, figuring we will be safe, because after all, we are not public people, and therefore, we can't be attacked.

When Jesus was teaching the multitudes in Galilee, he wasn't saying that a person who committed a sin should be allowed to get away with it. He wasn't urging us to get rid of justice. He was very clear on this piece of it: "Justice" is not the same as "judgmental." The former calls for us to use our judgment to find our way to the truth. The latter calls us to condemn those whom we do not like, or who are different from us. The former relies on facts, the latter on opinions.

So when Jesus said, "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged," he was warning us: Be careful how you judge others, and how quickly you do so, because one day, this could happen to you, and you won-3/4t like it either.

We are called by God to love one another as ourselves. Which means that if we want to be given the benefit of the doubt, if we want to be treated fairly and presumed innocent until proven guilty, if we want our denials to be believed, then we must give others the benefit of the doubt. We must treat others fairly, presuming them innocent until proven guilty. We must believe their denials, we must look closely and calmly for the facts.

Because if we don't, we will be judged, just as we are judging others. And that's not justice. That's being judgmental.

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(The Rev. Lauren R. Stanley, a former assistant news editor for the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, is a deacon at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Burke, Va. Readers may write to Stanley care of Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, 790 National Press Building, Washington, D.C., 20045.)

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(c) 1998, Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.