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Exodus 20:16 ‘You shall bot bear false witness’
Out our way, it was once understood that our word was our bond. Yet there have always been those who, as they said in the movies, “speak with forked tongue.” Liars and cheats have always been a problem and so it’s not surprising God condemns it. This is especially true when it comes to public trust — for those who lie in public are considered especially wicked.
In the ancient world before the days of CSI and FBI labs, evidence was mainly eyewitness accounts. It took two witnesses, whose testimony agreed with each other, to be considered evidence. Now of course, people could and did conspire with each other to “get their stories straight” and then falsely accuse their victim. That is why the punishment for perjury was so severe. Whatever sentence would have been given to the accused would instead be visited on the accuser and liar. If I lied and said I saw you steal someone’s car — I would be the one who would pay the penalty for grand theft auto. Worse, if I falsely swore that you were the one who murdered a neighbor, I am the one who would be liable to life in prison or lethal injection.
Perjury — false testimony — is considered one of the worst crimes against neighbors, because it is so easily done and so often succeeds. We have top demand people swear an oath that they will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth on the witness stand … because in so swearing the both make themselves liable for perjury if they lie … and also call down a curse upon themselves if they lie. “If I’m lying I’m dying!” Secularists may scoff at such things — but even they have some sense of karma — “What goes around comes around.” And it usually does.
But perjury or bearing false witness is not merely a matter of the legal system, but a matter of culture and civilization. As Hitler demonstrated, the “Big Lie,” if told often enough and presented as truth, will eventually become the “truth.” In a book called “The Goebbels Diaries,” the author interviews college professors and intellectuals after World War II and found that fashion and public opinion can be manipulated by propaganda and even supposedly educated people will come to believe it. Goebbels, the master of propaganda for the Nazis, managed to manipulate the faculties and the media over the years until most Germans came to believe the Nazi lies were the truth — and hence the holocaust. Today, we see Goebbels’s techniques being used on college campuses and in the media as various popular and supposedly elite groups give false testimony, swallowed whole by a gullible public, and becomes the “truth.” One professor at Berkley said the banning of free speech was necessary because opinions some people didn’t like were “microaggression” and should be halted by censorship or “macroaggression” — i.e. violence. Sadly, his views are no longer considered radical but are being adopted in places like Charlottesville, Virginia, and Durham, North Carolina, where radical groups on both the left and right have forsaken dialogue and debate for riots and physical aggression.
And, sadly, when we look at what has riled up these politically polar opposites to take the same road, it is the same cause … false witness by others who stir up their cronies with lies and historical inaccuracies as an excuse to hate, be prejudiced and bigoted. And Goebbels is laughing in hell to see his work carried on by fascists, communists, socialists, and other activists who only want an excuse to hate and act out their anger and frustrations. Instead of countering prejudice, bigotry and hate, the perjurers on the campus and in the media are creating and spreading it.
But there is another perjurer and false witness who is even worse than the liar in court or on campus — and that is the liar in Church. For like it or not, everyone who claims to be a Christian is also called to be a witness, for by our lives we give testimony to Christ. As has often been noted, the only “Bible” most people read today is the lives of the Christians around them. Gandhi did not begin his work in India, but in South Africa. Although a Hindu, he became greatly influenced by the Bible and the life of Christ. Deciding he wanted to know more, he attempted to enter a Christian Church but was thrown out by angry white Christians who did not tolerate “kefirs” in their sanctuary. As he would later note, while he still admired Christ, he saw “so little evidence of him in the Christians he met.”
My late cousin, Andrea, became a radical leftist and hater of the Church over the years because of the witness she saw in many local congregations and especially the TV churches where lightweight Christianity and heavy fundraising seemed to be the primary message. That this is the primary message of the Church is false testimony, but as Goebbels taught, eventually if it is not challenged it will become the truth.
A few years ago, I was a member of the “Wee Kirk” movement, a gathering of pastors from the small congregations. There was to be a big gathering in California, and I noted the featured speaker was not from a small church. Indeed, we were urged to listen to him because he was “successful” — that is, his congregation was well over 1,200 members, he had a huge budget, and he had become popular with the general public.
This made him an expert on small rural ministry? See what I mean about how false testimony, left unchallenged, becomes the perceived truth?
Now these “battles” against perjury on the national level may be beyond our control in many ways, but we can still challenge it by bearing true witness to Christ right here in our own community. Counter the propaganda and false witness of others by bearing faithful witness.
I have printed this before but I will do so again because it really rings true for me. It is a poem I ran across many years ago in a Church bulletin.
“You are writing the Gospel, a chapter each day
“By the things that you do and the things that you say.
“People read what you write, whether faithless of true.
“So, what is the Gospel … according to YOU?”
——
John Bruington and Goliath are still trying bear faithful witness and repent of the times they have failed — and hope you will join in him in wiping the grin of Josef Goebbels face.
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