False Witness

       In an old Peanuts cartoon, the students are assigned an essay about returning to school.  Lucy writes, "Vacations are nice, but it's good to get back to school.  There is nothing more satisfying or challenging than education, and I look forward to a year of expanding knowledge."

       The teacher is very pleased with Lucy and compliments her fine essay.  Lucy leans over and whispers to Charlie Brown, "After a while, you learn what sells."

       The temptation to say what others want to hear whether it is true or not, is always with us.  We face a serious truth shortage in our society.

       Look at what the ads tell us:

            (ad from GQ Magazine with comment)

       Americans lie on their income tax returns to the tune of millions of dollars a year.  Doctors fake reports in order to profit from Medicare patients.  Prize athletes at great universities are kept eligible for competition through bogus credits and forged transcripts.

        We live in a huckstering world.  After a while, people don't expect to hear the truth anymore. But God calls His people to truth.

       There are two ways to read the ninth commandment.  There is a narrow reading and there is a wide reading.  The narrow reading is the way the ancient Israelite heard the ninth commandment.  They heard it as a rule against lying in court.  A false accusation could deprive a person of property, land, reputation, and even life.  There was no CSI Jerusalem to lend a hand.  An accused person could not hire a Perry Mason to cross-examine witnesses and trick the truth out of them.  He had to plead his own case.  There was no jury.  He had to rely on the judge's ability to size up the character of the plaintiffs and witnesses.  Everything hung in the balance while the prince or the judge drew on his own personal ability to recognize an honest person when he saw one. In the gate where the law court met, the great need was a willingness to tell the truth.

        It is no wonder that Zechariah 8:16-17 commands, "Speak every person the truth to his neighbor, execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates."  In the courtroom the wrong of /lying is obvious.  It can ruin a brother or sister and pervert justice.    

       The wider reading of the ninth commandment is that truth telling is God’s norm in all human communications -- not just for sworn statements in a court of law.  The community of God is meant to show itself as a community of sincerity and truth.  So Paul writes in Ephesians 4:25: "Therefore, putting away the lie let everyone speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another."

       Read in the light of love, the ninth commandment calls us to active defense of the truth.  In the words of the Heidelberg Catechism, the commandment means that I am called to "defend and promote the honor and reputation of my neighbor."  Slander and gossip can take away in a few moments what it's taken a person a lifetime to create -- a good reputation.  So the ninth commandment obligates us to come to the defense of people whose lives are hurt by gossip, innuendo, and rumor. 

       Let me say a special word here to Junior and Senior High students.  Schools are centers for gossip.  When I was a teenager I remember thinking that if was good enough if the gossip wasn’t about me.  I was glad to see it aimed in another direction.  But that’s not good enough.  We must expend ourselves to protect people from untruth about themselves.  This is the work of love.  Love does not only rejoice in the truth for one's own self, but protects the truth for others.

       Now this issue of truth telling raises some very obvious questions.  The first obvious question is "who gets the truth?"  Does the Gestapo have the right to know you have a family of Jewish children in you attic?  What if they ask?     

       No.  They don't have the right to know.  There are greater issues at stake.  Respect for truthfulness does not compel us to reveal our minds to everyone on every occasion.  The ninth commandment assumes a situation that calls on us to speak.  The bottom line is that the commandment tells us to speak truthfully whenever it is appropriate for us to speak at all.  It does not ask us to tell the people at the next table in a restaurant that their manners are repulsive -- even if they are.  It does not require me to share all of my feelings to a stranger on the on the airplane. But I am called to speak the truth in any situation in which I have a responsibility to communicate at all.

       A politician ought to speak the truth about public issues.  He does not need to tell us what kind of underwear he prefers.  Bill Clinton gave us too much information.  I don’t think Obama or McCain will think it’s necessary.  A doctor ought to tell me the truth, as he understands it, about my health.  He does not need to tell me his views on universal health insurance. 

       This commandment does not call us to be blabbermouths.  But in the things that we ought to speak about at all, truthfulness is demanded.

       In his book on the Ten Commandments, the late Professor Lew Smedes of Fuller Seminary says that this is true for several reasons.

       First, because even white lies cause an erosion of our "sense of truthfulness".  The person who uses the harmless lie as an escape route from every uncomfortable conversation can soon become addicted to lying.  If you always try to make people around you feel good by exaggerated praise, if you always soothe anger by glossing over whatever it was that made you angry, if you always rescue yourself from socially tight situations by lying about your feelings, you are likely to develop a habit and you risk losing your feel for being truthful, your sense of the claim that truthfulness has on you.”

       "Second," Smedes explains, "lying leads to an evasion of reality.  He observes, "The 'white lie' is to communication what Valium is to stress.  Used in emergencies, they might be detours around trouble we are not equipped to cope with today.  But as a habit, they both become patterns of evasion.  We use them, not to give us time to catch our breath so that we can confront trouble tomorrow, but to live as though trouble did not trouble us. The habitual white liar is a person who "cops out" of risk and unpleasantness.

       And third, lying leads to a moral handcuffing of other people.  The "white lie" ties the deceived person down to the lie and prevents him or her from a free response to reality.  Preventing a small pain for now, the "white lie" often causes more pain later on.  A writer gets a manuscript back from a publisher with the gentle lie: "your work is too sophisticated for our readers."  The "white lie" is just enough of an encouragement to discourage the writer from the painful job of rewriting a boring book…White lies start out as social crutches but soon become shackles.

       “So-called benevolent lying robs people of their right to truth. Someone else decides that people who are mere citizens or patients do not have an intrinsic right to trust people to speak truthfully to them.  This puts people into infantile roles.  Somebody else is deciding for them when they are strong enough to bear up under the truth and when they ought to be deceived.  

       And finally, Smedes explains, lying to helps rob people of freedom.  No one can be free who is forced to make decisions on the basis of false or misleading information.  People who are lied to for their own political or physical good are, by that lie, being held in bondage.  They cannot make their own response to the bad news about their own reality.  For in fact, sometimes the thing we need most is life is the bad news about our own reality.”

       Auto maker John DeLorean is a good example of this.  Those of you who are younger will know DeLorean from reruns of the Back to the Future movies.  That cool time traveling car in the movies is a DeLorean.

        DeLorean was once the fair-haired boy of the automotive world.  But DeLorean suddenly found himself in a court of law accused of drug dealing and having to fight for what was left of his business. 

       In his book, he narrates the pivotal moment in his trial, a moment that to him was like a sudden dawn breaking in on his bleak darkness.  DeLorean described his emotions as a key government witness and paid informer testified against him -- piling lie upon lie and building a completely fabricated series of conversations.  "Why is he doing this?  Why is he building this totally false story?" puzzled the frantic and uncontrollably angry DeLorean.

       But all at once, he realized that what was happening in the courtroom was a mirror image of what had happened in his own life. "I had a moment of deja vu.  I came face to face with the old John DeLorean in all his prideful pursuit of fame, power, and glory."  Watching the self-serving zeal with which this lying witness trampled underfoot all that was decent and honorable. DeLorean saw that it was no different to the blind ambition that had driven him to chase his own dream.  For in his pursuit he, himself, had trampled under what he had once treasured.  He had, in fact, already born false witness against himself.  He had lied to himself about himself.  And God in his mercy broke through.

       This inward look led DeLorean to humble himself before God and paved the way for a dramatic transformation in his life as he sought forgiveness before a merciful God.  It was a hard step for him, but repentance is always difficult.

       It was humbling.  But humbling and humiliation are not the same thing.  In fact, God's humbling of us is the doorway to God's elevating us.

       We see this in the Lord's Table.  Jesus said, "This is My body broken for you.  This is My blood shed for you."  The dark reality, Jesus tells us, is that you can't save yourself.  I had to take your place.  Deal with it.  The good news is that I love you enough to take your place.  Jesus says that to you here through His table. 

       And Jesus always tells the truth.