What Does it Mean to Bear False Witness?
Bearing false witness has often been simplified to mean "lying." The belief that lying is unethical is a central tenent to many religions. Bearing false witness is particularly lethal when it creates a unfair consequence for others. The admonition against "bearing false witness" is located two Old Testament texts and is number nine of the ten commandments.
“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” This Commandment is recorded in Exodus 20:19 and Deuteronomy 5:20.
Rev. David Wilson Rogers indicated that the two texts use different words for the word 'false.' According to Rogers, the Exodus text references intentional falsification - or a deliberately misleading statement. Despite the different nuance, he correctly states that,
This is a very hard truth to fully accept, and an even more challenging one to live out in our Christian lives. Any time we make broad and pejorative statements, we violate God’s commandment. Anytime we share or spread false, incomplete, or distorted information— knowingly or ignorantly — we violate God’s commandment. Anytime we cast condemnation upon whole classes of people we do not know, we violate God’s commandment.
My concern with bearing false witness is twofold: 1) the harm it causes to the recipient of the lie and, 2) the strangle hold it places upon the speaker. Whether conscious or unconscious bias, the result is still often a devastating result for the recipient. One example is the Central Park Five, who were coerced and wrongly convicted of raping a White woman. The five African American youths, aged 14-16, served seven years for a crime they did not and could not have committed. Using his privileged position to help advocate for their imprisonment, Donald Trump spoke untruthfully about their guilt and used considerable funds to demand the death penalty for the youths.
The consequence to these teens, their families and their communities, is only the tip of the iceburg. The consquence went well beyond that to creating an impact for African Americans, more broadly, as proof that even our children are not safe from coercisive and illegal presumptions of guilt - that over very skin color is perceived as a weapon against the State.
The failure of Christians to live into the fullness of the Ninth Commandment is all around us. Bearing false witness does far more than distort and corrupt truth. It shatters peace, erodes trust, and violates all of humanity. Even well-intended statements that are rooted in presumed Christian doctrine violate God’s Law in powerful, albeit subtle ways.
My second concern is that this has an impact upon the speaker, and others who operated to condemn the youths as well. By advocating a presumption of their guilt, people like Trump do not only cause harm to other communities, but they harm themselves.
"White Rage" is closely tied to a need to maintain unfair levels of power through unjust actions. Without setting an example of the person who appears to transcend the racial caste system, without making an example to the rest of their community that "this is what we will do to you next ..." then White rage becomes unbearable. By eroding trust between communities, we create a wedge of mistrust that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
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