"You Shall Not Bear False Witness Against Your Neighbor."
When I was reading this week, I came across a suggestion for a children's sermon on this passage from James. The preacher, with the children gathered around, would take a tube of toothpaste and squeeze a long stream of it onto a piece of paper. Then he or she would ask the children if there was a way to get the toothpaste back inside. Theoretically, these children would say no,there's no way to get the toothpaste back in. So it is, the preacher would then say, with our words. Once they're out of our mouths, we can't take them back. Even if we apologize for mean or hurtful things we've said, the damage is done. So be careful! ("Watch What You Say!," submitted by Julia A. Boyce, www.talks2children.itsforministry.org)
It's a good sermon, but I didn't pass the idea on to Charles because it's a sermon I didn't want to hear. We all know that terrible, stomach-clenching feeling when we say something we'd like to take back: a hurtful remark, a careless piece of gossip that takes on a life of its own. A comment, that—as soon as it comes out of our mouth—we realize is racist or sexist or unwise or just not true. A political opinion we once proclaimed boldly and now see as foolish. I've even known that feeling when preaching—especially since these sermons are immortalized on videotape. James recognizes how easily, almost uncontrollably, regrettable words come out of our mouths: every species of beast and bird, he says, of reptile and sea creature can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. Yes, we know that loose lips not only sink ships, they hurt children and lovers, they damage reputations, they lead to all kinds of political mischief.
The danger and the potential evil of words is recognized in the ten commandments. In the third commandment, we were warned against taking God's name in vain; and this one, nestled between the commands against coveting, stealing, and murder, tells us not to bear false witness against our neighbor. In ancient Israel, this would have been understood as false public testimony against another, in a court or assembly, before judges. Justice between neighbors and the well-being of the community depended on true witness and was perverted by false. There are many testimonies to this in scripture. One of them is the story of Nahob's vineyard, starring King Ahab and Jezebel.
(1 Kings 21:1-16, told from memory)
This story began with coveting—commandment number ten, coming next week—and ended with murder and thievery. The false witness by the two scoundrels was the hinge between these crimes, between Ahab's coveting of the vineyard, and the murder of Naboth and Ahab's seizing of the vineyard.
Today marks the third anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. That, too, began with coveting: of oil, of power. That, too has ended—or rather, continues—in murder and thievery. Thievery from the inflated Halliburton contracts to the theft of archeological treasures. Killing of idealistic US soldiers who enlisted from a sense of duty; of Iraqi soldiers, women and children, and Iraqi children yet to be born who will suffer from nuclear waste we didn't bother to secure when we invaded. And it was false witnessing, false witnessing against our neighbor, that was the hinge between the coveting and the murder and thievery. False witnessing about those weapons of mass destruction. False witnessing about the trip to Niger. False witnessing about Hussein's ties to Al-Queda and his involvement in 9/11. False witnessing that said "they lost and we won" only weeks into the war.
Now you may be thinking, wait. There was some true witnessing in there, too. Sadaam Hussein was a tyrant who stole and murdered, and the Iraqis are well rid of him. Or you may be thinking, wait. We didn't know there were no weapons of mass destruction. President Bush stated what he thought to be true at the time, he was misled by faulty intelligence. And you could be right about that, we certainly don't know the intentions of the President's heart.
And that's what makes this ninth commandment so awesome, so difficult, and so intimidating. If false witness were only about calculated, deliberate lying—in or out of court—that would be hard enough. But it commands us not to give false witness, period.
This commandment is hard because so often we give false witness out of ignorance. Sometimes there is true and false mixed together, and we just see the truth. Or the falsehood is so congruent with our self interest, we assume it's true. Or maybe we shade the truth just a little to make a better story, and we don't realize we're in the land of falsehood. Or the falsehood is so universally believed, and makes so much common sense, we don't think to question it. False witnessing against women is an example of that. The false witnessing about women that kept (and keeps) them out of leadership in the church of Jesus Christ for nearly 2000 years often was—and is—made in the most sincere, devout and pious manner and seems self-evident to nearly everyone.
Yes, even when we keep from lying outright, we witness falsely with our words. The way this happens is bewildering to us, even mysterious and hard to control. As James put it, we bless God with our tongues in one minute, and the next we curse those made in the image of God. From the same mouth come blessings and cursing, and this ought not to be so. After all, fresh and brackish water don't come out of the same stream! But it is so. False witness comes out of our mouths impulsively, ignorantly, and sometimes sanctimoniously.
By now the solution should be obvious. We've got to keep our mouths shut. God doesn't want us to give false witness? We'll oblige!
But, unfortunately for us, silence speaks as well as words. We all know that terrible, stomach-clenching feeling of remaining silent when we should speak up. When someone makes a racist remark and we don't say anything, our silence joins in that false witness. When we hear an unkind or inaccurate remark about an acquaintance and don't speak up, we join in that false witness. When we hear the President claim that all those prisoners on Guantanamo are terrorists, undeserving of legal protection, we join in false witness against those prisoners. When we let the congress and president appropriate more billions for the "war against terror"—we're up to about 400 billion now—we join in that false witness against our neighbor, even if we've been silent because we don't know what to think. When we stand by silently while HIV-AIDS ravages Africa, we bear false witness that Africans, especially women, are less valuable than other people.
So what are we to do? Either way, silence or speech, is fraught with danger—to our souls but even more to our neighbor. At Ecumenical Advocacy Days (in Arlington, VA, March 10, 2006) I heard a wonderful sermon by the Reverend Dr. Suzan Johnson Cook. (The sermon preached is not always the sermon heard. I'm not quoting exactly.) She said that when the children of Israel reached the Red Sea with Pharaoh's army behind them, they were stuck between a rock and a hard place, and that we often find ourselves stuck between a rock and a hard place. Indeed, here we are. Some of us are more prone to the rock—the sin if you will—of the impulsive, uncharitable or ignorant word; others of us are more prone to the hard place—the sin—of timid and cowardly silence. (In our Wednesday night class, "Speaking About Sin," we've been doing just that, and people said last week they like to hear about sin from the pulpit. I know that Wednesday night class is not a random sample of the congregation, but I thought I'd use the word.)
So, we're stuck between this rock and this hard place, but as Dr. Johnson also pointed out, the children of Israel relied on God's grace to get them out, and so can we. And this is the grace:
James points out that we all make many mistakes. That if we could speak perfectly, we'd be perfect. But, thank God, God does not call us to be perfect, only to repent. God calls us only to turn towards God in prayer, living closer to the way God intends us to live each day. That turning can come one concrete step at a time. Perhaps that turning will mean, next time, saying a word in defense of a co-worker when the talk turns nasty at the water cooler. Or maybe it will mean finally reading that book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that you've been meaning to read, in order to speak more truthfully. It may mean going to one demonstration in 2006—or if you went to one in 2005, upping the ante to two or three this year. It may mean writing a letter to your congressperson.
In proverbs it says, "A truthful witness saves lives." A truthful witness does save lives. We are commanded not to bear false witness; we may have to risk making a false witness in order to tell the truth. And we can do this because there is forgiveness in Jesus Christ when we make false witness, but we are called, and commanded, to speak truthfully, to save lives. God cannot whisk us out of that place between a rock and a hard place, but turning towards God, we can live more faithfully in it.
Please join me in prayer: