Today we’re looking at the 9th commandment.
You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
Originally this is spoken in a legal setting. Do not lie about so-and-so. In the ancient world there was so such thing as forensic experts. There was no C.S.I. Jerusalem. The testimony of others was critical. Yet, then, just as today, finding multiple witnesses without personal attachment was hard to do. Everyone is personally attached – it’s difficult to remain neutral. That’s one reason I tell young couples not to get their parents involved in marital conflict because parents have a hard time not taking sides with their child. If you need a mediator, parents are usually NOT the best choice.
The same is true in legal matters. Don’t bring in a family member who has bias. Often times you will see family backing up something they KNOW to be wrong simply because they cannot go against family. You need to find an impartial person who is not going to give false testimony. People who give false testimony against others assassinate your character.
The character assassin is a crafty ninja. He goes around and he starts telling untruths about others. He pulls out his ninja swords and cuts people down with his lies and deceit. God says, “This isn’t the way I want my community to function!”
A healthy society depends on people being honest. So in the OT they actually had a law that said if someone lies about someone, the punishment that would have been on the accused now falls on the liar. It’s a reverse punishment. (Deut. 19:18-19).
If someone is on trial for his life, a liar caught giving false testimony must pay with his own life. God is very clear that lying about others in order to damage or would someone is NOT okay!
Even Jesus says false testimony defiles a person. One time when the religious leaders were upset with Jesus because his disciples “defiled” themselves by not washing their hands before they ate, Jesus told them, “It’s not the food going in that defiles you. You’re not 
dirtied until the stuff comes out of you!”
Yes, even Jesus enjoyed bathroom humor.
But it was a double entendre. What comes out of a person’s heart is what defiles him, things such as evil thoughts, blasphemies, and false witness. (Matthew 15:1-20) Lying about others doesn’t just damage them. The false things we say about others defiles us – makes us unclean.
While we may not find ourselves defending untrue allegations in court, we will find ourselves the victims of personal, false attacks on our character and behavior. This commandment carries beyond legal attitudes and into all of the ways we talk about other people
We can be character assassins without ever going to court. We can participate in gossip, rumors, and slander, and spread falseness without ever seeing the inside of a court. Rumors are a form of social bullying – to bring a person down and to put the gossiper up high.
You might have been the victim of a character assassin who is spreading false junk against you. Perhaps you’ve found yourself in the chain of passing along the rumor. There are really three ways to approach character assassins.
If you’re the one talking – STOP IT!
It’s pretty clear, isn’t it? There’s no need for you to be spreading false garbage against other people, no matter what they may have done to you. It doesn’t matter how they have behaved towards you in the past, we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard.
Jesus once said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Jesus IS truth, so speaking false junk is directly opposed to Jesus Christ. How can you claim to be a follower of Jesus if you actively participate in spreading falseness?
If you hear something about someone else – STOP IT!
Call time out. You don’t need to be involved. But we love dirty laundry (Don Henley song…), especially when it isn’t ours. Our own dirty laundry we hide, but we revel when we see other people’s. There’s no room for such behavior in God’s kingdom.
Ignorance is no excuse. Do you ignorantly pass on false info? We see so many do this with the internet. Now you have the opportunity to have tens of thousands of people passing on ridiculously bogus info (Lotto math; Obama curtains, etc.). If we looked at our online behavior through an OT lens and we were punished with the same punishment we’re asking for the person we’re speaking against, would we still be so quick to spread the lies?
IF YOU DO NEED TO BE INVOLVED (like this is a life-or-death situation), DON’T PASS ON INFO OR ACT ON INFO BLINDLY – VERIFY, VERIFY, VERIFY. When you spread stories about others, you can’t take it back. Labels stick, and are often impossible to scrub off. Think about what you say.
Words have power.
If you’re being talked about
This is the hard one. You can’t control what comes at you but you can control what you hold on to and how you behave. There are 5 ways we can behave when people bring false accusations against us:
- Live in such a way that, if people accuse you, others can see that it’s bogus. (1 Peter 2:12). Sometimes that means going above and beyond – walking a fine line and not taking an easy road. It means our behavior is impeccable.
- Go to the source and try to reconcile (Matthew 18). This is dealing with it man-a-mano. Keep it off FB!
- Never stop being polite to those who hurt you. Just because someone may have been a jerk to you doesn’t give us permission to be jerks back to them. We are called to treat everyone well, the way we want to be treated, in spite of the injuries done to us.
- Tell the truth to anyone who asks (without seeking to tell everyone!) Don’t lie. Don’t cover up. Don’t be vindictive. But calmly and simply be a truth-teller.
- Don’t give people more ammo to attack you with – be calm, honest, and discreet. When people spread false things about you, most people want you respond in an angry way. It adds fuel to the fire and justifies them in their own minds. You can’t feed the trolls. Starve the trolls.
These five things don’t leave us feeling satisfied when we’ve been wronged. There’s no justice being done. But Jesus calls us to be a new kind of community – a community that treats each other well and speaking only truth.
We don’t listen to falseness. We don’t spread falseness. We respond appropriately even if attacked. And even though we might want to fill their mouths of our attackers with superglue, that doesn’t seem like a very Christ-like thing to do… 😉
Questions for Reflection
- Have I participated in spreading false things against others?
- Have I been passive while hearing other people spread false things about others?
- Have I lived with such integrity that people wouldn’t believe false things?
Let’s talk about sex, baby. Let’s talk about you and me….aaaaand that’s enough of quoting that song. Seriously, though, our culture is obsessed with sex. Many people seem to have an attitude that anything goes as long as you are not physically hurting someone else. After all, who are we to tell others how to live?
It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.
Now catalogs don’t just show the underwear on people, but the editors try to make them look as tantalizing as possible.
Jesus is saying that what’s on the inside can separate us from God. We can’t hate each other on the inside and then go pretend that everything is okay. But we do it all the time. Something happens and fills us with anger. Then we walk into church and we put on a happy face and say, “Praise Jesus – God is good!” We’re two-faced liars who would rather be passive-aggressive towards people than to be open and upfront.
Frustration can cause anger. It’s NORMAL to respond in anger to frustration. If my desired outcome is to get all of my kids out of the door and into the van by a certain time and they fail to comply, my children are being roadblocks to my desired outcome. They are preventing me from my plan. And I get steamed – I become angry. It’s an easy anger, but it’s not a good anger.
He took it as an insult every time someone refused to learn his name, so I took it upon myself to learn his name and the proper pronunciation. When I said it his eyes got wide and his jaw dropped open.
Chris Linzey 