False Witness: Too Much to Bear

I think there is no greater sin in a legal system than when an innocent person is falsely declared guilty and suffers the consequences.  In recent years, the news has been full of stories of men exonerated by new evidence, usually DNA, and released from jail.  Sometimes they have been imprisoned for decades and have been unjustly deprived of the most productive years of their lives.  When we hear those stories, we sympathize with that falsely imprisoned person.  We get angry.  “How in the world was such a mistake made, in this country?” we wonder.  What evidence condemned this person to a life of false imprisonment and wasted potential?

Frequently, we discover that the deciding factor in finding the person guilty was the testimony of a witness.  Just as frequently, we discover that the testimony given by the witness in the trial was untrue.  A witness gave false testimony on the stand.  Sometimes that false testimony is due to prejudice, or self-interest, or personal gain (they were paid off), or being threatened.  Sometimes it’s just a case  of ignorance or the witness being mistaken, but giving their testimony with a false sense of certainty.  Either way, when we hear stories of people being wrongly imprisoned because of false testimony, it makes our blood boil.  We think, if we were the newly released prisoner, the first thing we would do is find that false witness and wring his neck.

What kind of person, lies on the witness stand, knowing they will ruin the life of another?  Who is capable of such cruelty and injustice?

Actually, you and I are.

How can that be?  Most likely, few of us have ever had to put our hand on a Bible in court and swear to tell the truth.  If we did, it wasn’t in some life and death murder case it was just something minor like, oh just say, a divorce.  Even so, I doubt many of us have ever lied in a court of law and had it result in an innocent person going to prison for life or being executed.

True, yet every day, you and I bear false witness against our neighbors.  Our false witness imprisons people in cells of ostracism, of pain, of falsehoods and misinformation.  Like the cases of men who waste their life in prison for crimes they didn’t commit, our false testimonies can ruin the life of another, sometimes for years.  Sometimes it even kills them.

It can start while we are still young.  We hear an unflattering rumor about someone at school and in order to fit in, we repeat it.  It may or may not be true.  We don’t know and we don’t care.  We just want to fit in.  Chances are we forget about that rumor the next day.  However, I can almost guarantee you, the person about whom we said it, has not forgotten it.  In fact, not only does that misinformation follow them around the next day, it may follow them around through their entire time at school.  Years, even decades later, we may have long forgotten that rumor, but they remember the pain it caused them for the rest of their life.  They remember what it was like to go through school falsely labelled the slut, the thief, the crazy kid, or the cheat. (Interestingly all people with whom Jesus hung out.)

Unfortunately, some of us never really graduate from high school.  As we move into our careers and our adult life, we continue to spread false information, assumptions, speculation, rumors, and half-truths.  We do it at our jobs, especially when we think it will benefit us.  

You tell a supervisor, “Well I heard the only reason Rick has his job is because of who he’s related to.” 

Or you tell a client, “I hear our competitor is having problems paying their bills.  They may not be around much longer.”

We bear false witness when we spread specious information about our competition, be it rival company or a rival coworker.  We do it in our communities.  “I hear Susan’s son was arrested.  You know she’s not a very good mother.   I heard she lets her kids…”

Sometimes our false testimony may be even cross legal lines.  Perhaps we do have to testify in a legal proceeding, for our job, or in small claims, divorce or family court.  When we do, we might stretch the truth just a little bit in our favor, or leave out some details.

We may conveniently leave out particular information on legal or financial form. Why is it that credit applications are the only place where we don’t claim to be underpaid?  If all of us actually made the money we claim to on credit applications,  I don’t think we would actually need the credit.  That fine print at the bottom of the form about filling it out truthfully, well, we dismiss it as just a formality. 

Why do we do these things?  Sure it can be for personal gain, but often we fall into the trap of our own assumptions and prejudices.  Recently I had a conversation with someone who had never been to our church.  In this conversation, they told me everything that was wrong with Vision.  They heard we had a band and a video screen, and they seen churches like that before, and found them rather shallow.  So therefore Vision must be shallow like those churches.  They knew about some Christian authors with whom I am friends, and although they never actually read their books, someone had sent them an email about them as being dangerous, so therefore Vision must be dangerous.   

This person wasn’t consciously choosing to lie.  They were just a victim of their own assumptions.  They had particular opinions about what worship and churches should be like, and jumped to the conclusions that would best support their own worldview.

None of this comes as a news flash to any of you, I’m sure.  In a world of diminished moral expectations, we may be angry, but not surprised when we come across such behavior.  We expect to see it in political campaigns, for one candidate to smear the other.  As a matter of fact, our expectations are so low, we aren’t even surprised to find such behavior in the church.  Actually, past experience has led many of us to expect to find it there.

It’s not supposed to be this way.  As God’s people, we should be the last ones to resort to bearing false witness against our neighbor, whether inside or outside the church.  God gave us this commandment, in part, because nothing can undermine faith in our social structures as can false testimony.  When we hear those wrongful imprisonment stories on the news, it erodes our confidence in our legal system.  Is the system broken and can it be trusted, we ask.  When politicians and pundits act that way, we lose faith in our democratic principles.  We become cynical and don’t participate in the process. When Christians act that way, we lose faith in our churches, and even in God.  

Whether in our interpersonal relationships, our politics, or our theologies, false witness undermines our ability to have any sort of meaningful conversation or dialogue.  It seems that in any argument there are not two sides, but four - the two sides plus the two false charicatures each side makes of their opponent.  We see it in every type of debate, from health care reform to the nature of the Trinity.

That should never happen anywhere, least of all in the church.  As followers of Jesus, when we discuss issues like sexual orientation or war, we have an obligation not to distort the views of those with whom we disagree.  It is often said that in any disagreement, one should always be able to articulate the position of one’s opponent so accurately, that the opponent would say, “Yes, that’s right.  That’s what I think.”  From there we can disagree, but it will be from a place of honesty and integrity.

Think of a disagreement in which you are involved right now, whether a dispute with your literal neighbor, a community issue, or a political discussion at your dinner table or even a discussion within your Vision Group.  Do you really understand the point of view of those who feel differently than you?  Or do you just paint them with a broad brush of assumptions or hearsay? 

I wish I could say that the church at large has been a good example of avoiding false witness, but sadly we have not.  We label one another as heretics or bigots, as unbiblical or intolerant.  Labels like that shut down conversation and make any progress impossible. Worst of all, those labels are often false.  When someone has a different interpretation of Scripture than you, and you label them a heretic, or under the influence of Satan, more than likely you are bearing false witness against your neighbor.  Too often, I have heard Christians say the most awful things about authors whose books they’ve never read, movies they’ve never seen, and music to which they’ve never listened.  Often, such accusations are made based on appeals to the Bible, while ignoring the very words of Scripture which warn us, do not bear false witness against your neighbor, and in particular your brother or sister in Christ.

I have spent my entire life in church and in that almost half a century I have heard the church at large bear false witness against Roman Catholics, against Jews, against Muslims, against gays and lesbians, against scientists, against politicians, against its own members and sometimes even against me.  I don’t mean the church has merely disagreed with them; I mean I have seen Christians make outright misrepresentations and even spread lies about them.  Every time I have heard those distortions, it has undermined my trust in the church just a little bit.  I know for many of you it has as well.  We say we are Christians, but when we bear false witness against our neighbors, we are really bearing false witness against Jesus, the one whose name we bear.  In doing so, we ultimately undermine people’s trust in him.

The ancient Israelites had an ingenious punishment to prevent false testimony.  If a child of Israel was discovered to have lied in court proceeding, they would receive the same punishment that would have been given to the accused. In other words, if it was discovered that you falsely accused someone of a crime for which the punishment was stoning, you would receive a stoning.  If the punishment was death, you would be put to death. I imagine that was quite effective and yet I’m thankful we no longer do that.

Picture if for every falsehood you spread about someone, the pain it caused them was instead inflicted on you.  Imagine if for every chain email you pass along that distorted the truth (and I have received them from both liberals and conservatives), thousands of people would be allowed to pass along a false email about you.  Imagine all the pain of that false testimony being borne by you.

How could you and I ever do that?  It would be too much to bear.  Well, that’s what Jesus did.  Jesus was falsely accused and sentenced to death.  Witnesses said he threatened to tear down the Temple, but he didn’t.  They claimed that he was able to cast out demons because he was one himself, but he wasn’t.  Yet Jesus absorbed all that false witness and bore it upon himself.  He bore the burden of false witness.  As it says in 2 Corinthians 5, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”

In carrying the burden of humanity’s false witness, Jesus became a true witness to the infinite love, forgiveness and compassion of God.  As his followers, you and I are called to bear that true witness as well.  When we bear false witness against our neighbors, in any form, we are distorting our witness to the truth of God.

It’s time we use the Bible as more than a legal prop on which we put our hand and swear.  It’s time to take its commandments seriously and simply seek and tell the truth.

Comments

[Capri]

Well said!

[Don Heatley]

Thanks Capri. Love the site your Twitter links to:
http://ChristiansBreakingChainFwds.ning.com/