"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."


The children's rhyme about "sticks and stones" is a cliche that everyone--from U.S. Senators, to Chinese communist party officials, to children on playgrounds everywhere--knows and knows to be false.  Of course words can and sometimes do hurt.  This next-to-last commandment, this ninth life-giving, creative Word is all about words.  With it God once again tells us how important words are.  With his own Word, God spoke the world into existence.  In order to create and protect a passionate, living relationship with us, the LORD spoke these Ten Words that we are studying now, the Ten Commandments.  God created us for a relationship with himself and with one another, and nothing is more vital to that relationship than telling the truth.  Words have real power in relationships, both the power to give life and the power to take life away.  Words can hurt and destroy people, they can literally demolish lives and devastate a person's future.  But words can also help and build up relationships; simple words can restore, renew and resurrect. 

Because of their power, words are often used in arenas where conflict has the highest stakes.  You might even say, "The pen is mightier than the sword."


http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2010/press.html

(Photo Credit, Wikimedia Commons, http://images.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2010/xiaobo_postcard.jpg)

Chinese dissident, Liu Xiaobo, "stuck his pen in the eye of the communist government" yet again, when he won the Nobel Peace Prize "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China" while sitting in a Chinese prison.  (ABC News, http://www.livedash.com/transcript/abc_world_news_with_diane_sawyer/7/KGO/Friday_October_8_2010/316551/)

A lawyer friend occasionally reminds me of an adage that made more sense in the days before TV and the internet, "Never pick a fight with someone who buys his ink by the barrel."  (A saying of unknown origin, but perhaps with Indiana provenance.)  The point of the saying is that someone who has limitless access to media--to words that are widely read or heard--is someone who has significant power.  The corollary, of course, is that someone who is powerful and wealthy can nearly always purchase access to the public's eyes and ears, and access to the halls of power.  (See Exodus 23:8.)  It is the poor who are mostly without voice.  (See Exodus 23:6.) It is those without voice that the Ninth Commandment mostly protects, by telling us who do still have a voice to tell the truth.


False Words or Empty Words?

This Ninth Commandment comes in two forms:

Do not accuse your neighbor with false ( sheqer) testimony. (Exodus 20:16) 
Do not accuse your neighbor with vain (shaw') testimony. (Deuteronomy 5:20)

There is not a significant difference.  The two words can be used synonymously, though the second one has to do with any unproductive word (a negative word, obfuscation, a word that tends to lead nowhere or to harm rather than help) and not simply with words that are contrary to fact.  It is clear that both forms of the commandment have legal proceedings and a courtroom in view.  We can even imagine a witness raising his right hand before a judge and swearing an oath to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" under penalty of perjury.  (For cases involving perjury, see Deuteronomy 19:18, and the like.)  Both forms of the commandment include the Hebrew word for witness or testimony (`ed) and the version in Deuteronomy even implies the invoking of God's name, as in an oath, but "in vain" (as the Third Commandment puts it; see Exodus 23:1).  It is also clear that this commandment is not a generalization.  It doesn't water down the main point (Love your neighbor!) by making a blanket statement about our veracity.  Lying is generally wrong wherever and to whomever it is done, but the point of this commandment is lying about our neighbor, lying to harm our neighbor, in a context where the word may in fact cause harm.  You may not be able to keep this commandment by telling a lie (Proverbs 14:5); but you can break it while speaking facts, if the facts are spoken maliciously (Exodus 23:1, "testimonial violence") for the express purpose of harming your neighbor. (Ephesians 4:15, "Speak the truth in love.")  The legal proceeding we are asked to imagine as the context for this commandment is one in which our neighbor's well being is at stake.  Our neighbor is on trial, perhaps for his life, and we have been called to the witness stand and placed under oath.

How will we answer?  Will we accuse or defend?  Bearing "false testimony" in such a context is like taking up a "maul, a sword, or a sharpened arrow" against our neighbor (Proverbs 25:18).  It is akin to murder.  For good reason the Proverbs put a "lying tongue" next to violent acts ("hands that shed innocent blood," 6:17) and a person who gives false testimony in the same category as a person who provokes a family to feud. (Proverbs 6:19)

On the other hand, I owe my neighbor the truth, especially when I am asked something that relates directly to my neighbor's well being.  Flattery is in the same "vain" category (Psalm 12:2) as slander or libel.  It hurts my neighbor.        

Truth-telling is thus not a general virture so much as it is a necessity for maintaining harmonious relationships.  It is one of the clearest manifestations of love of God and love of neighbor. Miller, The Ten Commandments, p. 345

What Does Jesus Say?

Jesus says little, if anything, specifically about "false witness," but he says much about avoiding hypocrisy.  The gospels everywhere make it clear that Jesus himself is the source of truth.  The irony is that Jesus suffered the very sort of abuse that this commandment prohibits.  He was arrested on false charges.  A search was made for false witnesses, but, according to Matthew 26:60 and Mark 14:55, they did not find any.  It seems that then, as now, many were found who would for a fee tell lies and half-truths, even in court, but getting any two of these witnesses to agree was another matter.  That requirement for agreement among multiple witnesses is an Old Testament community safeguard against the breaking of this commandment.  At least two witnesses (Deuteronomy 17:6, 19:15) were required to convict in cases that could result in the death penalty.

How to Keep the Ninth Commandment

If I want to keep this commandment, then I will stay away from people who make it their practice to malign others.  (Exodus 23:1, 7)  In other words, we keep this commandment by steering clear of conversations where we know we'll be tempted to join in slamming someone else's actions or character.  We keep this commandment by guarding our tongue from slander and libel. However "true" the content of my speech may be, when I use my tongue to harm my neighbor, I have broken the Ninth Commandment.  As Luther says, this commandment "forbids all sins of the tongue by which we may injure or offend our neighbor" (Large Catechism, Book of Concord, p. 421); instead, we must "put the best construction on all we may hear about our neighbors" (ibid., p. 424).  Or to state it even more positively, as Calvin does, we should take care of our neighbor's reputation and "sincerely keep their honor safe in our judgment, our ears, and our tongue." (Institutes 2.8.47-78) 

Discussion Questions

Read Exodus 20:16 (Deuteronomy 5:20) and Acts 5:1-6, 6:7-7:1

1.  Read Exodus 1:15-22 and Joshua 2.  Is it possible to keep the Ninth Commandment while telling a lie?  Would you say these are instances where people had what Rolf Jacobson calls the "freedom to lie" and what Patrick Miller calls "the evangelical freedom to lie for the good"? (Miller, The Ten Commandments, p. 384)

2.  Can you think of a way that someone might be tempted to "lie for God"?  See Job 13:4-8.

3.  Do you think that a person who tells the truth, in the sense of the Ninth Commandment, can get elected to state or national office?  Winston Churchill once accused a fellow politician of "perpetrating a terminological inexactitude."  What are some other ways we avoid the word "lying"?  Do you think that "euphemism, propaganda, and spin" are lying? (Miller, The Ten Commandments, p. 383)

4.  Should a preacher change a sermon to keep from upsetting a congregation?  Is this lying?  Is it lying to always preach uplifting sermons?  Did you know the Greek word for "witness" is martyros, from which we get the word martyr?  What do you think this says about the relative difficulty of speaking the truth?

5.  Read James 3:1-12, 4:11-17.  Is James right about the power of the tongue?  What specific things does James recommend about our stewardship of our words?  What is the relationship between word and deed?

6.  We have just come through a financial crisis brought on by (among other things) "liar loans" through which people without sufficient income were granted mortgages on properties they could not afford.  Is there a close relationship between lying and stealing? (Acts 5)  Our society provides some safeguards (including penalties for perjury) against lying.  Can you imagine what society would be like if all those safeguards were gone?

7.  Read Ephesians 4:14-32.  How would you describe the kind of truth-telling that the writer calls for Christians to practice?  What are some specific ways you could do this?

8.  Have you ever received an e-mail that had something hurtful to say about the President or another political leader or public figure?  (See Deuteronomy 24:8-9, Numbers 12.)  Did you ever receive one making fun of Muslims?  Did you pass it along to someone else?  Is this "bearing false witness"?  Does it matter whether it is factual? 

9.  Is it true that "You can usually tell when a hypocrite has been sinning; he denounces that sin in public -- and in somebody else"? (Davidman, Smoke on the Mountain, p. 109)  Do you think "Truth is the first casualty of war"?  Is lying necessary for conflict and broken relationships?

10.  Review your relationships this week, especially your closest family and work relationships.  Take stock of your truthfulness.  Where are your relationships being diminished because you are being less than honest or are hiding something important?  Is there anything in which you are deceiving those who are closest to you?  Are you passing along any hurtful things that you have heard about others?  Have you been less than honest in describing someone with whom you are upset, angry, or at odds?  Commit yourself to do the hard work of being a witness to the truth today.  Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth--and do it for the love of God and the love of your neighbor.

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Copyright © 2010 by Gregory L. Glover