Fact or fiction? True or false? We weigh these out every day to try and determine what is true and what is not. It’s especially hard when we understand that truth is often shaded or spun towards a preferred agenda. At what point do incomplete or biased truths become lies? The next to last line of the Ten Commandments is “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” (Exodus 20:16, NASB95)
Not bearing false witness has a legal sound and feel to it. In the legal setting telling a falsehood is perjury and is a punishable crime. But this command encompasses more than judicial testimony and includes all manners of speech and expression.
While most of us strive to be honest and avoid speaking falsely, our problem is the confusing middle-ground. Those times when speaking truthfully might cause unneeded harm to our neighbor, family, or friend. This is where looking at this command through the lens of loving our neighbor helps us out.
We need to weigh our motives without trying to justify our actions. Most falsehoods come from a motive of protecting ourselves or gaining something for ourselves. We made a mistake, so we try to protect ourselves with a lie. There are also many ways we may gain from speaking falsely, such as financial, reputation, peace, political or social agenda, emotional, and power-seeking. Even most “white” lies fall into one of these categories. One way or another those lies all run against our neighbor and for ourselves.
But there are a few times when expressing a falsehood is the only way to love your neighbor. One such instance is when you are bound to hold something in confidence and someone else asks you a direct question about it. Another time is when dealing with dementia-stricken folks by going along with their reality instead of trying to keep them true to today’s reality. My wife worked with one lady who had lost her husband. In her dementia, she would forget his death. She would ask her caregiver when he was getting back. If the caregiver told her the truth, she would spend all day crying and mourning her husband all over again. In that instance, the loving thing was to say something like he was just gone for a while.
While there may be a few limited instances when speaking falsely is the loving thing to do, the vast majority of the time speaking the truth is by far the most loving thing.
We asked a question at the beginning of this article, “At what point do incomplete or biased truths become lies?” People have become very adept at telling shaded truth to advance their own agendas. Not quite a lie, but not the full truth either. We can’t stop the world from using those kinds of falsehoods. But we as Christians are called to see through that spin and speak the truth. Consider this from Paul, “As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ,” (Ephesians 4:14–15, NASB95)
That term, “speaking the truth in love,” has sometimes been used without love to justify all manner of judgmentalism. It’s like a truth that acts as a lie, it harms someone else and makes us feel better. Speaking the truth in love may at times be hard and uncomfortable but we, again, need to honestly consider our own motives and goals. We should always speak the truth in love – that’s the whole point of this line of the Ten Commandments.
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