The Catholic Sun :: Phoenix Diocesan Newspaper

‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor’

Part One

The trouble with the truth

When author Peggy Noonan was asked by a friend, “How do you find God?” she replied: “Get yourself in trouble!” Trouble is what we can easily get into if we always obey the Eighth Commandment. Truth and convenience do not walk hand in hand. Neither do truth and comfort. But even if truth does not make life easier, nonetheless it certainly makes life much better. It draws us closer to Christ who is Truth itself, and, as He promises (Jn 8:32), “the truth will set you free.” A friend of mine likes to say with a smile, “Oh sure, the truth will set you free; but first it will make you miserable!”

Witness to the truth

Why didn’t God simply say, “Thou shalt not lie?” Isn’t that the equivalent of saying, “Thou shalt not bear false witness?” Not at all. Indeed, the Eighth Commandment does clearly forbid lying, but much more is at stake when God speaks about “bearing witness.”

In fact, bearing witness lies at the heart of being a friend and follower of Jesus. The word in Greek for “witness” is “martys,” from which comes the English word “martyr.” Martyrs are, of course, witnesses par excellance. Recall what Christ tells His disciples just before ascending into heaven (Acts 1:8), “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Far more is required in being witnesses of Christ than merely not to lie. A witness speaks with his attitudes and actions, by means of his convictions and sacrifices, through his perseverance and joy. Witnesses sometimes speak through their silence, when the silence is done for the sake of truth and love. St. Thomas More, the heroic English martyr, is an excellent example of this.

Jesus, the faithful witness

In the Book of Revelation, Jesus Himself is described as (1:5) “the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead and ruler of the kings of the earth.” The King of kings never asks of us what He Himself has not already lived to the full. His entire life on earth gave faithful witness to His love of the Father and of us, even though we are not worthy of such love.

Jesus bears witness to the truth of the Father’s love. Recall the famous dialogue between Jesus and Pontius Pilate, which revolves around the word “truth.” While Pilate fails miserably to act according to the truth because of his own cowardice, Jesus tells him in plain language (Jn 18:37), “For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, as it explains the meaning and implications of the Eighth Commandment, underlines the duty that we have as Christians to be witnesses of the Gospel in both word and deed, even to the point of shedding blood (CCC #2473), “Martyrdom is the supreme witness given to the truth of the faith: it means bearing witness even unto death. The martyr bears witness to Christ who died and rose, to whom he is united by charity. He bears witness to the truth of the faith and of Christian doctrine. He endures death through an act of fortitude.”

‘Taming the tongue’

Obedience to the Eighth Commandment does not come easy for a variety of reasons, many of them connected with pride and power. Psalm 52 paints a rather graphic picture of the problem (vs. 3-6), “Why do you glory in evil, you champion of infamy? …Your tongue is like a sharpened razor, you practiced deceiver! You love evil rather than good, falsehood rather than honest speech. You love all that means ruin, you of the deceitful tongue.”

The Apostle James, in his New Testament Letter, uses images of a horse, a ship, and a fire to underline how difficult it is to tame the tongue. For example, he writes (3:5), “Consider how small a fire can set a huge forest ablaze. The tongue is also a fire. It exists among our members as a world of malice, defiling the whole body and setting the entire course of our lives on fire, itself set on fire by Gehenna. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no human being can tame the tongue.”

Taming the tongue has not gotten easier over the past 2,000 years since St. James wrote those words. Mark Twain, with tongue in cheek, claimed that there are 869 forms of lying. And these lies, he contended are of different degrees of gravity: “You got ordinary lies, then you got damn lies, and finally you got statistics!”

Jesus underlines the battle that faces us all when He called the devil (Jn 8: 44) “a liar and the father of lies.” Taming the tongue is more than an exercise in self-discipline. It engages us in spiritual warfare, in which with God’s grace we reject Satan, his cunning temptations and his empty promises. To tame the tongue, we must rely on the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth who leads us to all truth (Cf. Jn 16:13). To live the truth in love also requires us to be faithful to Christ who is (Jn 14:6) “the way and the truth and the life.”

Live the truth first — then speak it

In order to bear witness to the truth, and to avoid bearing false witness against our neighbor, we must begin by putting the truth into practice. The words we speak ring false if they do not proceed from a life of integrity, if they are not preceded by the daily effort to live the truth in love.

Jesus warns us against wordiness and rationalization. He says (Mt 5:37), “Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one.”

And St. Paul writes to Ephesians (4:22-24), “You should put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth.”

What an honor it is to be a witness to Christ. And that is who each of us is by the grace of Baptism. God’s grace prepares us to be faithful witnesses of Him who defeated the father of lies by His Cross and who established a Kingdom of love and truth. And He sends us forth as His witnesses, not only in Jerusalem and Galilee but also in Phoenix and Prescott, in Mesa and Bullhead City.

The word of God provides the light that a faithful witness needs. Jesus promised us that this would be so. For He said (Jn 8:31-32), “If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

In the next issues of The Catholic Sun, I shall look more closely at some of the offenses against the truth that we struggle against most frequently today, both the big lies that darken the whole of society and the small deceits that ever so gradually corrupt the heart.