The Eighth Commandment: “You Shall Not Bear False Witness” | Rev. Steven P. Gunther

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our family service here at the Bernathan Cathedral.

My name is Stephen Gunther, and I'm on the pastoral staff here at the Bernathan Church.

And our subject this morning is looking at the eighth commandment: you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

And to begin our service, I'd like to begin with our readings from the Lord's Word, both from the sacred scriptures and from the teachings of the new church.

Our first reading comes from the Gospel of Mark, a portion of chapter 14.

And this takes place after Jesus was arrested in Gethsemane.

And they led Jesus away to the high priest, and with him were assembled all the chief priests, the elders, and the scribes.

But Peter followed him at a distance, right into the courtyard of the high priest, and he sat with the servants and warmed himself at the fire.

Now the chief priests and all the council sought testimony against Jesus to put him to death, but found none.

For many bore false witness against him, but their testimonies did not agree.

Then some rose up and bore false witness against him, saying, We heard him say, I will destroy this temple made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands.

But not even then did their testimony agree.

And the high priest stood up in the midst and asked Jesus, saying, Do you answer nothing?

What is it that these men testify against you?

But he kept silent and answered nothing.

Again the high priest asked him, saying to him, Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?

And Jesus said, I am, and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.

Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, What further need do we have of false witnesses of witnesses?

You have heard the blasphemy, what do you think?

And they all condemned him to be deserving of death.

Then some began to spit on him and to blindfold him, and to beat him and to say to him, Prophesy, and the officers struck him with the palms of their hands.

Turning now to the teachings of the new church, we read from the work True Christian Religion, number three hundred and twenty one.

It says, To bear false witness against the neighbor, to testify falsely, means in the natural sense, first of all, to bear false witness before a judge, or before others not in a court of justice, against anyone accused on a groundless charge of some crime, and to affirm this by the name of God, or by anything else that is holy, or by oneself or the honor of one's name.

In a wider natural sense, this commandment forbids all kinds of lies and hypocritical practices in civil life which have an evil purpose in view, and also traducing and defaming the neighbor to the injury of his honor, his name, and his reputation, on which his whole character depends.

In the widest natural sense, it forbids treachery, deceit, and premeditated evil against anyone arising from various causes, as enmity, hatred, revenge, envy, rivalry, and the like, for these evils involve the sin of false witness.

And finally, from the work Arcana Celestia, a portion of number 1079.

Where charity does not exist, self-love is present, and consequently hatred towards all who do not show favor to self.

As a result, they see in the neighbor nothing except their evil, or if they do see anything good, they either perceive it as nothing, or else place a bad interpretation on it.

It is altogether otherwise with those with whom charity is present.

And from such presence or absence of charity, these two kinds of people are distinguished from each other, especially when they enter the next life.

With those who have no charity, a feeling of hatred is manifest in every single thing.

They wish to try everyone, and indeed to pass judgment on them.

Their one desire is to discover what is evil in them, all the time having it in mind to condemn, punish, and torment.

But those who have charity hardly notice the evil in another person, but instead notice all the goods and truths that are theirs, and on their evils and falsities they place a good interpretation.

Of such a nature are all angels, it being something they have from the Lord, who bends everything evil into good.

Amen.

Here end our lessons.

Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.

So this morning we are continuing with this series that we are doing throughout this whole year, where we are looking at each one of the Ten Commandments.

In this month, we are up to the eighth commandment, which is you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

And to begin, I want to think for a minute about what does it mean to bear false witness against someone?

This isn't a phrase that we really use that much in the way that we talk.

We don't normally talk about bearing witness against people.

Well, in the simplest sense, this commandment is about lying.

And in particular, it's about lying about other people.

And I'm sure all of us know that we're not supposed to lie about other people.

We're not supposed to spread things that aren't true about other people.

And that's a big part of what this commandment is about.

But this commandment can also go deeper than that.

And there are ways that we can actually cross a line into bearing false witness against our neighbor, even if we aren't saying anything out loud against them.

And so that's what I want us to think about this morning is how might we be bearing false witness against other people, even if we're not saying lies about them to other people.

In our story this morning, Jesus had just been arrested, and before he goes to his trial with Pilate, where he had, where he's able to be condemned to death, he's taken to these high priests and he has kind of this religious trial, which isn't something that we really do these days, but it was one of their customs back then.

And so they have this religious trial to see if they can find Jesus guilty of any crime because they don't like Jesus and they want to get rid of him.

And during the course of this trial, it says that many people stood up and bore false witness against Jesus.

It uses the actual phrase.

They made up these lies about Jesus to try to condemn him.

But none of those testimonies that they gave were able to be used because they didn't agree with each other.

So the lie that this person told about Jesus didn't line up with the lie that this person told about Jesus.

And so none of these were really working.

They weren't able to build a case against him.

So finally they ask him directly and they say, Are you the Christ?

Are you the Son of God?

And he says, Yes, I am.

And at that point they say, then we don't even need witnesses.

We can all just tell how wrong this man is.

And we all think that he deserves to be condemned to death.

And so in this story, we have examples of people bearing false witness against Jesus.

We have people who are making up things that aren't true about him to try to destroy his name, to try to convict him of crimes that he didn't commit, so they could have an excuse to kill him.

But in the story, that false witness that they tried to do didn't actually work.

That wasn't actually what ended up condemning Jesus.

Because the reality is, all of these people who took Jesus and brought him to this trial, they had already made up their minds about him.

They had already decided long before this that Jesus was guilty and that he was a bad person and that they wanted to get rid of him.

And so when we think about it, in a lot of ways, really, they had already borne false witness against Jesus in their own minds and in their own hearts.

And this is something that we do ourselves sometimes, and we may not even realize it.

That we make up our minds about other people, and we decide, I know what kind of person that this person is.

And that changes the way that we view them.

That tells us how we should interpret the things that we see them doing.

Think about people that you know.

You might have a time where you might think, oh, this person I know, well, they're just they're just weird.

Or this person, oh, this person is just, they are so annoying.

And we put this label on them and we say, well, this person is annoying.

And maybe they've done things in the past that have annoyed us.

And it's true, and maybe that's where it comes from.

But when we put that label on them and we say, well, this person just is annoying, then from then on, when we interact with that person, we're going to see them, and that's the assumption we're gonna make from them.

We'll see them coming and we'll say, here comes this annoying person.

They're probably gonna do something that's going to annoy me.

And then really at that point, it doesn't matter what they do, because what we see, we see what we were looking for.

And they might be acting a way that's pretty normal.

You know, it might be possible that our friend could have come to us and acted the exact same way and said the same things and done the same things, and we might have thought, well, that's totally fine.

We're friends.

That's this is funny when you act like this.

But when this other person comes and does it, well, that's just annoying because that's who they are.

And we don't really realize it, but really what we're doing is we are creating an image of this person in our minds that isn't true, and then we are using that to judge this person.

And really what we're doing is we are bearing false witness against them in our minds when we do that.

So, how can we protect ourselves from this?

How can we stop ourselves from crossing this line into putting labels on people and bearing false witness on them by creating this image of them in our minds?

Well, and the answer to this comes with a simple word, and that's charity.

And charity is a word that we might hear used a lot in the new church.

And in its simplest sense, charity really is the way that we live when we genuinely love our neighbor.

When we love our neighbor, so we treat them with kindness and compassion and respect.

That is charity.

And I shared a passage this morning from the Arcana Celestia that talked about the way it shifts in us when we look at someone from a place of charity versus when we look at them from a place without charity.

It says when we look at someone from a place without charity, we notice everything bad about them.

We notice everything that's evil in them, or everything that they do wrong, or everything that we don't like.

This is like that person that we know who we think is just annoying.

That when we see them, all we notice are the things that annoy us.

All we notice are the things that we don't like about them.

And it makes it so we have this negative view of that person.

That's looking at someone without charity.

But it says it's totally different when we look at someone from a place of charity.

It says when we look at someone from a place of charity, we hardly even notice the bad things about them.

And instead, we focus on all of the good things that are in them.

We notice all of the things that we like about them.

We notice the things that they do right.

And imagine if we did that for a minute.

Imagine if we had this annoying person and we thought, okay, well, what if I were to put on my charity glasses for a minute and say, well, what are the good things about this person?

What are the things that I like about them?

Then maybe we'd be able to think of some things.

We'd say, well, you know, last week we were doing an assignment together in class, and they were, they were a pretty good partner.

They were helpful with that.

Or maybe we were we were playing a game at recess and we actually had a lot of fun together.

So this person isn't just annoying.

Maybe sometimes they do things that push my buttons and it kind of annoys me, and that's true, but that's not who this person is.

There's a lot of good stuff in this person.

There's a lot of good things that they do.

And what's powerful about this is when we do this, when we shift the way we look at people, when we put on these charity glasses and say, what are the good things in this person?

Then it stops us from falling into that trap of just assuming the worst in them.

It stops us from building this false idea of them in our minds that then changes the way that we view them.

Because when we focus on what's good in them, when we focus on the parts of them that are that are good and true, then we realize that they're not all bad and that there's a lot to love in them.

And when we come into conflict or when they do things that we don't like, we can address those as just the actions that they're taking, and we don't take that step of saying, that's who this person is.

So this is my challenge for all of us for this week.

I would invite us all to try to notice this week when we start having negative thoughts about someone, and especially if we start putting labels on someone, if we say, oh, this person is just a jerk, or this person is just annoying, if we catch ourselves doing this, thinking negatively about someone, I would challenge I would challenge all of us to say, let me put on my charity glasses, and let me try to see what are some good things about this person, what are some things that I like about this person.

And when we do that, when we shift our mind away from thinking negatively about people, towards looking for the good in them, we might be amazed at how much easier it is to get along with these people, to be friends with them, to be happy with them.

And this is how we can obey the Lord's commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves, and to protect ourselves from breaking the Lord's commandment against bearing false witness against our neighbors.

Amen.