The Eighth Commandment

You Shall Not Bear False Witness

The eighth commandment teaches that lying is wrong. The particular instance of lying mentioned in the commandment is perjury, where a person ‘bears false witness’ against their neighbour. All moral codes, and all legal systems, condemn perjury because it subverts justice. The very idea of a moral code or a legal system is undone by perjury.

More generally, this commandment condemns all lying. What does it mean to lie? To utter something that is untrue as if it were true. Why is it wrong to lie? Because it is a form of injustice, not rendering to another what is their due. We are all entitled to the truth.

One strand of thought among Christian teachers proposes that sometimes people are not entitled to the truth. For example, is a person who wants to use information to harm another entitled to that information? Is one justified in misleading such a person by telling them something false? Some Christian thinkers have said yes, one is so entitled, because the person has lost his or her right to the truth. Others have said no, because all lying, even lying to a wicked person, is an attack on the dignity of humanity. It would bring us down to their level, as someone prepared to distort the truth and live by lies. Of course one is not obliged to tell the truth to such a person even if one ought not lie to them either. One can remain silent, for example, or try to think of some response which is not false but which does not give the person the information they want.

Something else to which a human being is entitled is his or her good name. There are various ways in which we can act unjustly in this regard. Gossip, slander, calumny, and what St Thomas Aquinas calls ‘murmuring’: these things are very destructive of human communities. Fear, anxiety, envy, and lack of self-esteem: these lead people to want to pull others down and to destroy their reputations. ‘Of course she is not as good as you think she is’. ‘Of course you probably haven’t heard all that he has been up to.’

Sometimes we learn things about people that are true but harmful to their good name. We are not entitled to broadcast such information to anybody and everybody just because it is true. If the protection of others or the requirements of justice demand it then we must say what we know about people.  But most of what we hear about others we cannot know for certain to be true and some of it we may know to be false. In justice we ought not to pass on such gossip.

There are serious ethical questions here not only for journalists but also for all of us, because the good name of our neighbour is entrusted to our care (as ours is entrusted to their care). We may pretend to despise the tabloid newspapers but the fact that these are the biggest selling newspapers reminds us that they feed an appetite that is in all of us even if we would prefer to deny it.

Another aspect of life that deserves much thought in relation to the eighth commandment is advertising. Standards agencies try to ensure that its claims are not false, but overall much of the picture of life advertising presents is false and misleading, even idolatrous. So much of it is ‘touched up’. To value what is false as if it were true is the road to idolatry and there is today a worship of celebrity, fame and false beauty that verges on the idolatrous.

Jesus says that there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, nothing whispered in secret that will not be proclaimed from the rooftops. That may delight us or fill us with fear. Those who follow him will learn the truth, he says, and the truth will set them free. In the day of judgement all falsehood will be revealed, all lies will be exposed. How ready are we for the kingdom of light, for the presence of God in whom there is no darkness?  Although it is uncompromising, this is not a merciless light exposing us to ridicule and humiliation. It is a merciful light, God’s Word, helping us to see ourselves as we really are, very poor in so many ways but infinitely loved by God who is Truth.