The topic this morning for my seminary class is the Eighth Commandment. “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” It’s not only about being a true witness in court but a true witness in all of life. Wrote a Reformation era theologian, “This Law…contains the most beautiful of all virtues, truth.”
“What is truth?” asked Pilate (John 18:38). Knowing “truth” has deteriorated in our lifetimes. Remember the old sitcom, “Gilligan’s Island”? The Coast Guard actually received phone calls reporting people shipwrecked. It used to be, “I know it’s true because I saw it on TV!” A more current version is confusing truth with TV news or social media postings. Worse, many people today believe something is true simply because they believe it is true. Ignorant individualism. Socrates, the fourth century B.C. Greek philosopher, went to a politician, “and in conversation with him I formed the impression that although in many people’s opinion, and especially in his own, he appeared to be wise, in fact he was not” (“Apology,” 21, c). Socrates interviewed all walks of people and decided no one really knew the truth, although all thought they did. Today? “Nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9).
And us church goers? Barna found that in 1993 almost 9 out of 10 of Christians believed we have a responsibility to share our faith. In 2019 that number had gone down to 6 out of 10. In 1993, 4 out of 10 Christians would challenge someone to defend their beliefs. Now only about 2 out of 10 will. In our society of individually defining truth, Christian truth isn’t important enough for many church people to work into their conversations. “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8).
The little snippets we get on the news and social media show people spinning words to their own version of truth. Putting down someone else, kissing up to an important person, boasting, conveniently forgetting the past…Breaking the Eighth Commandment is all around us. How about you and me? Does Christian truth shape our conversations, or is it fear, or anger, jealousy, disappointment, seeking approval, desiring to get even, or something else? “Out of the heart” come our own sins against truth.
Sunday I’ll be teaching a Bible class at our church about conversations. They reveal a lot about the truth that is in us.
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