Much more to bearing false witness than lying

Exodus 20:16 is perhaps one of the most misquoted verses of the Bible I have ever heard.

No. 9 of the famous Ten Commandments given Moses by God on Mt. Sinai in Arabia, this is God’s commandment dealing with honesty. While most people are apt to think of it as “thou shalt not lie,” bearing false witness actually goes far beyond just simple lying. Think about it: When a child climbs up on the counter to reach the cookie jar on top of the fridge and then is caught by Mom, he lies to avoid punishment. Bearing false witness, on the other hand, is a lie with intent to inflict damage on another innocent party.

The night before Jesus was crucified, the gospel of Matthew records that “the chief priests, and elders, and all the council, sought false witness against Jesus, to put him to death.”

Like Daniel before him, they had no valid claim against him, just a deep-seated hatred for him that could only be satiated by his death. Being the good lawyers that they were, his death must be a legal one, but their hatred for him was such that they were willing to stoop to using false witnesses if that was what it would take to rid him from their presence. Though many false witnesses gave testimony that night, and two whose testimony might prove especially damaging, we are informed by Mark’s gospel that “neither so did their witness agree together.”

God is so opposed to the bearing of false witness that in the Old Testament the penalty for bearing false witness is the same damage it would have inflicted on the innocent party, including death.

Oh, I am so glad for America’s jury system. The right to a trial by jury is no small thing, for it actually takes judgment away from legal professionals and puts it into the hands of the common people. This is a sacred trust. Yet even so, jurors still must rely on witnesses because crimes are rarely committed in the presence of the jury. While it doesn’t seem like the modern judicial system relishes pastors on a jury, one of the things I look for when I am a juror is the absolute honesty of those who give testimony. Dishonest testimony gives rise to false conclusions, the results of which can damage a person for the rest of their lives and can even lead to death.

I say all this because you may be the victim of such deceit. As children mature into adulthood, one of the things they do is rely on various witnesses in their lives to give them correct information that becomes a foundation for future decision making. Thus, they give absolute trust first to their parents, then to others who are authorities in their lives, that the information they are given is absolute truth. It turns out that not all the information being given them is absolute truth.

For those of you familiar with the evolution vs. creation debate, you will no doubt be able to attest that at some point in your educational experience you have been exposed to a little chart that compares the human embryo with the embryos of several other of God’s creatures. Called Haeckel’s Recapitulation, it was intended to demonstrate human evolutionary lineage through the various “stages” the human embryo passed. What we are not being told, however, is that this chart was discredited by 19th century anatomists of Haeckel’s day, Haeckel himself being forced to admit that he “drew them from memory,” and thus they were inaccurate.

What we are also not being told is that these stages are also being grossly misrepresented. The “fish” stage, for example, is called that based upon what looks like “slits” behind the head like the gills of a fish. Yet what we are not told is that these so-called slits are actually pouches that develop into various things, none of which have to do with respiration.

And then there is the “amphibian” stage, called such because of an apparent “tail” on the embryo. Have you ever been told that this is actually the spinal cord which develops faster than the rest of the body, and for good reason?

What I am saying here is that false, or even incomplete, information leads to wrong conclusions. The debate between evolution and creation is basically one about truth — how we all began. As such, it is incumbent upon those who give us information, either for or against, to give us the God-honest truth. Anything less is to be guilty of bearing false witness.

Ron Hamman is pastor of Independent Baptist Church of Wasilla; contact him at 357-4229 or rghamman@mtaonline.net.