THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
#9 - NO FALSE WITNESS

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Have you been watching the impeachment hearings? I spent much of Thursday afternoon and evening glued to the tube. Not because the testimony and questioning were so scintillating or riveting, but because this was historic. This process is only occurring for the third time in our nation's history, and as a history buff, I wanted to watch. As we all know (and better than any of us is happy with), for the past four years, the Office of Independent Counsel has been investigating the President - first it was Whitewater, then "Travelgate" then "filegate," now finally, "zippergate." There has been a LOT of testimony - $44-million worth. Lies have been told, some under oath, some not. The impeachment hearings are focusing on whether or not the President perjured himself about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Did he lie under oath? That is the issue.

No question, we dislike perjury. People who swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth but then lie give us a queasy feeling. We might want to say that it depends upon what one is lying about as to the seriousness of the offense, but, none the less, we would prefer the truth. It has been that way through the centuries. As one commentator has written, "Primitive men who killed and raped and looted without a second thought regarded a false oath as an offense against the gods, and looked with superstitious horror for a bolt of lightning to strike the blasphemer dead."⁽¹⁾ We do not like lies. We do not want to be lied about, and we do not want anyone else to be lied about either. After all, we remember the words of the commandment, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor."

Of course, the prohibition against false testimony in court was not unique to the Jews. Three hundred years before the Ten Commandments, Hammurabi's code said the same thing. He even went so far as to lay out the sentence for those who were convicted of lying in court: they would have to bear the same penalty as the one who had been originally charged would have borne. For example, if someone perjured himself in a capital trial (where the penalty was death), then the one judged guilty of giving the false testimony was himself sentenced to die. To say the least, such stiff punishment would have tended to be a good deterent.

When it became part of the Jewish code of conduct in Deuteronomy 19, the same penalty was laid out.⁽²⁾ But there were even prohibitions attached to the code to prevent people from being tempted to lie in court. Some were not even allowed to testify because they might consider perjuring themselves: relatives, friends, known enemies, anyone whose profession was thought of as in the least disreputable (dice-players, usurers or slaves - these days, we might want to add politicians). The Jewish legal system was designed to protect the rights of the accused at every turn. Circumstantial evidence was not permitted. So most certainly, fabricated verbal evidence was despised.

This commandment prohibiting false witness was first and foremost forensic in nature. Its prime focus was testimony before a court. The reason it did not flatly prohibit lying of any sort is that these Ten Commandments are not to be understood as a code of personal conduct, but rather God's design for a just and decent society. The concern here is justice, for a society that would protect the weak from the strong, the poor from the rich, the simple from the crafty. The opposite side of that coin called for an active defense of those who had been slandered, those who were in the dock because of lies, rumors, or innuendo. As the Jewish law laid it down, "If a person sins because he does not speak up when he hears a public charge to testify regarding something he has seen or learned about, he will be held responsible."⁽³⁾ "False witness" could be given, not just by OPENING your mouth, but by keeping it shut as well. There is a bias toward truth in assuring a society that is as God intends, not only in this ninth commandment and the rest of the Jewish law, but throughout history.

As to PERSONAL truthfulness (not simply judicial), we learn early on. One of the first Bible verses my parents taught me was "Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord."⁽⁴⁾ And every time I would be tempted to skirt the truth, I would see a wagging finger and hear "Lying lips..." You all heard essentially the same thing - the standard for proper conduct is a strict adherence to the truth. George Washington and the cherry tree, and all that.

If you want a really good idea of the way folks actually handle truth, though, that cherry tree story is wonderful. It first appeared in Parson Weems' biography, Life of Washington, in the 1806 edition. According to Weems' story, young George was given a hatchet at about the age of six and went around his daddy's farm testing his present out on all sorts of things, including a young cherry tree which was damaged severely. Papa summoned the boy and asked if he knew anything about it, and got the response, "Father, I cannot tell a lie; I cut the cherry tree." Because George was so truthful, his daddy forgot his anger, and all lived happily ever after. We have all heard that story. It has had an enormous effect on the kids of every subsequent American generation and has succeeded in making George Washington the sworn enemy of all young children.⁽⁵⁾ It certainly has not made them more truthful. The funny part of it is that this story about the virtue of telling the truth is itself not true - Parson Weems or somebody made it up. O tempora, O mores.

I wish I could say that preachers were innocent of that sort of thing. There is the classic story of the young boy coming home on a Sunday afternoon and asking his minister father about something he heard in the morning's sermon. "Daddy, was that really true, or was it just preachin'?" Ah, well.

What is surely true is that many times we do not think of what we say as lying, whether it be about George and the cherry tree or some quirky little invention for a sermon. But if what we pass on to someone else is less than the whole truth and we do not make that clear, what comes out of our mouth most certainly qualifies as a lie. Worst of all, lots of the lies we tell are not even for our own advantage - we do not think of them as lies. They are just conversation. We call it gossip.

Do you remember the Salem witch trials? In the summer and fall of 1692, over a hundred people were arrested and convicted for being "in league with the Devil." The only way they could escape the hangman's noose was to confess their awful crime and be granted mercy by the court. Twenty of them REFUSED to confess to something of which they were not guilty and were legally murdered. Why did such a thing happen? Because the ridiculous gossip of some teenage girls got out of hand. In this case, lying lips were an abomination, not only to the Lord, but to the history of civilization.

It would be wonderful to say that such goings on were limited to the unsophisticates of the seventeenth century, but those of us who were around in the early 1950's remember well the Army-McCarthy hearings, the House Unamerican Activities Committee, and the Hollywood Black Lists. In a generation that had just been at war twice within five years, there was genuine terror of anything that could threaten us again. The fear of the "Red Menace" so gripped us that anyone even whispered about as being sympathetic to Communism was in danger of having life and career flushed right down the drain. Many had that happen, and all because of the same kind of gossip that the girls of Salem had spread so many years before.

I read once of a woman who had been telling some tales around her town about her minister. She knew they were not true, but she told them anyway. Finally, she realized how much damage she had done and how wrong she had been and she felt very repentant. She came to the pastor and confessed (and, of course, he was already aware of it). She asked his forgiveness (which he gave) and then asked if there were anything she could do to make it up to him. He told her that, as an act of penance, she should take an old feather pillow down to the center of town, cut it open, and empty it out in the middle of the street. Then she was to wait 24 hours and collect the feathers she had deposited. Of course, by the time she returned, they had all blown away, and only by the most diligent search was she able to turn up even a few of them. She came back to the minister dejected at her plight, and quickly realized the lesson he was trying to teach her. Once those feathers, those light little lies, get up in the wind, it is impossible to get them back.

"You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." Good words for the courtroom, good words for ANY room. It is NOT a flat prohibition against lying. It would have nothing to say to me if I lied to protect someone. If a man came to me wielding a machete, asking if I had seen his wife, threatening to chop her up into fish bait when he finds her, I would surely tell him that I had not laid eyes on her...despite the fact that she was at that moment hiding in my closet. If the Gestapo had come to my door looking for Jews to ship off to the Concentration Camp, I would have surely lied to protect the Goldberg family cowering in my attic. If a mother hands me her ugly little baby and asks if he is the cutest little boy I have ever seen, I am not going to tell her, "No, he looks like a young prune." If the reason God gave this commandment in the first place was to insure that people would not be wounded by words, you can KNOW that God would never countenance wounding as the price for absolute truth.

Let me raise one other issue in regard to this commandment. It comes not from me but from the Larger Catechism in our Book of Confessions. This from the section on how we are to understand the Ten Commandments:

Q. 145. What are the sins forbidden in the Ninth Commandment?

A. The sins forbidden in the Ninth Commandment are: all prejudicing of the truth, and the good name of our neighbors as well as our own, especially in public judicature; giving false evidence, suborning false witnesses, wittingly appearing and pleading for an evil cause, outfacing and overbearing the truth; passing unjust sentence, calling evil good, and good evil; rewarding the wicked according to the work of the righteous, and the righteous according to the work of the wicked; forgery, concealing the truth, undue silence in a just cause, and holding our peace when iniquity calleth for either a reproof from ourselves, or complaint to others...⁽⁶⁾

I will raise just one facet. True justice means appropriate sentencing, as the Catechism suggests. Therein lies the problem that many have with this impeachment mess: there is no great feeling that lying about sex should result in removal of the President - the punishment does not fit the crime. And people are NOT keeping silent about it.

We have a situation in our own community that also deserves public outcry. Are you familiar with the name Kwame Cannon?⁽⁷⁾ Kwame Cannon is a young black man who, in 1986, as a seventeen- year-old, committed and was convicted of six "cat burglaries" - he broke into people's homes while they were sleeping, never with a weapon, never injured anyone, and, in total, stole less than $500 worth of goods. His sentence? Two consecutive LIFE terms! A bit harsh, eh?

One year before Kwame's sentencing, his mother had played a major role in a successful $300,000 lawsuit in which Greensboro Police, the Ku Klux Klan and American Nazis were found liable in the wrongful deaths of five protesters in what has sadly become known as the 1979 Greensboro Massacre. Mrs. Cannon was well-known as a social activist on issues pertaining to poor people and African-Americans. Whether or not her son's sentence is at all related to that fact is only surmise.

Two consecutive life terms - that is the harshest sentence for comparable crimes in the history of North Carolina. In fact, under the structured sentencing law of 1994, Kwame would have received no more than 10 years for all six burglaries, and would now have been released long ago. Meanwhile, he has served twelve years. He committed crimes and deserved to be held accountable, as he himself willingly admits. He has publically apologized for his burglaries. Kwame has been a model prisoner. He has made an effort to rehabilitate himself, has taken correspondence courses, studied to take the SAT (and one of his burglary victims has served as his tutor). He serves as "counselor" to other prisoners. He has been praised by prison officials, ministers, political officials and virtually everyone who has seen this young man turn himself around.

Simple justice demands that something be done to overturn the outrageously excessive sentence. Over 5,000 letters have been written to Governor Hunt requesting Kwame's release. The majority of the Greensboro City Council, including the mayor, has requested his release. A former state supreme court justice and congressman, the 100-plus members of the Greensboro Pulpit Forum, as well as hundreds of people from all walks of life in Greensboro, have asked that this young man be freed. Even the district attorney and the Greensboro chief of police have said they would not oppose the release of Kwame Cannon.

In spite of all this and much more, Governor Hunt has refused to respond. If this Ninth Commandment demands not only an adherence to truthful testimony in our administration of justice, but as the Catechism insists, is a prohibition against "UNDUE SILENCE IN A JUST CAUSE," something must be said.

Five-thousand letters, Governor Hunt. The Mayor and the City Council, Governor Hunt. The Police Chief and the District Attorney, Governor Hunt. A model prisoner despite an unjust sentence, Governor Hunt. Do the right thing, Governor Hunt. Give this young man a pardon, Governor Hunt, and let Kwame Cannon come home.

God cares about justice. That is the message, not only of the Ten Commandments, but of the entire corpus of scripture. God's aim is a society where there is fairness and equity for all, where judicial decisions are based on truth, where gossip has no place, where the sentence fits the crime, and where voices do not remain silent while injustice is done. To help us along that road, God gave us these good words, words to live and live well by: "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor."

Let us pray.

O God, we know that your aim for society is justice, and we confess that too often we accept less, especially for those who have no voice. Forgive us, and help us do better. We pray in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen!

1. Joy Davidman, Smoke on the Mountain, (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954), p. 107

2. Deuteronomy 19:16-21

3. Leviticus 5:1 NIV

4. Proverbs 12:22

5. Clifton Fadiman, Gen. Ed., The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, (Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1985), p. 571

6. The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA), Part I, Book of Confessions, (Louisville, KY: Geneva Press, 1996), 7.257

7. The Prism, via Internet, http://www.sunsite.unc.edu/prism/apr98/seventy.html

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