Tuesday 2 September 2014

Morals Blogs: Ten Commandments: No False Testimony

You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour” Exodus 20:16

This is about the courts: Primarily the official law courts and secondarily what is often called “the court of public opinion.

Yes I know when we were youngsters this commandment was always just applied to telling lies in general. We need to rid ourselves and our teaching of the Commandments from the temptation to make them underpin human ideas. Jesus had a lot to say about this tendency in his day with comments like “You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.” (Mark 7:8).

In any endeavour to build a system of morals based on what can be known of the moral character of God we must exercise continual vigilance against our own bias and presuppositions.

Our constant temptation will be to fall back to “proof text-ing” where we scour the Bible for verses that seem to lend weight to what we already believe. When we are using the Bible the right way we will more often find it shows us ourselves to be wrong. We will find that it judges and condemns our own thoughts actions and prejudices. Will we accept this condemnation and let God change us into better people – people who more and more believe and practice what is in accord with his moral character? Or will we chose to go our own headstrong way? That is the question. That is the temptation. That is the pitfall waiting to turn our noble dream into base hypocrisy.

So to deal fairly with this commandment we have to be honest about what it says. It is not about telling lies in the general sense. It is about the vital importance of a just and true legal system. Secondarily it is about what I have called the court of public opinion.

Yes the Bible does have things to say about honesty in general: not telling lies; not using false weights and measures, not cheating your employees and so forth. The Bible has some very stern and important things to say about these. I too want to delve into some of these issues. This Commandment is the closest subject heading under which to discuss them. So in later blogs I will discuss them. But we must not pretend that these allied Biblical issues are the main thrust of this Commandment.

Back to the subject of law-courts.

I have noticed earnest “Christians” who despise the law courts. Big mistake! The Bible, almost from cover-to-cover hammers home the necessity of law courts and the vital importance to God that the courts dispense justice.

These earnest people find a single proof text (that itself should be a warning that they are wrong!) in 1 Corinthians 6. They take it to mean that 'believers' should not use the secular law courts. In the young Corinthian church, one can see Paul's point – they were demonstrating to the pagan society around them that their new-found faith had not improved their morals or their business ethics. Better indeed that some believer could bring the contestants to a better frame of mind and behaviour. Better still they should repent of their avarice. However in, for instance modern Australia, where the court system has been built up and reformed continuously since then by God-fearing people who were trying to make it dispense justice reliably, this is not a true application of Paul's injunction: quite the reverse: it is a silly thing to say.

I have had some direct experience of both the secular law courts and church courts. Some personal, but mostly through the work of my sister, a retired lawyer who has defended clergy and lay people unjustly hauled before church courts. One can see some of her work on www.churchdispute.com/sample-page/ From these experiences both personal and vicarious I say without hesitation that “church” or “Christian” courts compare very badly to “secular” law courts.

Sadly I have noticed that church courts tend to be corrupt – they put their idea of what would benefit the institution, or implement the wishes of say an archbishop far ahead of justice. They want the approval, as Jesus observed in his day, of humans, not the approval of the only God! I have even seen people who are judges in the secular system behave in church courts in a manner which would never be tolerated in the secular justice system.

As to Christian people who are not trained in the law, they tend to be just plain silly. Sweeping statement I know, but in my experience it is a just condemnation. Jesus said we should be wise as serpents but innocent as doves. We humans tend to get it the other way round! My almost universal observation is that well meaning “Christians” who dabble in dispute resolution or get themselves onto church tribunals have absolutely no concept “justice” or "a fair trial" in any form let alone as God depicts his passion for it.

Back to our main topic: One indispensable ingredient in a justice system that works is honest testimony.

Decades ago a relative who was at that stage a young barrister told me of his complete frustration in most of the cases dealt with in court. He said witnesses just lied. They brazenly lied under oath.

This problem is the crux of this commandment. You can't have justice without truth. You can't find the truth if people give false evidence in court. In our time we have gone soft on perjury. That must be corrected.

The specifics of correcting this problem is largely in the hands of specialists in the law. That is outside my expertise. I can say this though:

1. In the Old Testament perjury was treated far more seriously than we treat it. The punishment for giving false evidence was the same as the punishment the accused person would have received if found guilty. Today perjury seems to go largely unpunished

2. Forensic evidence is relatively new. Some decades ago in Australia there was a case that seized public attention where a woman who was convicted of murdering her baby was later totally exonerated: as she had always maintained, a dingo (wild dog) did take her baby. One of the many aspects of this terrible miscarriage of justice was forensic evidence. Experts gave evidence against her that a sticky substance found under the dashboard of her car was human blood. Eventually it was shown to be factory-applied rust-preventer. I sometimes wonder how confidant these “experts” would have been with their damning evidence if they had faced being sent to prison for 'life' themselves if their testimony was shown to be wrong!

So Lawyers and law-makers: what can you do to tackle the problem of “false testimony”

The other side to the decline in truthfulness in court is religious. There have been times in history when even rather nasty people would not, as they put it “perjure their souls”. That is they were sufficiently aware of the gravity of perjury and of God's judgement that they would not lie under oath even thought they committed other serious crimes. It is my sad observation that professing “Christians” from lay people right up the hierarchy now have no difficulty lying under oath. Perhaps they rationalise it as being “for the good of the Church” perhaps they are sure in their own minds of the “right” side of the case and think that justifies perjury. Perhaps they are just influenced by the current social acceptance of perjury.

We have got to change. God thought it so important as to make it one of the Big Ten commandments. We have got to start with professing Christians and sweep out to all the community: False testimony makes a mockery of justice! Perhaps the first step is re-discovering a proper fear of God. God hates evil with a passion. If we chose to continue to love evil rather than good we will not escape punishment at the final judgement: That God promises!

As a secular (but Christian informed) society we must re-utilise all the resources of socialisation and moral education-cum-formation to enforce this social more: When put under oath in court you will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth!



Next time... Slander: false testimony in the court of public opinion.


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