Bearing False Witness

One of the great challenges for me in these past several years – and particularly the last 6 months – has been staying positive, hopeful, and encouraged. The US President’s advisors, early in the President’s term told us, there are “alternative facts.” This phrase is simply nonsense describing a public culture of official lying…about everything.

It is challenging to be positive, hopeful, and encouraged when we struggle to know who and what to believe or who and what to trust. It is challenging to be positive, hopeful, and encouraged when conspiracy theory is valued equally, and frequently more highly, than researched journalism.

For nearly 4,000 years it has not only been known but also, REVEALED, that a thriving, enduring and just culture depends upon and upholds truth telling in public life. The Ninth Commandment lays it out this way: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. (Exodus 20:16 and Deuteronomy 5:21a).

The Ninth Commandment, if thought of at all, is most often thought of in the context of a remembered elementary Sunday School lesson about not telling lies. Well, it is that to be sure. But there is so very much more.

A legal system cannot function with the result of any justice if there is no personal or social expectation of truth telling and a revulsion to, as well as penalty for, bearing false witness. Justice is not possible in a society condoning “alternative facts.” 

Justice and a prevailing common good cannot be achieved when a sense of equivalency is given to unsubstantiated facts that contradict the documented record. A just and free country is not possible, for long at least, if bearing false witness – making claims of wrongdoing or poor performance of duty – does not require evidentiary support by the person or persons making such a witness.

In our public life at the topmost level, and with far too many persons supporting that level, this is happening all the time. There is seemingly no consequence for those bearing the false witness and those reporting it as factual. Rather, the consequence is being seen in the erosion of the priceless capital of confidence in the public good.

Here is a short list of precious, public trusts currently being eroded because of false witness being born without any substantiation of alleged wrongdoing:

  1. Fair and free elections – IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA – are being undermined by the suggestion that our ballot methods are corrupt.
  2. The United States Postal Service is said to be flawed to the point of not being worthy of our trust.
  3. Our national security agencies are alleged to have been corrupted by mid-level partisan bureaucrats.
  4. Our public education system is said to have been degraded to its core by left-wing liberals promoting a political agenda at the expense of educational quality, content, and safety for children.
  5. The science, medical protocol and disease prevention advocated by the Centers for Disease Control has been undermined as unreliable.

These are just five examples of bearing false witness unsupported by any evidence for such claims. Again, the price we are paying as a society is huge in terms of the constant erosion of public trust.

So, here is how I am trying to stay positive, hopeful, and encouraged. 

I intentionally spend time calling to my mind all the women and men I have known who have been involved in such essential things as pubic education, national security agencies, the postal service, our local elections boards, and public health agencies.

I do this because their lives of integrity, service, loyalty to principle and mission of their respective agencies and discipline, and their personal lives of honor and decency valuing the public good, EXPOSE THE LIES and statements of those who are bearing false witness.

I am grateful for these persons I have known who live out the commandments. I am grateful for these persons who would not live within, remain quiet or acquiesce to a professional culture which compelled them to act or perform in ways inconsistent with their values and beliefs.

So, indeed, despite all the nonsense and false witness being born day after day, I choose to be positive, hopeful and encouraged. It is not easy. But like so many others, and with apologies to the late, Welsh, poet Dylan Thomas, I will not go quietly into this pervading night of bearing false witness.