“Do not give false testimony against your neighbor.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I told one big lie to my parents when I was growing up. I don’t mean this was the only lie I told, I’m sure there were many more of those, but this was the big one. They had told me not to throw dirt clods from our freshly tilled garden bed at the shed sitting at the end of the garden because they didn’t want me to accidentally hit and break the window that faced that direction. The trouble was, I was an eight- or nine-year-old boy, and those dirt clods exploded so satisfyingly when they hit the wall. So, I threw them anyway…and I broke the window. But on that particular day, my cousin was there throwing with me. I told my parents he broke the window. Year…I paid for that, and rightly so. Here’s my question: Did I violate this commandment then? Let’s talk about this penultimate of the Ten Commandments and just what it means.

The short version of the response to my question is this: No, I don’t believe I violated this commandment and that doesn’t matter anyway because it didn’t and doesn’t hold any authority over us today. Hold on now! Doesn’t this ninth commandment expressly forbid lying? No, it does not. It expressly forbids giving false testimony against another person in a legal setting. If anything, what it forbids is perjury. Perjury is a kind of lying, but if God intended to expressly forbid all lying, then you have to imagine He would have said so.

Okay, so does this mean God is okay with lying? Of course not. He is the source of all truth. When we lie, what we are doing is creating fantasy worlds, worlds that do not actually exist, setting them up alongside reality as He created it, and then living in them instead of the world as God created it. We are saying to God that our version of creation is better than His. Worse, if our lie involves another person whether because they are in on lie or more simply because we told them lie, we are forcing them to live in our fantasy world with us. So, not only are we removing ourselves from the world as God made it, but we are forcing the people around us to do the same. Lying, in this sense, is a kind of philosophical kidnapping. God lays out His view on physical kidnapping in the next chapter. Let’s just say for now that He’s not a fan of it.

Remember what the Ten Commandments were for. They were about setting out the boundaries for the people of Israel of what it looked like to live in a relationship with God. They were also about giving them the tools to create a culture and a society that were reflective of God’s kingdom and character. Such societies always operate better than those that do not share such a reflection. (This doesn’t mean, by the way, that all cultures which claim to be operating on that basis really are.) Well, one of God’s primary characteristics is that He is just. This command was about making sure Israel’s legal system operated in a way that was just and fair, trustworthy and true. When people can’t trust the legal system, they will pursue what they see as justice on their own. That will invariably create a disaster for the culture. Keeping that from happening was the point of this commandment.

So then, lying is always wrong? That question still misses the point, but it is an understandable one nonetheless. The short answer is…maybe? Yes, in at least the vast majority of cases, lying does just what we talked about its doing a second ago, and is therefore wrong to do. To use the word you may have been waiting on my using, it is sin. We don’t need this command to understand that. It’s all over the New Testament which is the covenant that applies to us. Furthermore, to create a false world and then force another person to live in it with us, meaning they are eventually going to experience the painful run-in with reality that is waiting for us as well is unloving. That does violate the one command we have to keep as followers of Jesus.

But to categorically say lying is always wrong is a bit more complicated than that. Christian philosophers debate that point. There are at least two instances in the Scriptures (one which we have talked about here) where a character lies to another and is not only not condemned, but is in fact praised and rewarded for it. In both of these cases the people being lied to were actively seeking to cause harm to others and the lies preserved the lives of the people the liars were seeking to protect. I’ll let you click that link to read through a fuller exploration of the issues here. Suffice to say now and while we have to walk very carefully on this matter, people who are already living in fantasy worlds, who demonstrate no inclination to leave their fantasy worlds, and who are seeking to behave toward others from out of the rules of their fantasy worlds in ways that will unjustly cause them harm do not deserve to be invited back into the real world. It is morally appropriate to allow them to walk from one fantasy world into another in order to prevent the unjust harm from taking place. That’s a mouthful, I know. Go back and read it again if you need to.

Before you go letting your mind race to find a way in there to justify the last lie you told, let me add this: The circumstances in which that principle may apply are really, really narrow. If you live in a cultural setting at all like mine, you have almost certainly never encountered them and probably will not at any point in your future. In fact, the likelihood that you will encounter the circumstances that allow this principle to come into play is sufficiently small that it’s okay to go ahead and operate under the assumption that lying is always wrong. That approach will keep you out of trouble more than it will cause trouble for the people around you. Of course, you can always deliver the truth to someone in an unloving manner which will cause its own set of problems, but the issue there is not with the truth, but with your presentation of it. And, if the person to whom you are delivering the truth has been living in their own fantasy world, your invitation back into the real world may not be received well no matter how gently you offer it. But in nearly every case you can imagine, such an invitation is the right thing to do. So, don’t lie. And, yes, I was wrong when I blamed my cousin.