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The Eighth Commandment

In most Bibles, the eighth commandment reads: “You shall bear no false witness against your neighbour” or “your neighbours”. One more time the Bible “The Good News” is an exception. There one can read: “Speak no untruth about your fellow man.”

And so, we violate the eighth commandment when we say something about our neighbour that is not true. But bearing false witness also means to flatter our neighbour, to speak honeyed words to him, to praise him, to acknowledge him with a lot of words, with a lot of flowery words, in order to perhaps achieve something for ourselves, personally. Our thoughts, our wants are then totally different than our words. This is false witness – falsehood. And we act this way in order to steal energy, acknowledgement and attention from our neighbour, which he wouldn’t have otherwise given us in the form that we wanted. Then it is not only that we don’t say the truth, but we don’t even give our honest opinion; we say what we think our neighbour wants to hear. We can see that the seventh commandment “You shall not steal” is also a part of this commandment.

What is an opinion? “Opinion” always says that we don’t know something. We don’t know the truth and therefore we think up something that fits into our way of thinking and thus sounds logical to us. This is then our opinion. Since an opinion bears witness to not-knowing, it can be untrue.

Seen spiritually – that is, in reality – a word, a statement, a thought, as we heard, remains empty and hollow as long as the word comes solely from what we have read, from our intellect, from our knowledge. The word gains sound, weight and meaning, only when the person fills what he speaks with life, that is, with the truth – with his actualization, the  deed.

The person who lets the commandments of God come alive in his thoughts, words and deeds knows that what he speaks about is true, because he has experienced and learned it himself. His feelings, sensations and thoughts then agree with his words. On the other hand, the person who speaks about life – about divine principles of the law as well as about things concerning the daily living of people together – and does not apply them in his own life, not having experienced them, cannot do anything more than express a supposition, a conception, an opinion.

A truth, a spiritual principle of Inner Life, can thus be conveyed and passed on solely by the person who has actualized – that is, lived – this himself.

It is claimed that priests, ministers, bishops or cardinals are guarantors for the truth. So can bishops, cardinals, ministers and priests have opinions? As we have seen, an opinion is not necessarily the truth. So if we do not speak the truth as guarantors, then we are bearing false witness against our neighbour and thus commit a sin. Here, a question comes up: Can we absolve the sins of our brother or sister who comes to us and tells us about his or her cares and sins, when we ourselves sin knowingly or even intentionally?

We all should check what we say every day. For each one of us is a guarantor before God. He guarantees before God that what he says corresponds to the truth. If our words don’t correspond to the truth – that is, are only suppositions or opinions – and we are aware of this because our thoughts show something totally different and because we may even act totally differently, then we are bearing false witness. We thus speak falsely, because we think differently. We are speaking untruly and are untruthful. We are liars.

Only the one who is upright himself, that is, who is truthful – the one who says what he feels, senses and thinks and also acts accordingly – is able to tell the upright, honest person from liars, opinion-makers and tempters. If we do not strive with all our strength to orient our thinking and acting to the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, we often fall victim to opinion-makers.

As Original Christians, we observe the eighth commandment in the following way: We try to observe ourselves daily in everything that we think, say and do. If we are in conversation with our neighbour, we ask ourselves: Is what we are saying the truth or is it a false witness? We recognize ourselves by examining and controlling not only our words, what we are saying, but also our thoughts all the way to our feelings, to see whether they are truthful.

Of course one could say: Everything is truth for the one who has no pangs of conscience; he bears much false witness against his neighbour. However, it is normal to have pangs of conscience, if we daily observe ourselves and place our life in the hands of Christ, by fulfilling the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount step by step. Then we recognize immediately: Are we speaking falsely, bearing false witness or being truthful? This shows itself in our feelings and in our thoughts. This is how the Christ of God revealed it to us, and the person who keeps to this recognizes himself and knows whether he is faithful to the truth, to Christ, and whether he is faithful to the eighth commandment in his feeling, thinking, speaking and acting.

We already violate this faithfulness to the eighth commandment when we, aware of what we are doing, pass on a rumour, like, for instance: “I heard that my neighbour said this or that”. If we don’t first check to see if it really is the truth, then we are already making ourselves guilty.

In order not to load guilt onto ourselves, by passing on as truth something that we have heard, we could add: “Well, that could be just a rumour.” But in this case, we have to ask ourselves: Why do we want to say anything about this rumour at all? What do we want to achieve with this? And so, we should not talk about a third person. If we notice something, then we go to our brother or our sister and ask him or her. We express what moves us. Then we will treat our neighbour justly and have taken a step towards fulfilling the principle of justice.

This is the way Christians should think and live. And in this way, we fulfil the eighth commandment: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.”

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