Objectifying other people is a dangerous habit we human beings regularly get into. We treat someone as an object when we talk about him or her as a “them.” There are two kinds of people in this world – those who categorize people and those who don’t.
When I triangulate or gossip or objectify one person, I am breaking the 9th Commandment by passing on false information about him or her. I may not even intend harm by speaking about someone, but in separating that person from his or her information, I have started a process that could well unravel that person’s reputation.
The same thing happens on a larger scale. We can triangulate or bear false witness against a whole group of people, corporately ruining their reputations.
When I was a kid, my brother and I had a couple of friends who were brothers and lived in our neighborhood. We were poor and they were poorer. Even worse, they were often getting into trouble, which back in second and third grade in the early 1960s in our town was low-grade trouble. It also sounded like fun to my brother and me. Nevertheless people used to talk about them as “those Brown boys.”
The trouble with brothers is that when they get into trouble they tend to compound their troublesomeness. Meaning that whenever “Fred” did something wrong, it was a mark against both of them. And when “Sam” did something wrong the same thing happened, until each of the boys was in compounded trouble.
On a societal scale, we call this racism. Racism is both ugly and surefire sin. Moreover, it is a direct violation of the 9th Commandment. What is racism? Like gossip on a personal level, it is bearing false witness against a whole class of people. It is triangulating about a group of people without taking time to verify the truth of our statements. It is class action gossip.
For some reason we Evangelicals don’t treat racism as a sin, at least not on the level of the Ten Commandments. We insist on hanging the Ten Commandments in Courtrooms while we violate those very commandments by bearing false witness against a whole class of people who enter those courtroom doors. Jesus had some hard things to say about people who give only lip service to the commands of God.
We see prejudice as a social or political matter, which seems to mean that it lies outside of spiritual concerns, something not to be preached against in church. But, as we do with gossip, we treat racism as harmless something which condemns people to hell. Jesus said it was better for a man to be drowned than for him to cause someone else to sin.
My doctoral research was in part on how a segment of us Evangelicals had practiced the sin of racism in the mid-twentieth century. As happened with a lot of churches, this particular group decided that they had to make a choice between reaching African Americans and White Americans, so like triage in an emergency room, they decided to reach the Whites and forget the Blacks. They, who had been called to preach the gospel to all peoples, had done exactly what Jesus warned about in Luke 17.
We may not intend for our actions to reap such consequences. Yet whenever we treat others as “them”, whenever we pass on individual behaviors in other people as class acts, we objectify a whole segment of this world’s population and bear false witness against our neighbors. We see a person act in a certain way and then classify all those like her as that same way. We see another person else in that group, and in circular fashion we say that is how we are to think this second person. She’s one of them, so she must be like them. Compounded trouble.
We don’t think of racism and prejudice as lying. But in reality that is what they are – bold-faced lies. When was the last time you heard the 9th Commandment preached on in church? When was the last time you heard racism preached on in church? Perhaps it is time to hang the Ten Commandments in the sanctuaries of our nation.
2009-03-25
2009-03-18
Authenticity and the 9th – Part III
We’ve been talking about the 9th. Commandment that is. The 9th is all about not sharing harmful information concerning our neighbor with others.
Often we break the 9th when we aren’t intending to harm anyone. We may even be attempting to keep people from being hurt. I’d take a guess that we’re more likely to “bear false witness” when we really think we are not.
It can happen in a couple of ways. First, we do it through the art of planting questions in peoples’ minds about a third party. We aren’t saying anything wrong. We aren’t even hinting at something out of order. But we just raise a question or wonder if such and such could really be so. We even plant questions when we don’t speak up for someone, not treating someone’s honor as something we will defend to the last.
The second way is through the art of playful humor. Humor is a gift from God, but like all gifts it can be misused. We joke about something in regard to someone and soon the gentle joke turns cruel or malicious. Maybe it doesn’t even get repeated, but the humor like the hint of a question stirs in people’s minds and impressions are formed.
A key purpose of the Ten Commandments is to ensure a just and functional society where people find methods to work and live together in harmony. What happens when the 9th is abused in the most casual of ways, through a question or a quip that does not automatically assume the best in someone else? The fabric of society starts to tear apart. We have just separated that object of our question or humor from the rest of us – we have turned that person into an object outside of our circle.
A friend of mine tells a story on himself. He laughs about it now, but I wonder how he really felt when it happened. While in college, he took a liking to this particular girl, a fellow student. One day after class he asked her out on a date. Right there she turned him down. I don’t know that she did it poorly. I rather think she just found the best way she could think of to say she wasn’t interested.
A short while later my friend showed up in the school’s administrative offices and a secretary said she’d heard that so-and-so had turned him down for a date. How quickly that news had traveled around the campus! How many other people knew about this story? What was this news causing people to think about my friend. A date nobody wanted? A joke, a loser?
Like a faint breeze that portends a violent thunderstorm, our hints through question and humor can unleash terrible pain in people. The smallest, most off-handed remarks can grow into monsters of destruction.
I’ll admit I’m as guilty as anyone. But just because I am in good company doesn’t excuse my behavior. I do well to heed each of the Ten Commandments, particularly this 9th that can sow pain and misery in my wake if it is ignored.
Often we break the 9th when we aren’t intending to harm anyone. We may even be attempting to keep people from being hurt. I’d take a guess that we’re more likely to “bear false witness” when we really think we are not.
It can happen in a couple of ways. First, we do it through the art of planting questions in peoples’ minds about a third party. We aren’t saying anything wrong. We aren’t even hinting at something out of order. But we just raise a question or wonder if such and such could really be so. We even plant questions when we don’t speak up for someone, not treating someone’s honor as something we will defend to the last.
The second way is through the art of playful humor. Humor is a gift from God, but like all gifts it can be misused. We joke about something in regard to someone and soon the gentle joke turns cruel or malicious. Maybe it doesn’t even get repeated, but the humor like the hint of a question stirs in people’s minds and impressions are formed.
A key purpose of the Ten Commandments is to ensure a just and functional society where people find methods to work and live together in harmony. What happens when the 9th is abused in the most casual of ways, through a question or a quip that does not automatically assume the best in someone else? The fabric of society starts to tear apart. We have just separated that object of our question or humor from the rest of us – we have turned that person into an object outside of our circle.
A friend of mine tells a story on himself. He laughs about it now, but I wonder how he really felt when it happened. While in college, he took a liking to this particular girl, a fellow student. One day after class he asked her out on a date. Right there she turned him down. I don’t know that she did it poorly. I rather think she just found the best way she could think of to say she wasn’t interested.
A short while later my friend showed up in the school’s administrative offices and a secretary said she’d heard that so-and-so had turned him down for a date. How quickly that news had traveled around the campus! How many other people knew about this story? What was this news causing people to think about my friend. A date nobody wanted? A joke, a loser?
Like a faint breeze that portends a violent thunderstorm, our hints through question and humor can unleash terrible pain in people. The smallest, most off-handed remarks can grow into monsters of destruction.
I’ll admit I’m as guilty as anyone. But just because I am in good company doesn’t excuse my behavior. I do well to heed each of the Ten Commandments, particularly this 9th that can sow pain and misery in my wake if it is ignored.
2009-03-11
Authenticity and the 9th – Part II
I love well-written and artfully illustrated children’s picture story books. One of my favorites is a 1987 edition we have of Hans Christian Anderson’s It’s Absolutely True! Anderson, famous for his children’s fairy tails, was a Nineteenth Century Danish author.
Though I highly recommend you read the story for yourself, I don’t think I’ll spoil it for you by telling you the gist of it. It is worth reading over and over again.
In a farmyard, a very dependable and respectable hen fluffed her feathers as she came to roost and a little feather fell out. She made a joke about plucking out more and then went to sleep. A nearby hen could not sleep until she had passed on the news that one of the cluckers in the henhouse intended to pluck out her feathers to make herself look better. This got passed on as invariably happens – from hens to barnyard owls to other winged creatures until it made the news all around the community and finally came back to the original farmyard.
By the time the news had gotten all the way back around, it had mushroomed into a tall tail indeed. Five hens, it was reported, had plucked out all their feathers trying to compete for the rooster and then had pecked each other to death. Even the original hen did not recognize the story – fortunately. Anderson writes that this is the way “one feather can easily become five hens.”
Now is Anderson writing this only to warn about how rumors get started? A story like this could be considered harmless as long as no one passes a law forbidding hens from pruning. But a deeper warning lurks underneath. The hen who could not sleep for the disturbing thing she had overheard was doing a grave injustice to the original hen, even if she did not attach that original hen’s ID to the story. Add the identification and you have a gross violation of the 9th Commandment.
It is called gossip. But gossip with or without the intent to do harm, invariably does, for it paints a picture of a person, correctly or not, that is independent of that person’s ability to verify. The last six of the Ten Commandments are all about not causing harm to others, and gossip is one of the worst ways to harm. We moderns believe in this principle so strongly we’ve even enshrined it in our laws as “innocent until proven guilty.” Unfortunately there is no way to enforce a law against gossip, something which the Scriptures paint as one of the vilest of sins.
We have a new term for it these days, particularly as fits the barnyard scene above. Triangulation. A triangle by definition has three points or angles. I hear something from you and I go to a third party about it. You have just been triangulated. Most times, though malicious intent is not involved, grievous harm results. It may not look like it at first, but like so much dust in Northwest China, layer upon layer of tidbits accumulate and soon you have packed clay hundreds of feet thick.
Sometimes the triangulation is as innocent as sharing prayer requests out of concern for others. As with Anderson’s story, the prayer requests get passed on and in the transmission are augmented or altered here and there until they are hardly recognizable to the original person. Even harmless facts can accumulate in a very harmful way.
Jesus presents what we often call the “Matthew 18 process” as a surefire way to stop triangulation. Paul echoes this idea in explaining about observing communion. When you have a problem with a brother or sister, go back directly to that person and sort it out. Even physical sickness can result if you don’t.
Funny thing, we Christians have been known to preach against smoking and dancing and drinking and cussing and gambling. I wonder if all the people harmed by those practices add up to those harmed by gossip. Sit on that for a while and see what hatches.
Though I highly recommend you read the story for yourself, I don’t think I’ll spoil it for you by telling you the gist of it. It is worth reading over and over again.
In a farmyard, a very dependable and respectable hen fluffed her feathers as she came to roost and a little feather fell out. She made a joke about plucking out more and then went to sleep. A nearby hen could not sleep until she had passed on the news that one of the cluckers in the henhouse intended to pluck out her feathers to make herself look better. This got passed on as invariably happens – from hens to barnyard owls to other winged creatures until it made the news all around the community and finally came back to the original farmyard.
By the time the news had gotten all the way back around, it had mushroomed into a tall tail indeed. Five hens, it was reported, had plucked out all their feathers trying to compete for the rooster and then had pecked each other to death. Even the original hen did not recognize the story – fortunately. Anderson writes that this is the way “one feather can easily become five hens.”
Now is Anderson writing this only to warn about how rumors get started? A story like this could be considered harmless as long as no one passes a law forbidding hens from pruning. But a deeper warning lurks underneath. The hen who could not sleep for the disturbing thing she had overheard was doing a grave injustice to the original hen, even if she did not attach that original hen’s ID to the story. Add the identification and you have a gross violation of the 9th Commandment.
It is called gossip. But gossip with or without the intent to do harm, invariably does, for it paints a picture of a person, correctly or not, that is independent of that person’s ability to verify. The last six of the Ten Commandments are all about not causing harm to others, and gossip is one of the worst ways to harm. We moderns believe in this principle so strongly we’ve even enshrined it in our laws as “innocent until proven guilty.” Unfortunately there is no way to enforce a law against gossip, something which the Scriptures paint as one of the vilest of sins.
We have a new term for it these days, particularly as fits the barnyard scene above. Triangulation. A triangle by definition has three points or angles. I hear something from you and I go to a third party about it. You have just been triangulated. Most times, though malicious intent is not involved, grievous harm results. It may not look like it at first, but like so much dust in Northwest China, layer upon layer of tidbits accumulate and soon you have packed clay hundreds of feet thick.
Sometimes the triangulation is as innocent as sharing prayer requests out of concern for others. As with Anderson’s story, the prayer requests get passed on and in the transmission are augmented or altered here and there until they are hardly recognizable to the original person. Even harmless facts can accumulate in a very harmful way.
Jesus presents what we often call the “Matthew 18 process” as a surefire way to stop triangulation. Paul echoes this idea in explaining about observing communion. When you have a problem with a brother or sister, go back directly to that person and sort it out. Even physical sickness can result if you don’t.
Funny thing, we Christians have been known to preach against smoking and dancing and drinking and cussing and gambling. I wonder if all the people harmed by those practices add up to those harmed by gossip. Sit on that for a while and see what hatches.
2009-03-02
Authenticity and the 9th – Part I
Have you ever been triangulated? Have ever watched a court witness being cross-examined to determine his or her integrity? Have you ever been a victim of racism? Or expressed a biased thought against someone else?
All these questions are related to the 9th Commandment in the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, which reads “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.” We think that the 9th Commandment has to do only with lying, and there is a relationship. But nowhere do any of the Ten Commandments say, “Thou shalt not lie.” As with each of the commandments, a much broader principle is being laid out in the 9th.
Honesty is a difficult thing to master. Kids are taught almost from Day One not to lie; it doesn’t come naturally. Our cultural icons are shrouded with stories of their veracity, making them civic lessons in truthfulness. Every American knows the tale of young George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, then telling his dad, “I cannot tell a lie.” Yet even the most conscientious of adults struggle with, When is it appropriate to withhold or pass on information?
The Scriptures have much to say about honesty and lying and the priceless value of earning a reputation for integrity. The 9th Commandment is concerned with a particular form of honesty – how we present our neighbor to others. Don’t give a false impression about your neighbor, it is saying. The vocabulary here sounds a legal note. “Don’t give a false witness.” Obviously this covers no lying on the witness stand.
Back in Moses’ day when the Ten Commandments were established as the cornerstone of Hebrew society, legal proceedings were achieved less in a formal court like we have today than with a couple of neighbors bringing grievances against each other to a tribal leader. There were no scientific procedures for verifying a testimony such as with a polygraph or DNA test. The weight of the evidence rested on the word of an individual. A leader had to sort out the inevitable “he said, she said” tangle.
Thus the Biblical injunction that verification should be done in the presence of two or three witnesses, not just one. Like observing with two eyes instead of one, two or three witnesses provide perspective. No two people see, remember or interpret everything exactly alike. Hearing the story or the impression from more than one person increases the likelihood that a true picture will immerge.
A judge or leader has the responsibility to sort out the evidence presented by the witnesses – and the truthfulness of the witness given. On such integrity rests the whole fabric of social order.
So the weight of testimony falls heavily on the known character of the witness. Has this person ever told a lie or done something like this before? Has he or she ever done anything which puts his or her integrity in question? How trustworthy is this person?
Some of the most famous trials in history – actual or fictional – revolve around these questions of truthful witness. Think of the book “To Kill a Mockingbird”, the Salem Witch Hunt, Senator Joe McCarthy’s anticommunist crusade, President Nixon’s famous tapes, President Clinton’s impeachment proceedings, or the cross-accusations of the Televangelists in the 1980s. They all boil down to who is telling the truth or not – and about whom.
To the question “Who is my neighbor” in the Gospels, Jesus turns the challenge on its head. Don’t ask, Who is my neighbor? Ask, Who am I neighbor to?
As we will see in this series of postings, the implications of the 9th are far greater than “I cannot tell a lie.” They include the much broader concern, Can I be trusted with my neighbor’s reputation?
All these questions are related to the 9th Commandment in the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, which reads “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.” We think that the 9th Commandment has to do only with lying, and there is a relationship. But nowhere do any of the Ten Commandments say, “Thou shalt not lie.” As with each of the commandments, a much broader principle is being laid out in the 9th.
Honesty is a difficult thing to master. Kids are taught almost from Day One not to lie; it doesn’t come naturally. Our cultural icons are shrouded with stories of their veracity, making them civic lessons in truthfulness. Every American knows the tale of young George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, then telling his dad, “I cannot tell a lie.” Yet even the most conscientious of adults struggle with, When is it appropriate to withhold or pass on information?
The Scriptures have much to say about honesty and lying and the priceless value of earning a reputation for integrity. The 9th Commandment is concerned with a particular form of honesty – how we present our neighbor to others. Don’t give a false impression about your neighbor, it is saying. The vocabulary here sounds a legal note. “Don’t give a false witness.” Obviously this covers no lying on the witness stand.
Back in Moses’ day when the Ten Commandments were established as the cornerstone of Hebrew society, legal proceedings were achieved less in a formal court like we have today than with a couple of neighbors bringing grievances against each other to a tribal leader. There were no scientific procedures for verifying a testimony such as with a polygraph or DNA test. The weight of the evidence rested on the word of an individual. A leader had to sort out the inevitable “he said, she said” tangle.
Thus the Biblical injunction that verification should be done in the presence of two or three witnesses, not just one. Like observing with two eyes instead of one, two or three witnesses provide perspective. No two people see, remember or interpret everything exactly alike. Hearing the story or the impression from more than one person increases the likelihood that a true picture will immerge.
A judge or leader has the responsibility to sort out the evidence presented by the witnesses – and the truthfulness of the witness given. On such integrity rests the whole fabric of social order.
So the weight of testimony falls heavily on the known character of the witness. Has this person ever told a lie or done something like this before? Has he or she ever done anything which puts his or her integrity in question? How trustworthy is this person?
Some of the most famous trials in history – actual or fictional – revolve around these questions of truthful witness. Think of the book “To Kill a Mockingbird”, the Salem Witch Hunt, Senator Joe McCarthy’s anticommunist crusade, President Nixon’s famous tapes, President Clinton’s impeachment proceedings, or the cross-accusations of the Televangelists in the 1980s. They all boil down to who is telling the truth or not – and about whom.
To the question “Who is my neighbor” in the Gospels, Jesus turns the challenge on its head. Don’t ask, Who is my neighbor? Ask, Who am I neighbor to?
As we will see in this series of postings, the implications of the 9th are far greater than “I cannot tell a lie.” They include the much broader concern, Can I be trusted with my neighbor’s reputation?
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