jilogig.blogg.se

Some sin and some sins do involve a deliberate, conscious, malicious choosing.

This misunderstanding - this refusal to recognize sin as something we’re in beyond our discreet, conscious, deliberate choices - is a big part of why we’re so very bad at dealing with and thinking about so many of the sins that shape our lives, whether that be racism, or any other form of bigotry, or almost anything involving money. And thus as something we always have the option of choosing not to do - something we’re capable of avoiding entirely.

And thus as something we choose to do, consciously. Despite two millennia of Christian theologians talking about sin as something we’re in, we prefer to think of it only as something we do. This is not how many Christians - at a popular level - like to think about sin. And that applies even if we bear this false witness ignorantly and thus, we like to imagine, “innocently.” We violate it when we bear false witness - when we carry it and pass it along. Violation of this commandment does not require such explicit malicious intent. It would be fine if the commandment said something like “Thou shalt not deliberately and knowingly and intentionally make the discreet choice to bear false witness against thy neighbor,” or if it said “Thou shalt not create/invent/fabricate false witness against thy neighbor.” But that’s not what it says. Further speculation or investigation as to whether that bearing of false witness was also lying ought to follow, but there can be no doubt that a bearing of false witness has taken place.īut if this distinction might be welcome to journalists, it’s distinctly less welcome for many Christians, who find it bewildering and terrifying because it doesn’t fit with the individualistic way they’ve been taught to think about sin. They bore witness, and the witness they bore was false. Is the person knowingly saying something false due to an intent to deceive? Irrelevant. Journalists should thus find “bearing false witness” to be a very useful substitute for “lying.” Not a synonym, mind you, but a substitute. If the witness that has been borne is false, then the bearer of it has borne false witness. That falsehood may or may not have been stated with malicious intent it may or may not have been stated with the knowledge that it was false it may or may not have been stated with the explicit intent to deceive. It applies whenever any of us states a falsehood against our neighbor. And keep asking, until you get either an answer or such a stubborn refusal to answer that allows for the same conclusion.)īut “bears false witness” doesn’t involve or invoke intent. If you want to know what someone’s intent was, just ask them. The intent of another person is often regarded as an ineffable, inscrutable, impenetrable mystery. Journalists are usually reluctant to say that anyone is “lying.” Why? Because lying involves malicious intent, and intent is supposedly harder to prove. The distinction here is important - and it can be quite useful for newspapers and others in journalism. Thus we often do what the USA Today editorial board does - using “bears false witness” as a synonym for “lies.” We’ve been taught to think of that commandment - “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor” - as simply a prohibition against lying. When he says these things he is literally “bearing false witness against his neighbors.” And those statements violate that commandment* more directly than some of Trump’s many, many, many, many, many other well-documented falsehoods, such as when he repeatedly insists that he “never said” something he just said, moments earlier, on videotape. Trump’s remarks about “shithole” countries, or about all Africans living in huts, or all Haitians being diseased, aren’t merely “denigrating,” they’re false. One problem with that sentence is the distinction between “bearing false witness” and “denigrating entire nations.” Those are, in fact, indistinct. To this day, he bears false witness an average of several times a day and uses vulgarities to denigrate entire nations of people. The sentence that caught my eye was this one: And kudos to the paper’s editorial board for turning to Molly Worthen as an authority on white evangelicalism (pun intended).