Telling the truth is important. It made God’s Top Ten list: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor.” And as anyone who has had children can testify, it’s a strong human urge to lie, especially to get out of trouble.

In some courts today (and most of them in past days), they tried to get people to tell the truth by having them put their hand on a Bible and swear “so help me God”. But the Bible itself says:

“You have heard that it was said to them of old times, ‘Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths’. But I tell you, don’t swear at all; neither by heaven, for it is the throne of God; nor by the earth, for it is the footstool of his feet; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Nor should you swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Instead, say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; whatever is more than these comes from evil.” (Matthew 5:33-37)

Christ gives two reasons for not taking an oath. First, oaths are meaningless. If you swear on your mother’s grave or the hair on your head, and lie, nothing is going to happen to your mother or her grave or your hair. It’s nonsense. If every person who had told a lie after swearing “on the lives of my children”, our overcrowding problems would be solved.

Then Christ goes all the way in the opposite direction and tells us that oaths “come from evil”. He doesn’t explain this, unfortunately. Is the evil that of pride, that we attempt to make a person believe that our words have greater effect than they actually do? Or are they superstitious? Or are people who make such oaths more likely to be lying, more focused on making the listener believe them than in telling the truth?

I have always been impressed when someone refuses to swear an oath. In court, occasionally, you will see a witness who refuses to put his hand on a Bible and take an oath, because he is following the prohibition in Matthew 5:37. It is, actually, rather ironic in the first place, to ask someone to swear an oath on a book which states that you shouldn’t swear oaths. Personally, I’m always impressed with the veracity of such people. If they take the Bible seriously enough to follow this passage, perhaps they are more likely to tell the truth.

Mason Barge

Daily Prayer

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