By Jonathan Keller
“False witness” comes from a courtroom analogy where a judge summons a witness to testify before the court. Outside of the courtroom, though, this commandment seeks to reign in our speech in general. Today I wanted to focus on the idea of reputation.
Protecting Reputations
Imagine you and a friend enjoy traveling to apple orchards to pick and taste all kinds of apples. You may call yourself apple aficionados. If either of you tell about your apple adventures, this apple-ing reputation grows in the minds of those who hear of these tales. In a matter of weeks, news has spread across the land that you are a pair of avid apple-rs.
Before you told others about your apple adventures, you had still picked and enjoyed apples. In a sense, there was a private reputation of apple enjoyment between you and your friend. Once that practice was divulged to others, that reputation has spread and become public.
Hopefully, apple picking is not a notorious hobby to enjoy, but many of us say, do, or neglect to say or do things all the time that we regret. Should others learn of these matters, our reputations become damaged. We ought not hide sin because our heavenly Father wishes that all our sin would be eradicated one day, but we also ought to take care to divulge such rebellion only to those who need to know that information. Some things are best handled privately to remedy our transgressions, lest those not fit to handle that information create conflict out of thin air. Other things are properly taken public to warn other sinners from their evil ways and to warn the innocent of engaging with particularly notorious people.
In light of this, we must be careful with what information we divulge and to whom we divulge it. Similarly, we must be careful to verify that this information is true rather than a simple unsubstantiated rumor crafted by a charlatan or carried along unawares. Knowingly or unknowingly transmitting false information leaves us in dangerous territory with others! Is it actually true that Fred insulted Harry at dinner last week, or did Harry have a short fuse at the end of a long week and found Fred just a bit annoying? As James warns us about our tongues, our speech can set a whole forest ablaze, taking with it our treasured relationships because we did not appropriately control our speech.
Take a moment to reflect on your conversations this week. How have you represented yourself or other people when speaking to others? How did you care for their reputation in your speech or messages, if online?