Lent
is traditionally a season of contemplating the Ten Commandments, or words of
life. How many of them can you call to mind? Here’s the ninth:
You
shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.
Exodus
20:16
Fake
news, we call it now. Bare-faced lies, they used to be called. Words of death,
not life. A lynch-mob of syllables, falling over one another in their lust for
blood. But, oh! What juicy bones, bursting with marrow to slurp and suck, and
wipe from our jowls with the back of the hand.
When
you want to control slaves, you tell them a false witness, of who they are,
over and over and over again.
This
is, in fact, so common place, that to hear a true witness it must be spoken
again and again for a lifetime. But a lifetime is what we have. For we have
been set free, and this god is in no hurry to get us home. We are a pilgrim
people, and the journey on the Way is what transforms us.
That
thing you believe about yourself, who told you that?
And
what were their motives? Freedom or control?
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