Nine of Ten

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?