One of the ten commandments is always stated wrong. People always say that it is you shouldn’t lie. It is really you shouldn’t bear false witness against your neighbor. For the longest time, I thought it meant that you shouldn’t commit perjury in a court of law and in a simple sense it does.
Today, I listened to an account of Nazi war crime trials in a movie. I realized bearing false witness against my neighbor meant much more than I ever realized. I have asked myself several times in the last few years, if I lived in the time of Hitler what would I have done? Would I have the strength to do something or anything at all? Well, it turns out that during that time in history, the very least that anyone could do was to be truthful about what was happening in Germany. It seems that the world bore false witness unto itself and allowed atrocities to occur.
It seems that it happens whenever atrocities occur, people bear false witness and try to spread a lie instead of telling the truth of the evil that they do. Too often other people bear that false witness and allow the evil to continue. It has happened so many times all over the world since World War II. As long as evil exist, it is going to keep occurring.
Maybe I can’t be an activist or someone who tries to be heard in our society, but I know that I won’t bear false witness when I see the evil that we do unto each other. I won’t sit back and say that I don’t see it or say that it doesn’t exist. Evil will always be part of this world, but atrocities occur because we bear false witness to the evil right before our own eyes.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
