In our culture of gossip and slander, Christians have a biblical mandate to be careful what they believe and to guard what they say. The Scriptures give us clear warnings and practical steps forward.

On December 28, 2017, Andrew Finch, a 28-year-old father of two in Wichita, heard a noise outside his home. When he opened the front door to investigate, the police confronted him, ordering him put his hands up. In the confusion of that moment, one of the officers fired his weapon, hitting Finch in the heart and killing him.

Police had been responding to a 911 call from someone claiming to be at Finch’s residence. The caller claimed he had shot his father and was holding his family at gunpoint. He asked if police were coming and said he was going to burn the house down.

But the caller was not Andrew Finch. It wasn’t anyone in the house or even in Wichita. It was Tyler Barriss, a 25-year-old man in California with a history of making fake threats. He made the call at the request of a friend, Casey Viner, who was having an online dispute with another person, Shane Gaskill, over a video game match with a $1.50 wager. Gaskil intentionally provided Viner a false address, which Barriss then used to make the fraudulent 911 call. Andrew Finch, the man who died, didn’t know any of the three men.

This is a tragic story with some very obvious villains. Barriss, Viner, and Gaskil were all indicted on multiple charges. Gaskil had his charges dropped, but Viner was sentenced to fifteen months and Barriss to twenty years. Barriss’s official crimes include false information and hoaxes, cyberstalking resulting in death, making threats of death or damage to property by fire, interstate threats, conspiracy to make false reports, and wire fraud. Behind all of that legalese is a single sin that we all implicitly recognize in this story—a sin, in fact, that is both one of the most condemned in our Scriptures and one of the most overlooked and tolerated by contemporary Christians: the sin of false witness.

False Witness: What It Is and What It’s Not

You are likely surprised to hear me say that Christians overlook and tolerate false witness, and you may find that claim dubious. It is the Ten Commandments, after all, that tell us not to lie, and you will find few Christian communities that don’t take that command to heart. Even in those high-profile cases we have heard about too often in recent years, of celebrity pastors or even local ones who have deceived their congregations while living a lifestyle of sin—even in those cases it is the assumption and expectation of personal honesty that allows sin to go unnoticed for so long. Rare is the Christian who believes it is right to knowingly say something untrue. When we argue about whether lying is okay, we often frame the question around whether it’s a sin to lie the Gestapo, not whether we should lie to our brothers and sisters—that, we know, is out of the question.

But it is true that we overlook and tolerate false witness, and the reason we do is we have misunderstood what it is. We rightly condemn personal dishonesty and the kinds of lies we are tempted to tell one another, just as Scripture does (Ephesians 4:25). But the commandment is not, as we have so often heard it expressed, “You shall not lie.” That’s not what the Scripture says. Those are not the words God wrote on the tablets he gave to Moses. God said, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Exodus 20:16).

There are some big differences between the commandment as it is written and the way we misremember it. Bearing false witness is dishonesty, but it’s not simply dishonesty. It’s perjury. There is even a special word for it in Hebrew (shaqar)—distinct from the word used to denote a lying generally (kachash). It assumes a legal context, a courtroom where one person is giving testimony about another. The words “against your neighbor” communicate that the dishonesty in view here is not simply a self-destructive practice on the part of the witness; it doesn’t just damage the witness’s soul or create enmity between the witness and God (although it does do those things). It destroys the life of the defendant. It harms another person in a public manner. When false testimony is believed, it ruins their reputation, it steals their time and livelihood, and in some cases—like when false witnesses testified against our Lord at his trial (Matthew 26:59–61)—it takes their very life. Andrew Finch was killed because of a lie that someone told, because of an act of false witness.

The Mortal Consequences of False Witness

This is why Scripture is so serious about how we wield our words. Proverbs 18:21 says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” Proverbs 25:18 says that “a man who bears false witness against his neighbor is like a war club, or a sword or a sharp arrow.” In Psalm 27:12, David describes false witnesses as people who “breathe out violence,” and if you read the Psalms you will find that they go on and on about liars and slanderers who seek to harm people with their words. David himself is wise enough to ask God to “set a guard” over his mouth (Psalm 141:3). James 3 warns us that the tongue is a fire and urges us to consider “how great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire!” (James 3:5). Deuteronomy 19:19 recognizes the seriousness of the consequences of false witness when it prescribes the penalty: “You shall do to him as he intended to do to his brother.”

There is a dubious notion promoted in some circles today that words are violence, and that notion has been leveraged against words that simply cause offense. We should reject these kinds of extremist views about language. But if we follow Christ, we must accept Scripture’s teaching about language, which includes this truth: Words cause violence. It was words that killed Andrew Finch as much as it was the policeman’s gun. People wield words to harm and kill. Words are consequential.

The ninth commandment certainly has the implication, confirmed elsewhere in Scripture, that we should not tell interpersonal lies. But when we reduce it to “You shall not lie,” we put ourselves in danger of misrepresenting the stakes. If the commandment has ever seemed anticlimactic to you following the prohibitions against murder, theft, and adultery, this is exactly why. It’s too easy to excuse ourselves for the “white lies” we tell that don’t seem to harm anybody. But false witness truly belongs among those other grave sins as a sibling of equal stature. We forget too quickly what a lie can do.

Kinds of False Witness

Second Samuel 15 tells an important story about King David’s Son Absalom. Absalom is the son who rebelled against David and nearly succeeded in taking the kingdom from him. This is no easy thing to do, and one cannot do it alone. Absalom needed a movement and an army. Second Samuel 15 tells us how he used false witness to get one.

Absalom used to rise early and stand beside the way of the gate. And when any man had a dispute to come before the king for judgment, Absalom would call to him and say, “From what city are you?” And when he said, “Your servant is of such and such a tribe in Israel,” Absalom would say to him, “See, your claims are good and right, but there is no man designated by the king to hear you.” Then Absalom would say, “Oh that I were judge in the land! Then every man with a dispute or cause might come to me, and I would give him justice.” And whenever a man came near to pay homage to him, he would put out his hand and take hold of him and kiss him. Thus Absalom did to all of Israel who came to the king for judgment. So Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel. (2 Samuel 15:2–6)

Absalom did not stand before a court committing perjury under oath. But he did commit a kind of false witness, testifying publicly to the people of Israel that his father did not care for their needs and provided no provision for them to be heard. This word was untrue, and it was consequential. Second Samuel 14 tells us how Absalom, who had been exiled from Jerusalem, was allowed to return because of a hearing David held with a woman whom David believed to be a rural widow. The people of Israel did have recourse with the king, and had they not stopped at the gate, all too eager to believe the charismatic and good-looking young man who told them they did not, they might have learned the truth when they reached the palace.

Among the laws that God gave Moses with the Ten Commandments is an exposition of the command against false witness. We find it in Exodus 23:1–3:

You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a malicious witness. You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many, so as to pervert justice, nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit.

These commands have many implications for us, covering such ground as conspiracy, intent, social pressure, and partiality. But it’s the first that the church desperately needs to hear: “You shall not spread a false report.”

The wording of this command is important, because it has implications beyond the courtroom. Its vague language suggests that it is applicable to more than the witness at the stand. One need not be in a courtroom to spread a false report. One can do it in a conversation, in a text message, through a tweet, or from a pulpit. I have said that the ninth commandment implies the wrongness of interpersonal lies and so includes within it the command “You shall not lie”; but it also has this other implication: “You shall not slander.”

Slander is not perjury if does not take place in a courtroom, but it is false witness against a neighbor. It is the spreading of falsehoods about another person with the intent of harming them—whether their reputation or their body.

Leviticus 19:16 forbids slander for the same reason so many other passages of Scripture condemn false witness: “You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand up against the life of your neighbor.” To slander one’s neighbor is to stand up against their life; it is to threaten their life and livelihood by the power of your word. It is to witness falsely—not to the judge or jury who are restrained by law, but to the mob, and it is all the more dangerous for that reason.

Speaking in Psalm 101:5, God says, “Whoever slanders his neighbor secretly I will destroy.” Psalm 140:11 calls the slanderer “the violent man.” Romans 1:30 sets it among a list of vices characteristic of a “debased mind” and deserving God’s wrath, and Paul condemns it in numerous other places as unbefitting those redeemed in Christ (2 Corinthians 12:20; Ephesians 4:31; Colossians 3:8; 1 Timothy 3:11; 6:4). Psalm 15:3 includes among the qualities of a man who is acceptable to God that he “does not slander with his tongue.”

Absalom slandered his father, David, to the people of Israel. He knowingly lied to them with the intent of turning them against his father, laying the ground for his coup. He is guilty before God as a kind of false witness.

Exodus 23:1 condemns Absalom and people who do as he did, but it has one other important implication: If the command is against spreading a false report, then it is not merely against inventing it. That is, one can spread someone else’s false report, and one can even do it sincerely, believing it to be true. The commandment thus forbids not only perjury and slander but also gossip, which like the others has the power to destroy lives. So the ninth command also has this implication: “You shall not gossip.”

Gossips stand beside slanderers in Romans 1:30 among those with a debased mind, as they also do in 2 Corinthians 12:20. When Paul commands that the wives of deacons and elders be “not slanderers, but sober minded” (1 Timothy 3:11) he implies that intemperance and foolishness—the lack of self-control that James rails against when he says “no human being can tame the tongue”—can spread slander. By speaking too readily, gossips spread lies and harm their subjects, proving true the words of Proverbs 29:20: “Do you see a man who is hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool than for him.”

Absalom slandered his father, but he would not have won many hearts if his lie convinced only those people he spoke to personally in the course of four years. The success of his lie depended on the willingness of those people to believe him, their unwillingness to confirm his words, and their readiness to repeat his falsehood to their fellow Israelites when they returned home. In other words, Absalom successfully perpetrated a disinformation campaign in Israel, depending on the oblivious false witness of his fellow Israelites to accomplish his will.

(There is a lot of crossover between what we mean when we talk about slander and what we mean when we talk about gossip, but I am simplifying these terms here for the sake of teaching.)

So, in Scripture, we can perceive two kinds of false witness. Slander happens when someone knowingly speaks lies about a neighbor to do them harm. Gossip happens when someone believes lies too readily and repeats them imprudently. Notably, gossip as we are speaking of it here—as spreading an unconfirmed report as if it were true—is not merely a matter of interpersonal sin in local communities but can have broad societal import, as it did in Israel when Absalom spread his lie. Both slander and gossip are sins against neighbor and against God; both harm the church and the wider community.

But gossip is in some ways the more dangerous of the two, because gossip is more difficult to discern in one’s own behavior. Slander is malicious and openly evil, and slanderers bear a special measure of guilt. But gossip is sinister and self-deceiving. When slander becomes gossip, it takes on a life of its own. The illusion and even conviction that the gossip is true gives it a self-righteous fervor and can delude even believers. They may come to believe that their unwitting communication of lies to one another and in public forums is a service to Christ and his kingdom. Thus a whole church might be deceived into telling lies in Christ’s name.

We Must Repent of False Witness

We live in a culture of false witness, though we do not call it that. We call it misinformation, fake news, or, sarcastically, alternative facts. These are euphemisms. They are ways that we comfort ourselves and spare each other from the hard truth: we are believing and repeating lies—those of us, at least, who aren’t inventing them.

I don’t intend to preach to you about whose fault this is. Particular lies have particular consequences, but it is not a particular lie that I am writing to you about—it is a culture of lies. This culture is not one person’s fault, nor is it the fault of one political party or of one political ideology. The church in its manifold forms has been as much a perpetrator of false witness as any part of our culture, and I can make no claim that the false witnesses among us are not true Christians. I have met some false witnesses whom I know to be true believers, and I know that I have been a false witness myself. It is a sin that we are all participating in and one which we must take responsibility for. We must repent fervently and quickly, or else suffer God’s judgment—a judgement that will come at the very least when we eat the fruit of our own godless works.

Our culture of false witness has roots that go back for decades, but we are beginning to see the worst fruit now. Political divisions are at a high point. They are breaking apart our families. They are wrecking our trust in public institutions—a problem that has had a terrible toll during the COVID-19 pandemic. They are accelerating social unrest in our cities, which have seen a sharp increase in real violence against human bodies. Public officials and public figures have endured threats of violence against them and their families. We watched with dismay and anger as insurrectionists stormed our Capitol. All of these things to varying degrees and for varying reasons have happened because of the lies that we have told. It’s true that few of us are guilty of swinging the ax, but too few are innocent of pointing out the trees. It is time to stop pointing the finger. We are the ones who must repent.

Why We Bear False Witness

Misinformation is false witness. Much of it begins with slander. But it is gossip that gives real life to the slander, and we are the gossips. When we share news stories that aren’t true and when we make claims about public figures and groups of people that aren’t true, our words have real consequences. They do real harm, even if indirectly, even if we do not see it.

I will say more momentarily about how we can avoid this, because in fact, we need to be able to talk about the news. We cannot thrive or even survive as a democratic society or as a church without information. And the Scriptures do give us some principles that we can live by to guard ourselves from repeating lies and to live by the truth. But first, I must address the reason we gossip like this. As is the case with every sin, at its root is idolatry.

Proverbs 1:7 tells us that “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge.” When the Bible speaks of fear of the Lord, it is talking about our center of gravity. We fear the Lord when we recognize that his power and will prevail over all things and we thus orient ourselves to him. It refers not only to what we are scared of (his just judgment), but also what we hope in (his kindness and mercy). When God is our center of gravity, as Christ has given us the grace to make him by his Spirit, the troubles of the world cannot overwhelm us. But when we make the world and its ups and downs the center of attention, our center of gravity, then our fortunes rise and fall with the world’s and ultimately will be overrun as God accomplishes his will.

Our false witness is testimony against us that we fear the world more than we fear God. And this fear drives us to do things we should not. It does this in several ways:

Fear of the world creates anxiety. People who are afraid of the world become obsessed with news about it. People who believe their good depends on what happens in Washington, on Main Streat, or on Twitter will be fixated on news about those things, on the ups and downs, the wins and losses of their position. It makes us grasp for worldly hope, seeking that piece of information that will vindicate us or save us.

On January 7, I was refreshing my newsfeed constantly, hoping for some news that people would begin to see things the way I did; that some new piece of information would arise to show that I had been right all along; that some change in someone’s behavior would indicate a new trajectory for our country. And when that bit of worldly hope never came, I became even more sad and angry than I had been. Ultimately, I had to confess to some brothers of mine that I was looking for hope in the wrong place.

Fear of the world cements pride. People who fear the world cannot admit to being wrong. To be wrong is to be put to shame before your enemies. It is to have lost the fight. When what is most important is whether the world respects you—rather than the truth that God in Christ loves you as a child, whatever the world thinks of you—then loss of respect and loss of status are the ultimate violation of dignity. People who fear the world will hold onto worldly dignity at the cost of truth, latching onto and insisting on whatever word seems to vindicate them, whether it is true or false.

When I hear something from my political or ideological opponents that seems to contradict my understanding of the world, my first response is often not to ask whether its true so much as to prove it false. Even when this doesn’t tempt me to latch onto an equal and opposite lie, I still find myself speaking in ignorance. And when people challenge the things I say, it takes a conscious effort of the will to not close myself off to argument and double down. It’s too easy to forget the depths of shame that Christ saved me from, that these little moments of shame pale beside. It would be a far better thing for me to admit that I am wrong and face public (but merely worldly) shame for my mistake than to dishonor Christ by clinging to a lie.

Fear of the world enflames tribalism. People whose hope rests in their worldly good as they perceive it build coalitions to fight for that good. Loyalty to the coalition becomes synonymous with loyalty to the cause, and it becomes necessary to dismiss and explain away truth that hurts the coalition. This often manifests in “what-aboutism”—the insistence that however bad one’s tribe is, the other tribe is worse. In our culture it has created a race to the bottom.

Over the last five years, I have loudly proclaimed that both our major political parties are bad, but I have also found that the visceral frustration I feel with one of those parties has led me to share in the emotional victories and defeats of the other. Even as I have claimed to be impartial, I have defended and minimized the real wrongdoings of the one while exaggerating the problems of the other. I have believed without saying so that only the victory of “my” party could bring about my good.

Fear of the world is self-perpetuating. Fear breeds fear. People who fear the world fear what others will do to them, and are prejudiced to perceiving danger in others. If the words, actions, and politics of others have the power to take away a person’s hope, then that person will react to the words, actions and politics of others. Reactions cause further reactions from those others in a cycle that is not easily broken.

A study from an organization called Beyond Conflict surveyed over six thousand Americans about the ways they perceived the political “other.” They found that “Americans believe that members of the other party dehumanize, dislike, and disagree with their own party about twice as much as they actually do.” In other words, Republicans and Democrats both have a false perception of how much they are hated by the other party generally, and they exaggerate the threat to themselves posed by the other party. They believe wrongly that the other wants to harm or destroy them, and they say so—slandering millions of people they don’t know and who don’t want to do them harm.

Fear of the world justifies sin. People who fear the world put too much stake in worldly conflicts. If one’s hope is this world, it’s rational to take whatever steps are necessary to defend that hope. Tolerating and even spreading falsehood is a small price to pay when everything is on the line.

In the last few years, I have often found myself enflamed with anger when reading some bit of news, and I have often felt that other people needed to know now what is happening so that it can be stopped. In such moments it is difficult to slow down and ask whether I’ve really understood what I’ve learned, whether what was said is really true, and what there is to gain by spreading that news to others. Fear of the world erodes my standard for truth and tempts me to justify my rash speech.

Why the Fear of God Excludes False Witness

Some among my friends and loved ones urge me to think about the real concerns that our country is facing right now—that it’s justifiable to be afraid and to act because there are truly fearful things happening. Although the scope of the danger is often exaggerated, it is true that Democrats have much to lose from Republican victories and vice versa, and many of us who stand outside of the party system have much to lose from the machinations of whoever is in power. Some rightly point to the existence and schemes of spiritual powers that seek to destroy God’s church.

But people who fear God first and without rival understand that no power in this world, political or spiritual, can strip us of our hope or of the good that God will do for us, as Paul testifies in Romans 8:38–39:

I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Indeed, he says in verse 28, “for those who love God all things work together for good.” He does not mean that we will only experience good things in this world. In fact, in verse 35, he testifies that we will experience tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and sword.

In this he is in lock step with Christ, who suffered in this life. He told his disciples, and through them he tells us, “If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household” (Matthew 10:25)—that is, the way the world persecuted Christ is the way it will persecute us. This includes the slander of being called evil as Christ was. It also includes the threat of physical harm, which Christ endured.

But in the very next verse, Christ says, “So, have no fear of them” (Matthew 10:26). That “so” is telling. How can it be that the implication of our persecution and mistreatment is that we should not fear? Because God, he says, is the one whom we should fear. People can destroy the body, but God ultimately has power over both the body and the soul, and the purpose even of our suffering is that we might rise again in glory, even as Christ did after he suffered. “Whoever find his life will lose it,” he says, “and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:39).

This is a hard saying, but it is a necessary one. If we fear God rather than the world, and if we hope in God rather than in the world, we will do what God commands even if it costs us the world—and in fact he promises that it will. Paul goes so far as to say our death is already complete: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:2–3).

That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t seek good or struggle for justice in this world. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t engage in politics, since the God-ordained purpose of government is to maintain a just order. But it does mean that these worldly goals are merely important and not ultimate. When politics is important, it comes at the cost of energy and effort. When it is ultimate, it comes at the cost of holiness—of values and character. If we cannot engage in politics as God’s people, if we cannot do it while showing the fruit of the Spirit, if we cannot do it with personal and intellectual integrity, if we cannot do it as peacebuilders, if we cannot do it without malice, if we cannot shun slander and gossip and lies, then politics has stopped being merely important and has become our god, and the fruit of that false god will be rotten. “Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9).

Our Repentance Must Be Active

Repentance means first acknowledging our wrongdoing to God and to one another, then exercising a concerted effort to turn from that sin, beginning with a plea for God’s help in doing so. We cannot repent without the aid of God’s Spirit, who sanctifies us by convicting us of sin and enabling us to walk in righteousness. But we also cannot repent without striving to do good (1 Corinthians 9:27; 2 Peter 1:5; 3:14).

Striving is all the more necessary because we are immersed in a culture of false witness. We are, in Paul’s words, “following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2). The pattern of our world—spurred on by the devil, who rules it—is false witness, slander, and gossip. If we are complacent, we will be carried along in this sin and destruction. We must resist living a life of lies, and we must do so actively.

Many Christians are not thinking enough about how the world and the spiritual forces who rule it are conspiring to deceive them. Right now there are worldly powers—we will think readily of the Chinese and Russian governments and their so-called troll farms, though these are by no means the only ones—that are working to make you believe falsehoods and to create enmity between you and your neighbor. These worldly powers believe they are their own masters, but they are doing the work of the devil, “the father of lies” (John 8:44), and accomplishing his will. If you are not active in testing information and seeking the truth, you will fall victim to lies, and you will spread a false report.

Many other Christians, by contrast, are rightly concerned about information warfare and the spiritual warfare that drives it, but they have mistaken import of this danger. It’s tempting to focus on the ways that worldly and spiritual powers are operating to hand political power to one party or another. It’s certainly true that the devil can accomplish and has accomplished great evil through the raising up of godless rulers who are a terror to their people and of ideologies that anathemize and persecute the gospel.

But when Christians fixate on elections as the sphere of spiritual warfare, they have already lost the battle. When warnings about spiritual warfare are transformed primarily into warnings about who to vote for or vote against, they become a kind of false testimony—one that claims to know God’s intentions and to give the political roadmap for bringing them about. Christians who do this risk becoming like Peter, who rebuked Christ when the Lord told his disciples of his coming cross in Matthew 16:21–23:

Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

Christians are too quick to mistake defeat in the worldly realm for the defeat of God’s kingdom. They are too quick to assume they know what the devil wants and what God wants, and so they testify falsely about both. Peter assumed Christ’s victory would come about through the accumulation of worldly power. Acting on this assumption, he rebuked Christ and aided the devil in his work. But our Lord knew God’s true purpose—that through his apparent defeat at the cross, God would “disarm the rulers and authorities and put them to shame, triumphing over them” (Colossians 2:15). We cannot assume that God’s will is going to be accomplished through the ascendence of Christian power, nor even through an approximation of godly justice in a secular government.

The fact is the devil is the ruler of this world already—he is “the prince of the power of the air.” We cannot make America great again because the devil has always had his hands in our culture and our politics. He doesn’t have to rip the United States or any other worldly power out of God’s hands. It already belongs to him—for now; until the consummation of Christ’s kingdom when he comes again. The devil’s goal is not to win our nation but to devour our souls—to destroy the church of God by turning us from Christ, from his mission, from the holiness to which he calls us, and from the gospel that saves us.

So, we must resist the devil, but not by winning the White House. We resist the devil by clinging to the gospel. We resist the devil by living holy lives. We resist the devil by taking up our crosses and following Christ—that is, by going after Christ in a lifestyle of righteous suffering, enduring persecution and hardship faithfully because that is the pattern that our Lord established for us. We resist the devil by imitating Christ “the faithful and true witness” (Revelation 3:14).

The church in the United States has much to gain through the preservation of religious liberty and the accumulation of respect in the culture. These are worthy goals. But if they come at the cost of our holiness and our commitment to the gospel of Christ, they are idols.

So, in our pursuit of these worthy goals, we must actively guard ourselves against false witness. We must resist the temptation to grow complacent in our commitment to truth and to speaking justly. We must forsake spreading falsehood even at the cost of worldly victory, lest we gain the world but forfeit our souls.

Our cry must not be, “Give me liberty, or give me death!” Liberty is not our god. Rather our cry must be, “Give me Christ, that I may may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (see Philippians 3:10–11).

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a Russian Orthodox Christian and a political dissident during the Soviet era who recognized the power of lies in his culture. He was imprisoned and eventually exiled for his beliefs. He knew suffering, but he also knew that the stakes were not merely about the freedom that the Communists could take from him. We would be wise to listen to these words, which he wrote just before his exile:

You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.

How to Resist False Witness

There is significant danger in my exhorting you to resist false witness. I am afraid that when you hear this message, you will think, “Yes! Preach! They are liars! We must fight the liars and expose their lies!” I am afraid that you will think I am calling you to a cultural battle against other people. Let me say now definitively that that is not what I am doing. If we take the necessity to resist false witness to mean making war on other false witnesses, we run risk of bearing false witness ourselves in order to win that battle.

It is necessary and good to identify and expose lies in our culture. There are particular false witnesses telling particular lies that are resulting in particular and grievous consequences. Such lies must be exposed, and such liars must be held accountable—we cannot excuse them if it is in our power to justly rectify them. But first we must remove the plank from our own eyes.

We must resist false witness by resisting the temptation to be false witnesses. This means, I hope obviously, that we must not commit perjury when we speak under oath. But it also means that we must guard ourselves from slander—whether we think our words are true or not—and from the gossip we spread when we too quickly presume our words to be true and worth repeating. To put it another way, we must examine our own words and hold ourselves accountable for what we say. We must be careful to say only what is true and only what is helpful (Ephesians 4:29). And we must recognize that at no point in our lifetimes will we have the luxury of not taking care about what we say, since, as James says, “If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man” (James 3:2).

God has not left us on our own in this. Thankfully, the Scriptures give us many helpful examples and pertinent commands. Many of these principles are relevant to courts of law, but they are also helpful to private citizens who engage in the “court of public opinion” by sharing information and opinions on matters of public importance. It is essential, especially for followers of Christ who are politically engaged, that we participate in public discourse on the basis of established fact. As you read these principles, consider how they apply to your life: to your private conversations, to your public statements on social media or other platforms, to the way you vote, and so on.

We must be “quick to listen, slow to speak” (James 1:19). One of the most fundamental lessons the publicly engaged must learn is to slow down. In an age dominated by cable and internet news and instant communication and feedback, we are incentivized to share and share quickly. Information comes with a sense of urgency, and that sense of urgency causes us to spread information thoughtlessly—and falsehood with it.

A Christian should resist this sense of urgency. Few things are so urgent as to require immediate action. Christians would be wise to sit on information before sharing it. In the meantime, they would be wise to pray about it and consider whether it is true. The command to be “quick to listen” does not mean quick to believe so much as eager to understand before speaking. In the context of news, this will often mean listening to a report from another source on the same events, or to a second opinion and a different point of view (and not simply believing a second source if it says something different than the first; see Deuteronomy 19:15).

Practically, this may look like Christians resisting the urge to hit the share button in an online news story. It is a wise practice to step away from the screen for an hour or even a day to see if the sense of urgency remains. It may look like resisting the temptation to loudly tell your spouse about the news article you are reading if you have not had time to consider its truthfulness or hear another perspective on the events. It may mean refraining from gossiping about a piece of news over a cup of coffee before you have become confident that your words will be true and helpful to your companion.

It may mean, when a conversation is necessary, speaking only with the confidence that your degree of knowledge merits—asking as an inquirer of someone who can help you wisely answer your question, and not proclaiming your opinion as a judge to anyone who will listen. It may mean starting your conversations not with, “Did you hear that…” but with, “I heard this thing, and I’m not sure it’s true. Do you know anything about it?”

We must be “slow to become angry” (James 1:19). James, who warns us about the danger of the tongue, also adds “the anger of man does not accomplish the righteousness of God” (v. 20) and commands us to “put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness” (v. 21).

Anger increases our sense of urgency. Anger wants justice and cannot wait. Paul assumes that we will be angry, and he warns us about how to respond: “Be angry, and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Ephesians 4:26). Anger is often about seeking justice, but my experience of anger has no power to justify or excuse my own sin, because the perception or even the fact of someone else’s sin cannot excuse my own. Because “the anger of man does not accomplish the righteousness of God,” a Christian who does not want to sin in anger will refrain as far as possible from acting in anger at all—including by speaking too quickly, the result of which is often harmful slander or gossip. By telling us not to let the sun set on our anger, Paul commands us to refrain from stoking it, which will require active prayer and forgiveness. Once anger has cooled, a just response is possible. Ultimately, we can practice forgiveness and let our anger cool because we know that judgment—and mercy!—belongs to God (Romans 12:19; cf. Matthew 18:21–35).

Our public culture is saturated with anger and grievance, much of it inspired by real offense and harm. Anger is a natural response to injustice, but it is a dangerous tool. Anger demands a response—at best justice, at worst revenge. And we are short-sighted and easily blinded creatures, so even when we think we are doing justice, revenge is often the actual the result. Christians who hear new information must examine their reaction to it. Ask yourself, “Am I angry?” If the answer is yes, or even maybe, being slow to speak is all the more vital.

We must accept claims only on the basis of evidence. The Law of Moses not only forbids false witness; it also offers guidance about how to avoid acting on false witness by carefully judging what counts as evidence.

Deuteronomy 19:15 says, “A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established” (cf. Numbers 35:30). Note that this is not the same as saying a sole witness is necessarily wrong; it only means that the testimony of one witness is not sufficient grounds to establish a public claim. The principle of not entertaining claims made by only a single witness is affirmed by Christ and by Paul and guards against many cases of malice inspired by personal grievance (Matthew 18:16; 2 Corinthians 13:1; 1 Timothy 5:19).

Because of the danger of two false witnesses conspiring together (Exodus 23:2; see Matthew 26:60–61), the testimony of two witnesses cannot on its own be undeniable proof of a claim. The law required judges to “inquire diligently” into whether a “witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely” (Deuteronomy 19:18). Importantly, public opinion is not evidence and in fact puts us at risk of “siding with the many, so as to pervert justice” (Exodus 23:2). The danger is that a false charge would “kill the innocent and righteous” (Exodus 23:7)—or otherwise punish them unjustly.

In a democracy like ours, where we all have some measure of power to direct events, those of us who participate in the court of public opinion also bear special responsibility in our judgments. We must be careful not to slander and gossip by spreading false reports before “inquiring diligently” into the evidence. We must be careful not to simply follow and parrot the prevailing public opinion. We must also be careful not to thoughtlessly repeat the minority opinion, as if being in the minority excused it from the necessity of evidence. The Scriptures lay out these principles broadly for us, but we would also do well to familiarize ourselves with more specific time-tested critical thinking skills that we can apply to public statements and news media. We have an obligation under God to grow in our media literacy if we are to participate in public life.

We must reject speculation. The necessity of evidence also has the implication that we should avoid speculation. When James, speaking of the tongue, wonders at “how great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire” (James 3:5), it brings to mind this pernicious quality of gossip: it grows in power as it spreads. What begins as “asking questions” and “wondering aloud” is eventually repeated as fact by people falsely convinced of its truth. Inquiry, curiosity, and imagination can be valuable in seeking to understand, and for that reason speculation in private among people of mature mind can be valuable, but Christians must be careful about how they air speculation publicly and must take care that they do so with conversation partners who share their commitment to the truth.

Speculation is not vindicated if it turns out to be true. For someone to be a true witness, they must indeed have witnessed the events they testify about. Someone who testifies to something they have no knowledge about that by chance happens to be true is as much a false witness and a liar as someone who misrepresents events that they were privy to.

In practice, we must be careful to recognize when something we hear is not a statement of fact but a speculative scenario. We must be aware of our tendency to ignore evidence or lack of evidence and accept speculation that confirms our biases. The world’s events are difficult to understand, and speculation often gives us the narratives we need to make sense of what’s happening. The desire to understand thus tempts us to take hold of unfounded claims—false reports—and spread them as truth.

This is at the root of the spread of false conspiracy theories, which give people a narrative for understanding events, but not a narrative based on evidence—and thus not one that can claim to be true in a meaningful sense. One of many reasons that Christians should condemn the Q Anon movement is its dependence on a single anonymous witness who shares vague information, fueling speculation that enflames baseless slander and mobilizes people to spread and act on dangerous falsehoods. A desire to make sense of the world is good, but it does not justify spreading falsehood through speculation; Christians must rather trust that God is sovereign over the apparent chaos of our times.

We must not show partiality. It is important to judge the credibility of a witness, to consider their history of truthfulness, and to “inquire diligently” into individual claims. But we must guard ourselves from showing partiality. Leviticus 19:15 commands, “You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.” Exodus 23 similarly prohibits being “partial to a poor man in his lawsuit” (v. 3) or “perverting the justice due to your poor in his lawsuit” (v. 6). What matters is not the identity of the witness, nor whether they are victim or offender, but whether what they say is true.

In our culture, this often looks like dismissiveness of the claims of “elites” or, contrastingly, of “deplorables.” It’s found in the simple assumption that whatever the “mainstream media” says is a lie or that whatever “right-wing media” says is a lie. It puts us in opposition to the truth because it begins to define truth in opposition to one’s enemies rather than as a quality of reality—it makes truth political rather than theological. It thus leaves us vulnerable to the manipulation of the devil, who, if he would have us believe falsehoods, only needs to convince us that the truth is what our enemies believe. And it puts us at risk of countering lies with equal and opposite lies.

If we return to the story of David and Absalom, it’s fair to observe that the people of Israel and Absolom himself had real grievance against David. By the time of the coup, he was no longer the popular young captain on the run from a tyrant king. He had become a levier of taxes and forced labor, tolerant of grievous sin within his family (2 Samuel 13), and tarnished by his adultery with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah. Many in Israel had good cause to be angry with David, and one can’t help but wonder if this was the reason they were so ready to believe Absalom’s lie. But David’s real sins do not excuse the sins committed against him—neither Absalom’s slander nor the people of Israel’s quickness to believe and repeat it.

We must not curse our enemies. Closely related to this is the necessity of speaking charitably and lovingly of our enemies. Christ’s and the apostles’ insistence that we love our enemies extends to the words that we speak of them, so that it is improper to curse them publicly or privately. Jude tells us that the angel Michael, in a dispute with Satan himself, “did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, ‘The Lord rebuke you’” (Jude 9). If it is improper to curse even the devil, since judgment belongs to God, we ought to take special care how we speak of our fellow human beings.

My wife, on a recent visit to Hobby Lobby—where one is bound to find all manner of Christian oddness—noted a truck in the parking lot that bore the vanity place “GUY4GOD” beside a bumper sticker that read, “My governor is an idiot.” Since both of these statements were deliberate acts that involved someone personally modifying their vehicle in an effort to make an ongoing public statement, it is a very visceral and telling illustration of what James lamented: “With [our tongue] we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so” (James 3:9–10).

Thus, we would do well not to attack the character of our opponents, nor to misrepresent what they say in ways that demean them. We ought to show them the same love in our speech that we hope to receive from them. One practical application of this is that we should likely make a definitive and sure end to consuming and sharing political memes, which reduce, curse, and mischaracterize people almost as a rule and do so in a way that encourages spreading them and sharing in their wrongdoing. We also ought to take special care when consuming news parody, late-night shows, and talk radio, which revel in cursing and misrepresenting others. In all these cases, ask yourself, is this helping me to love my neighbor—to love my enemy? Or is it helping me justify my hatred?

And we would do well not to draw too fine a line between personal feeling and uncharitable speech. Love is proven in its works. It is “patient and kind … not arrogant or rude … not irritable or resentful” (1 Corinthians 13:4–5). Anyone who claims to bear no resentment against his governor in his heart proves himself false when he says, “My governor is an idiot.” He ought to remember Christ’s warning that saying such things is akin to murder in the heart, which will leave us liable “to the hell of fire” (Matthew 5:22). Harboring such hatred in our hearts and stoking it with our mouths will not help us stay on guard against false witness.

The Lord Is Faithful and Just

I do not write any of this as someone who claims to be an exemplar. Those who know me and have spoken with me about public events know very well how often and passionately I have violated these principles and brought dishonor to the name of Christ doing so. But I take hope in the words of 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

I have been a false witness. I have spread a false report. I have been a slanderer and a gossip, and I have cursed my fellow men and women with my mouth. These things do not bring honor to Christ who saved me. So, I ask the Holy Spirit to help me: Help me to be a man who resists the devil by repudiating false witness. “Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips!” (Psalm 141:3). Let me be so committed to the truth that I would rather stay silent than risk spreading a false report. “Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.”

Resources

Wise participation in public life requires growing in media literacy. These resources are helpful for learning to engage information wisely and to discern what is worth believing and repeating.

“Crash Course Navigating Digital Information” by CrashCourse with the Poynter Institute and the Stanford History Education Group (YouTube Series)
This video series is designed to winsomely teach basic practical strategies for interacting with a digital environment without being fooled. Its worldview is not Christian, but the tools it offers are universally helpful, as well as accessible. I highly recommend it for anyone who feels uncertain about what to trust online.

“How to More Wisely Consume News” by Bryan Weyland (Gospel Coalition Article)
In a short article, Weyland walks through some biblical principles and practical steps that Christians can employ when consuming news content.

“Come, Let Us Reason Together” by Kevin DeYoung (Gospel Coalition Article)
In another short article, DeYoung considers the contentious environment we live in and offers advice on assessing the trustworthiness of information.

“Evaluating Information - Applying the CRAAP Test” by the Merian Library at CSU Chico (PDF)
This one-page PDF is an at-a-glance guide for evaluating the trustworthiness of a source of information. It is designed to help students with research in an academic setting. This was recommended to me by my friend Emma, a high school English teacher.

AllSides (News Aggregator)
AllSides is a multi-partisan organization committed to “balanced news, diverse perspectives, and real conversation.” The website’s news aggregator compares headlines from media outlets left, right, and center, allowing readers to get more than one perspective on reported events. AllSides assumes that all reporting (as well as all readers) is “biased” and so attempts to give people the tools to navigate that bias. Their media bias ratings are helpful for understanding the background of various news organizations. (Please note that a news organization’s position on a media bias chart is not causally related to the truthfulness of their reporting. Ideology is universal and inescapable; false testimony is not.)

The Flip Side (Opinion Aggregator)
The Flip Side provides a daily newsletter aggregating opinions and commentary (not news) from the right and left side of the political spectrum. It is a helpful tool for charitably understanding the arguments on both sides of an issue, for understanding the differences of opinion within each political camp, and for recognizing that there are many things on which everyone can agree.

“Bad News” by DROG and the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab (Browser-Based Game)
This game, designed to be used in educational settings, introduces players to some of the factors that drive online disinformation by putting them in the role of unethical news tycoon. DROG is a Dutch media platform that has set out to counter online disinformation. This game was also recommended to me by Emma.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. May not copy or download more than 500 consecutive verses of the ESV Bible or more than one half of any book of the ESV Bible.