You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor
“The Eighth Commandment forbids misrepresenting the truth in our relations with others.” (CCC 2464)
I’ve been writing and thinking a lot lately about truth and love. They fit together nicely in my mind, each so important to the other, so this morning when I read a short meditation on the Eighth Commandment, it fit right in with where my mind was --- and of course, it said things in a way I had not considered, and with much better words:
“We are seekers after truth, but our lives are encumbered by lies. In our dealings with others we deceive and are deceived; we hold secrets too shameful to share and present ourselves to others as people we are not. We meet others partway and, in this partial meeting, are made painfully aware of how far we remain from the ones we care about. Our untruths cause discord and division, and we are pushed farther and farther from what we know to be good. We try to speak the truth as lies tumble from our lips.
We are seekers after ultimate truth, for we sense that all the little truths we discover will end in falsity without it. Science tells us that we are nothing but a haphazard coming together of bits and pieces of matter, no different really from rocks or trees or bacteria. All our history, our great works of art and literature and music, all our acts of compassion, all the love we unaccountably feel for others, all our yearnings tell us that this is nonsense. They send us searching for the truth beyond our many little truths, to the truth that lies hidden in all things but is different from all things. But all our science and all our thinking fail us in the search for the truth behind truths. This search is doomed, as our efforts to be truthful are doomed, until we abandon our pride and our science and our philosophy, until we stop trying to wrest truth from the physical world and finally admit that truth is not something to be discovered but Someone to be met.”
Life in Christ, by Fr. Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R.
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"Lies tumble from our lips"
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this great reflection-it rings true in so many ways, but I'm not sure that it is necessary to reveal our entirety to others, sometimes it is more than they can handle. I don't think it is necessarily a lie, just a hidden part of ourselves that only God and maybe a few select others can know about. In this age of tell-alls on television, it's nice to have a little mystery to unravel in others without having everything in your face all the time.
Ah, only a woman would understand about the need for some mystery. Guys are just mostly confused by it.
ReplyDeleteIn the world of truth and lies, I don't worry about the unsaid or unknown things, mystery, but I do get concerned about "truths" which I know to be (or believe to be) un-truths. Relativism, when two intelligent people of good-will meet and see a different truth from the same facts. I know that sometimes it is necessary to "agree to disagree," but so often people (sometimes even me) can't reach that agreement, and consider the other person stupid in their beliefs. Then all conversation, regardless of topic, is often cut off between two good people. That bothers me, and I think on it much.