Trump shreds the Ninth Commandment while Christians demand it in classrooms

By Patrick McCormick | FāVS News Columnist

The views expressed in this opinion column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of FāVS News.

Conservative Christians want the Ten Commandments in our classrooms and courtrooms, while their preferred candidate and president shreds the Ninth Commandment’s order to not “bear false witness against our neighbor” with abandon.

Trump’s 2016 campaign started by slandering Mexican and Muslim immigrants and went on to defame the sitting president and every other candidate. Once in office, he told a record shattering 30,000 lies, many self-aggrandizing fictions, but mostly libels about judges, politicians, journalists or anyone not approaching on bended knee. 

Upon losing the 2020 election by over 7 million votes, he broadcast the “stolen election” whopper on every possible platform and defamed everyone who supposedly assisted in “the steal.” These lies generated threats and violence against countless civil servants and a criminal assault on the Capitol seeking to overthrow the election.

In the current term Trump’s lying is an uncontrollable tick. Not content with slandering Joe Biden, Jerome Powell, Jack Smith, Somali and Haitian immigrants, and late-night talk show hosts, he has whitewashed U.S. history of racism and misogyny and published deadly fictions about vaccines, pollution, food safety and the climate. 

On the global stage, he’s blamed Ukraine for starting the Russian invasion and Black South Africans for inventing racism, then fabricated nonsense histories of Greenland, Denmark, NATO and Europe. 

And to distract us from Epstein, Greenland and the “affordability” crisis, he libels the millions of Americans joining 10,000 nationwide protests. 

How Christians rationalize it

Pro-democracy Iranians being gunned down in the street are his heroes, but U.S. citizens resisting and being killed by masked DHS agents are paid agitators, traitors, domestic terrorists and assassins. Tragically, as Trump’s minions regurgitate these slanders chapter and verse, most of his largely Christian base swallows it as gospel. 

MAGA Christians often applaud Trump’s slanders as courageously anti-woke frankness and suggest progressives either don’t get his “sense of humor” or hypocritically ignore the fact that all politicians lie. Or, while blushing at his lies and slanders, these conservative Christians minimize his hate speech as a minor flaw.    

But these denials and minimizations blindly ignore that Scripture condemns bearing false witness against our neighbor so strongly because lies like Trump’s inflict terrible harms. 

They libel the righteous, defame the innocent, scapegoat the marginalized, cover up real injustices, cheat the poor, demonize our opponents, shred the community and render all speech useless. 

Trump’s flood of lies is not merely false speech, but language weaponized to destroy conversations, shred the communities they sustain, and pollute public discourse with so many falsehoods that all language is meaningless. 

The wave of slanders about critics or opponents distracts us from Trump’s failures and crimes, scapegoats others for ills he has created or cannot solve, discredits anyone suggesting the emperor has no clothes, and splits us into warring camps.

The Ninth Commandment (Exodus 20:16) forbids bearing false witness against our neighbors to prevent wrongfully convicting the innocent, cheating workers of their fair wage, customers of a fair price or landowners of their property.  

As Exodus 23:1-3 argues, “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 … to pervert justice.” 

God does not just condemn libeling the innocent or defrauding the worker, customer or landowner, but also conspiring with those plotting such crimes by liking or retweeting their lies. 

Indeed, Deuteronomy 19:17-19 demands those bearing false witness get the punishment they would impose on the falsely accused, while Proverbs 12:5 says, “a false witness will not go unpunished, and he who speaks lies will not escape.” 

Paul further unpacks the harms of bearing false witness in Ephesians 4:9-16, reminding us that leaders must help us grow up, “so we may no longer be children, tossed about … by craftiness in deceitful schemes” that shred our community. “Therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.” 

Jesus, of course, rails against self-righteous slurs of our neighbors, marveling in Matthew 7:3-5 at the hypocrisy of raging against the speck in our neighbor’s eye while ignoring the beam in our own and demanding in John 8:7 that only the sinless (of which there are none) should condemn others.

Indeed, bearing false witness against our neighbors is the antithesis of the gospel. The order to love our enemies and pray for our persecutors is at the heart of Jesus’ new commandments in the Sermon on the Mount, while Luke 3:37 demands, “Do not condemn others, or it will all come back against you.” Rather, “forgive others and you will be forgiven.” 

And for himself, Jesus promises in John 12:47, “I will not judge those who hear me but don’t obey me, for I have come to save the world and not to judge it,” which he proves when he begs God to forgive his executioners with his last dying breath.  

The antidote

There is something deep in us that loves to gossip about, judge or condemn the other, projecting our fears and failures onto the backs of scapegoats, claiming the higher moral ground by slandering or demonizing our neighbors. 

But this demon is not Christian — or Jewish, or Muslim, or Buddhist, or Hindu — though it has infected all our faiths from time to time. 

The antidote to bearing false witness against our neighbor is confessing our own sins and failures, loving our enemies and praying for our persecutors.  It is also bearing witness to the truth by standing with the slandered, libeled and defamed and speaking truth to power loudly, clearly and ceaselessly. 

The word martyr describes someone bearing witness to the truth. Folks in Minneapolis protecting their neighbors, resisting the unconstitutional use of armed force by masked gunmen and singing songs of protest to ICE agents are not traitors, paid agitators, domestic terrorists or assassins. They are martyrs.

FāVS News uses professional journalists and thoughtful commentary to explore faith, values and ethics. Support journalism like this by making a tax-deductible donation. FāVS is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.