The Hardest Commandment
I fall short on all the ten commandments, but the eighth one is the one that calls me out the most often. For all of you who don’t recite the ten commandments every morning (how dare you!), this is the one I’m speaking of: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” (Exodus 20:16)
I first learned about the breadth of this commandment back when Allison Johnson – a former seminary intern at the Center – was creating a confirmation class for Adam and Amanda’s two girls who were in middle school at the time.
Essentially, this commandment is all about seeing and sharing the goodness in others rather than dishing out the dirt you just heard at a party. This means keeping yourself from spreading the rumors that are going around the office or not sharing the judgments you might have of someone with the people around you.
After being strongly convicted of this when Allison was putting her lesson together, some of us at the LC turned this commandment into a verb. “You just eighth commandment-ed him!” or “Wow, I am totally not eight commandment-ing today.” Making it a verb makes you very aware of how often you do indeed bear false witness.
There are naturally people who are better at following this commandment and I look up to them; I would even say I’m jealous of them. We have a student at the LC who is so good at eight commandment-ing, he even eighth commandment-ed a street preacher that was on campus this fall! Always seeing the goodness and divine within everyone, I look up to this student as my cynicism and judgment is reflected back to me.
I’ve thought about this a lot this past week because there have been two occasions where I’ve heard bad things about people or a rumor that’s spreading around campus and immediately wanted to share it with my colleagues. What is it about us that just loves sharing nasty things about others? Why are we so attracted to how people have failed and how they’re living their lives “worse” than we are? I gain nothing in my gossiping and judgment.
This fall, the LC staff is reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Life Together” in preparation for our living and learning community in the new building. In the chapter I read this week, he was highlighting the various ways we need to be ministers to each other. And one of them in particular called me out – the ministry of meekness.
In this ministry, we are called to sink all the way down to the depths of humility so that we might see the Christ in our neighbor. And to do this, we must see our own sin as the absolute worst. “If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all. My sin is of necessity the worst, the most grievous, the most reprehensible. Brotherly love will find any number of extenuations for the sins of others; only for my sin is there no apology whatsoever. Therefore my sin is the worst.”
Pretty harsh, huh?
And when I read this, I immediately had those two people I’ve been judging come to mind. To think that my sin is worse than anything they have or have not done is a brutal accusation. There is no room for me to see my neighbor other than the beloved, child of God that they are. There is no room for me to see myself above them, better than them, more worthy of God’s love than them. And I think that’s the core of the eighth commandment and key to the Christian communities of which we are a part.
Bonhoeffer says, “God did not make this person as I would have made him. He did not give him to me as a brother for me to dominate and control, but in order that I might find above him the Creator.”
So may we eighth commandment our neighbors today and every day. The neighbors who may be in the midst of a scandal. The neighbors who we see panhandling every morning on our way to work. Even the neighbors who are in or campaigning to be in the White House. May we humble ourselves enough to see our own sin so that we can see the Christ within them.