Lying versus "bearing false witness."
Apr. 18th, 2022 12:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alex_antoninYou know how some Christians tell you the Bible forbids lying? Well they're wrong. The Bible forbids "bearing false witness." This is not the same as lying. Bearing false witness is closer to lying *under oath*. Bearing false witness is a lie that hurts others. Not all lies hurt people. In fact, given the prevalence of "little white lies" and lies of omission in our culture, most lies are either harmless or mostly harmless. Some lies can even be protective armor.
Examples of harmless and/or protective lies:
* "The Beatles? Never heard of them. Are they any good?" (Harmless, and amusing to tell older people.)
* "Oh what a lovely dress." (Potentially harmless. Said by someone who thinks that dress is hideous, but hey, to each their own.)
* "I'm straight." (Protective lie said by someone who is not at all straight.)
* "I'm normal." / Masking (Protective lies done by neurodiverse people to protect themselves from neurotypicals.)
Examples of bearing false witness:
* Lying under oath.
* Falsely accusing someone of something they didn't do in order to get them in trouble or to get other people to hate them.
* Claiming vaccines cause autism. Andrew Wakefield has harmed millions of people by telling that one. And everyone who continues to spread it by believing it and getting others to believe it is also bearing false witness.
* Claiming trans women are men or trans men are women. That one has also claimed millions of lives and made millions more lives very difficult.
* Claiming LGBT people are pedophiles. Stop projecting. Just because you lot are pedophiles doesn't mean the rest of us are.
* Saying "the Bible forbids abortions." This is harmful to people who have accidentally gotten pregnant and don't want their lives ruined. It's also literally a lie because there is actually a part of the Bible where God gives Moses instructions on how to perform an abortion. So yeah, your God is NOT pro-life. (As if all the times he genocided humanity wasn't a dead giveaway on that one.) So you can stop using that argument now.
This has been another in a series of "rare tidbits of wisdom in that garbage book Christians claim to believe in."
Examples of harmless and/or protective lies:
* "The Beatles? Never heard of them. Are they any good?" (Harmless, and amusing to tell older people.)
* "Oh what a lovely dress." (Potentially harmless. Said by someone who thinks that dress is hideous, but hey, to each their own.)
* "I'm straight." (Protective lie said by someone who is not at all straight.)
* "I'm normal." / Masking (Protective lies done by neurodiverse people to protect themselves from neurotypicals.)
Examples of bearing false witness:
* Lying under oath.
* Falsely accusing someone of something they didn't do in order to get them in trouble or to get other people to hate them.
* Claiming vaccines cause autism. Andrew Wakefield has harmed millions of people by telling that one. And everyone who continues to spread it by believing it and getting others to believe it is also bearing false witness.
* Claiming trans women are men or trans men are women. That one has also claimed millions of lives and made millions more lives very difficult.
* Claiming LGBT people are pedophiles. Stop projecting. Just because you lot are pedophiles doesn't mean the rest of us are.
* Saying "the Bible forbids abortions." This is harmful to people who have accidentally gotten pregnant and don't want their lives ruined. It's also literally a lie because there is actually a part of the Bible where God gives Moses instructions on how to perform an abortion. So yeah, your God is NOT pro-life. (As if all the times he genocided humanity wasn't a dead giveaway on that one.) So you can stop using that argument now.
This has been another in a series of "rare tidbits of wisdom in that garbage book Christians claim to believe in."