Day 81

"You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." Exodus 20:16

I would say that this commandment is fairly straight forward. Lying about someone usually results in major damage to that person. One aspect that especially strikes me about the topic of bearing false witness is when someone believes false things about themselves. I have seen the damage it can cause. Children and teens, for example, are especially impressionable to opinions about them. When they believe false things about who they are, their emotions can run the gamut -- from feeling bad about themselves, to feeling worthless and not wanting to live. Some of those early wounds can set the tone for adulthood struggles with false impressions of oneself.

Even situations in adulthood can get us questioning our worth. Job loss, broken relationships, physical appearances and other elements that we tend to measure ourselves by may catch us in the trap of falsehood. When people measure their value to man’s standards and not to God’s word, they get off track.

But who are we to insult God’s "knitting?"Psalm 139:13-15 says, "For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them."

This bring me to when Moses is being directed by God to be the voice of Israel, and Moses, knowing his speaking troubles, says in a sense to God: "You got the wrong guy." In Exodus 4:10-12 Moses said to the LORD, "Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue." Then the LORD said to him, "Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak."

When Jesus sat with tax collectors, prostitutes, or other hurting souls, He made a positive impact on them, because He saw through their roles in society or the mistakes or bad choices they made. In a sense, Jesus saw the truth about them and helped them see it themselves.

We are all unique and we do a disservice to ourselves when we compare ourselves to others, especially when we use man’s measuring stick. Are we not bearing false witness to ourselves when we measure by our standards or someone else’s standard as opposed to God’s?

In our culture, if you make a good salary and have a high position in a company with a nice house, car and vacation home, you are considered a very successful person. Yet you do not find these standards in the Bible to describe a successful person. Not that achieving those things in themselves are bad, but if we start seeing ourselves as "not good enough" because we don’t have these things then we are getting off track. Remember that Jesus himself was homeless . . .

Bearing false witness is not good and if we believe false things about ourselves are we not bearing false witness to God’s creation? God is great and His Word, Works and Ways are perfect. Knowing that you are made by the perfect creator is the true stamp of your value. The deceiver would love for you to forget or fail to recognize yourself as perfect and worthy, because then you would start to feel worthless and might even become withdrawn, which ultimately would not reflect our great Creator.

Pray: I pray that we would not only recognize that bearing false witness hurts those to whom it is directed but that we would also see that bearing false witness against ourselves, Your own creations, is damaging. May we see anew the stamp of our value in how You made us; unique and wonderfully. There may be roles, behaviors or choices that we have made that bear false witness to who we truly are. Jesus, help us to see with your eyes the true value of who we are beyond the false witness. Thank you Lord for loving each of us for who we are and for reminding us in your Word that we are made in your image. Amen.