Bearing Witness

“And you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” (Deuteronomy 5:20)

I remember growing up in churches where the old preacher would pause on the midst of his sermon, intoning “Can I get a witness?” Shouts would rise from the congregation and echo across the ceiling. “Preach it brother!” “Truth!” “Amen!” “Glory!” The robust call and response between preacher and audience taps into a deeply biblical rhythm of bearing witness.

The prohibition in the ninth commandment  is based on the possibility of bearing true witness. Torah talks about this phrase as a legal speech-act:

“Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established.” (Deuteronomy 19:15).

If someone is accused of a crime, it requires two or three people to establish a charge. In the case of a capital crime, these people must act out their accusation by literally throwing the first stone. To bear false witness is a serious act because it could mean killing someone on the basis of deception. The Stoning of Soraya M.: A True Story tells the horrific story of an entire village bearing false witness against a woman by stoning her to death. If a person is exposed for bearing false witness, they must bear the penalty that related to the specific accusation.

True Witness is not simply a legal action, but is at the heart of all knowledge. We know what we know based on some form of witness. There are a range of witnesses to knowledge including personal experience, the experience of others, the world around us, and the Triune God. For now, I simply want to mention each of these categories. I’ll discuss them in more depth later.

Personal Experience – Each person develops personal knowledge of the world as a whole person. We hear, see, smell, taste and touch the world around us. We think, feel, talk, and engage the world around us. The mystery of our own consciousness is a witness.

Other People – Even as we are immersed into the world we are perceiving, we interact with our people who witness in word and act. From experts telling us to exercise, to our wives telling us to buy more bread, we rely on the witness of other humans to live in this world. This witness can be face to face discussion but it can also be text: witness recorded. This implies some form of text. As humans we rely primarily on language, but witness can also be recorded in pictures, music, buildings and more.

The World – While only humans offer us an articulate voice we can understand, all creation is witnessing at some level. This might be called a passive witness. While the tree may not communicate in a common language, I can learn from watching the tree. I must adapt and the let the tree reveal itself to me “so to speak.” This is not some form of mystic application to creation rather it is the discipline of letting go of my assumptions about what I am observing and learning how to observe it. More on this later.

The Triune God – We encounter this unseen witness through the witnesses above and in a distinctive breaking in as “inner witness.” As a Christian, I would consider this a fundamental witness, but it is also the most challenging because it is not bound by the world. In one sense, the world includes ourselves, other people and the world around us. The Triune witness of Father, Son and Spirit is not contained by the world and may seem to be invisible in the world.

Each of categories require more space to discuss, so I’ll spend more time on that in the future. For now, I’ll simply suggest that witness as knowing may help us to see how knowledge requires some form of trust, relationship, engagement, and adaptation. Since some form of witness is so primary to knowing, false witness threatens to unravel all knowing. 

* Image by thebristolkid on Flickr (used by permission via Creative Commons)