Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness: The grievous sin of false Facebook posting

Exodus 20:16. "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour." 

This is the Ninth of the Biblical Ten Commandments: Right up there with murder, theft, adultery and idolatry.

Yet every day on Facebook, I see posts, from people who claim to reverence the Ten Commandments, that copy false accusations and slanders.  I won't cite specific examples. There are too many, some obvious, some subtle. There are more every day, mindlessly copied and shared without checking by many people, simply because they attack people they dislike.  This is false witness.  It is spreading malicious lies to slander someone.

In John 8:44, Jesus says that the devil is the father of lies.  The word "devil" is an English form of the Greek word "diabolos" which actually means: Slanderer, False accuser.  So, when you post a false accusation, you are quite literally the devil.

By contrast, Jesus said:  "I am the way, the TRUTH, and the life," so if you want to follow Jesus, you must follow truth.  If you follow lies, you are not following Jesus.

But, you say, you didn't realize it was false!  Is ignorance a defence? No, it is not.  If you spread accusations that you don't really know to be true, it is still bearing false witness.  But anyway do you really want to claim ignorance?  If you don't know what you are talking about, why are you posting?  Why post in ignorance?  All you do is prove your ignorance.

Spreading malice in ignorance is gossip. The Bible condemns gossip in the strongest terms.  Romans 1:29 says this about the Godless: 

 "so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil."

See who gossips are grouped with?

There is simply no way to reconcile careless posting of accusations with Christian ideals.  It is anti-Christian.  If you are going to make accusatory posts, you have a Christian obligation to at least make sure they are true.  If you can't take time to check before you post, don't post.  If you check, make sure you check reliable sources, not just the same scurrilous partisan echo chamber sites that pump out the lies. And, if you believe those slanders against Snopes, you have already been deceived by the devil.  If you don't know how to check it, or just don't want to bother checking, just don't post it. It's sinful.

But, what about "harmless" non-accusatory memes? They may make a claim, or just be a "cute" photoshopped picture, with, or without, a fake story.  What's the harm in sharing?

The biggest harm may be to your own reputation.  Do you really want to be thought of as that credulous, gullible person, with a loose grip on reality, who can't tell real from fake, fact from fiction, Truth from lies, news from propaganda?  Because that's the inevitable result.

The other BIG problem, is that we get so swamped by fakes that fake vs. real has ceased to be important.  Facebook is so overrun with fake memes, it has turned into Fakebook. The falsehoods are so dominant, that it is tough to wade through all the nonsense.   Russian troll factories flood us with it.  Politics, which always was a dishonest business, has now become virtually Fact-Free.  And social media has to bear much of the blame. Set a better example. Have a higher standard.  We should value Truth, above all.  Without it, we live in a fantasy world, and not a pleasant one.

You can't teach truths unless you value truth.  Facts matter.  The very first question to ask is:

Is It True?

What YOU can do about gun violence

It is astonishing that some people think the solution to guns and violence is more guns and violence. America is far and away the most armed nation in the world: Over 300 million guns in the US, belonging to 100 million or so Americans. Over 40% of the civilian guns in the entire world are in the United States.  50% more guns per capita than the next most armed nation. The American experiment has conclusively proved the obvious: that guns do not prevent violence.

To be fair here, despite that arsenal, America generally has a remarkably safe record of gun ownership. Only 30,000 deaths per year, with 300,000,000 guns, means less than 1 in 10,000 get used to kill someone in any given year, a pretty good ratio, one might say. So, the vast majority of gun owners have a reasonably safe hobby.

But, hobby is all they are.  Guns have no real use or value for honest civilians. None. They are killing tools. That's all. Very dangerous weapons that do in fact kill people, and have no useful purpose in civilian hands. I could elaborate on that, but that's another essay. Regardless, this isn't going to change any time soon.  Nobody is going to get those gun owners to give them up. Not gonna happen.  No use even thinking about that.

A few bad or mad individuals, that small fraction of a percent, creates a lot of carnage.  The culture that glorifies gun violence, that glorifies the stereotype of the lone hero gunman, seems to be a lot of the problem, but pinning it down to any one thing is futile.   Guns don't protect you; they kill you. Having a gun in your house actually multiplies your odds of you or a family member being the victim of gun violence, whether by accident, homicide or suicide. There is a faint chance you might be able to use your gun to defend yourself. There is a far greater probability that you or someone else will use that gun against you or a member of your family.

Guns are like cigarettes: legal, lethal and stupid. Until the country recognizes that, we will continue killing ourselves with both. You have the right to both, if you are foolish enough. It may not be coincidence that firearms, tobacco and alcohol regulations are all enforced at the Federal level by ATF.

You can stand on your rights and argue that laws don't solve anything.  Maybe you're right - until people change, no law could take away enough of those 300 million guns. Like I said, not gonna change any time soon, and not my concern to even try. Quite honestly, I have to concede that I have yet to see any laws proposed that seem likely to have a significant effect on the carnage.

So, what can you do?  Don't worry about the 300 million guns out there. They aren't going away.  Just worry about the ones most likely to hurt you: Any in your own house. That is what YOU can deal with.

This is not political. I am not about politics or laws or trying to make people behave. I support no political party or politician.  Gun rights folks often assert that criminals do not obey laws. That is truly total nonsense, but I actually agree that changing people, not changing laws, is what is really needed.  You can't change anyone but yourself. So, start there.  So, change.  Start with seeking out the violence in your own heart and fighting it. This an angry and violent nation. Don't participate in that, even emotionally.

But you can go farther: You want to defend your family. The most effective way to do that is to keep guns out of your house.  Don't allow guns in YOUR house.  Don't voluntarily be in the presence of anyone else with a gun. If YOU own guns, destroy them.  I'm not suggesting taking away your useless "right" to own guns if you are so foolish as to want them.  I'm suggesting you take the personal responsibility to renounce guns. That won't stop gun violence, but it's one small step in the right direction.  It won't solve the problem, but at least then, YOU won't BE the problem.  At least then, it won't be YOUR gun that is used in the next slaying.  It won't be YOUR family member who goes crazy and kills people with your gun. It won't be YOUR gun that is stolen and used to commit crimes. It won't be YOUR gun that is found by a toddler with tragic results.  Or, most common of all, you or your loved one, in a moment of desperation, will not use YOUR gun to commit suicide. At least then, YOU won't be supporting the gun culture or the gun industry, an industry of death. Then YOU, or a member of YOUR family won't be the next angry white man whose suppressed rage erupts into mass shooting.

I haven't actually seen these signs available, and I don't post slogans in my yard, but I would have not the slightest hesitation to making it clear that my home is gun free.  I don't for a minute think that burglars are restrained from my house by the fear that I might be armed.  Canadians don't seem to have a worse burglary problem than Americans.  Guns are a desirable target of burglars, so they can go elsewhere looking for them.  They may as well know that we aren't gonna have a shootout over my TV.  It's insured, and getting a little old anyway.  My home is (humbly) gun free.

Luckier Than Lou Gehrig

I always used to wonder how Lou Gehrig could say in his famous July 4, 1939 farewell speech to the New York Yankees, after having been diagnosed with ALS, a cruel disease that came to be named after him, that:

"Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth." 

Lou Gehrig's speech

How could any man facing such a near and difficult death consider himself lucky?

But now, having myself been diagnosed, not with Lou Gehrig's disease, but with some similar neuro-muscular condition, I do think I understand, and agree.

I'm still not completely sure what I have. It falls (as do I, frequently) under the general heading of a "movement disorder."  My symptoms don't exactly fit the classic definition of any of the possible diagnoses.  My doctors tell me what I don't have. I had every test the doctors could imagine, and none of them showed anything.   I don't have ALS, or MS, or Parkinsons, or Alzheimers, or Muscular Dystrophy.  I don't have a brain tumor or cancer.  One doctor thought it might be Ataxia, but the other disagrees.  They all say I don't have Hydrocephalus. They all say it's not brain damage from my cycling concussion.

Tentatively, maybe it might be something you've likely never heard of called Multiple System Atrophy (MSA) though my symptoms differ in several ways from how MSA is usually described. There's a whole list of vaguely similar neurological conditions that you've likely also never heard of, but I probably don't have those either.  It's some kind of deterioration of the cerebellum (not the cerebrum).  Whatever it is, my brain seems to be slowly losing control over my body.  And, whatever it is, there is at present no real treatment. In fact, the diagnosis doesn't really much matter as there is no real treatment for any of the likely possibilities. 

There's also not much in the way of prediction or prognosis.  As my doctor says, we know that it progresses, but otherwise we can't really predict much. Lou Gehrig lived two years after his ALS diagnosis. Stephan Hawking has lived over 50 years since his ALS diagnosis, married twice, fathered 3 children, wrote books, did physics, and still gets bit parts on the American TV sit-com "Big Bang Theory." So, these diseases are not very predictable.

But, here's the point:  I, like Lou Gehrig, can't help considering myself lucky.  I guess I could get into a "why me" or "woe is me" attitude, but that would be fake. I just don't feel that way about it.  It would be a totally wrong summary of my life and my circumstances.  Lou Gehrig died at the young age of 37. I am now 68, and will most likely make it in some fashion to the Psalmist's proverbial allotment of "threescore and ten" (that's 70, for those of you who don't know the score).  So, in quantity of life, I really have nothing to complain about. Sure, I always imagined that I would follow my parents in living into my early 90's, but life is not about quantity but about quality, and I have had a GREAT life. I would not trade these 70ish years for 100 of some other life.

I can only hit a few of the highlights here that have contributed to this great life I have lived.

I was born to wonderful parents and great family in a wonderful community. I was blessed that my ancestors immigrated to America, and to California.  

Although merely middle class by the standards of this country, we were, and are, rich by the standards of the world as a whole. If we aren't in the global top 1%, we are close to it. As they say, if you have to be a cripple, it's better to be a rich one, and I consider myself rich.

Certainly by the standards of any previous generation in human history we have comfort, leisure, ability to travel, and houses and driveways full of magical things that do the drudge work, entertain us, transport us, connect us, feed us, to a standard undreamt of by kings in any previous century. Objectively it is absolutely undeniable that here and now, this is totally without question the greatest time ever to be alive.  By whatever measures you care to use, people today live longer, healthier, wealthier, happier lives than they ever have before in the history of the world.  Two minor examples:  The biggest health problem in America today is the over abundance of inexpensive, delicious food of every possible variety. A cure for cancer? My wife was cured of a very nasty cancer that would have killed her a decade ago.  

Yes, I said houses, plural. Most people wish they could own one house (The "American dream.") We have two really great houses, both of which in different ways we were blessed to be able to share with many others. And now we are selling those and building one great big one by the shore of Lake Michigan to share with our daughter and family.

My parents gave me more than I could ever deserve, in every way, material, spiritual, educational. I have a brother who has always been my best friend.

I have the greatest marriage ever to my soul mate. The best wife I could ever have wished for, who, 46 years and counting, is still standing by me and supporting me to my last step.

I have wonderful in-laws, who are still with us and who have been like second parents to me. Lou Gehrig mentioned that his mother in law took his side, and mine does too.

I have two great children and five amazing grandchildren.  And, get this: my children actually want to help take care of me, even to the extent of amazingly inviting me to move in with them!  How's that for lucky!

We were so blessed to spend some time in the high Sierras. seeing them as few are able to do. I was able to realize a dream and hike most of the length of the John Muir Trail.

I have a faith that sustains me, guides me, gives me hope, gives purpose and meaning to my life, directs my life, and promises something even better to look forward to. And, I have a worldwide family, brotherhood, community of faith that is the most amazingly close and loving group of people in the world. We were blessed to be able to serve that family of faith in many ways. We continue to be blessed with not just one, but two local congregations that love us and care for us, and brothers and sisters all over the world.

I had a great career in my chosen field of engineering. I was fortunate that my parents sent me to USC to Engineering school. Sometime I'll tell you about how I became a "swiss army knife" of three engineers in one.  I was privileged to work for some truly great organizations at the peak of their productivity, doing exciting projects.  I worked for some inspiring leaders - some truly great men, and was privileged to lead some amazing people.  Although at the time it was often stressful, and there were times when I indeed hated it, it was never dull, and I was able to accomplish and achieve some fabulous things.  I worked with amazing people, sometimes on the cutting edge of technologies. And it paid pretty well, too.

I was able to run for years, and loved doing it.  I got to ride bicycles, to commute by bike for some years.  Not quite as much as I wished, but a lot. And I can still trike!

I live in a time and place where disabilities such as mine can be handled with comfort - luxury even. I get the best medical treatment available.  That it so far offers no cure is unfortunate, but still, I get the best there is.

You know those outrageous overly generous public pensions the politicians complain about?  I've got two of those. With medical insurance, too.

I was thinking about more things that have made my life so amazing, like watching men walk on the moon, robots exploring Mars, asteroids, comets, other planets, Voyager leaving the solar system! Telescopes that have found planets around other stars! So much wonder!

And now, my family is raised. My children self supporting and with great families of their own.  My career is done and I can look back on it with a feeling of accomplishment.  Do I wish I could still hike and bike and camp and run?  Of course I do.  But I look forward with excitement and anticipation to the next chapter in my life.

The point is that I have had a wonderful life. I hope it continues, because it is still going great, but were I told it would end today, I would not feel in any way cheated or deprived.  Lou Gehrig said he felt he was the luckiest man on the face of the earth, and I feel even luckier.