False Witness

I memorized the ten commandments when I was in 3rd grade, about the time I memorized the books of the Bible to earn my first Bible in Sunday School. It was all King James Version at the time, so I have etched in my brain: "Thou shalt not bear false witness." Sometime later I read Proverbs 6:

There are six things the Lord hates – no, seven things he detests: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that kill the innocent, a heart that plots evil, feet that race to do wrong, a false witness who pours out lies, a person who sows discord in a family.

I remember marveling that a lying tongue and a false witness were included in the same list as hands that kill the innocent. Since then I've seen how lies can kill.

Bearing false witness is not just originating lies. It includes repeating them. Maliciously, carelessly, casually, fervently ... The harm is done no matter the motive.
I've always taken that seriously, so seriously I won't even write something in my morning prayer journal unless I'm sure it's true. I sometimes catch myself about to record a grievance or complaint. I pause, pray, consider.

To me, truth is a precious treasure, and false witness a danger that destroys trust, damages community and endangers lives.

That's why I'm alarmed when people I once respected casually repeat lies. It's also why I have a deep distrust of President Donald Trump. No, Haitian immigrants have not been eating people's pets. No, USAID did not pay millions of dollars to distribute condoms in Gaza.

I know politicians sometimes misspeak. I know sometimes they stretch the truth. I also know Trump's flagrant lies led to the nickname "Liar in Chief" (repeated in well-researched books, film and too many articles to document).

Wikipedia has a page titled "False or misleading statements by Donald Trump." It's by far the longest page I've seen on Wikipedia, and has a little note to volunteer editors:

This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably. Consider splitting content into sub-articles, condensing it, or adding subheadings. Please discuss this issue on the article's talk page. (September 2024)

 

The page provides 595 sources (as of this writing, with more added daily). Text under the graphic on the right notes it only covers a window from 2018 to 2021:

Fact-checkers from The Washington Post^[1] (top, monthly), the Toronto Star^[2] and CNN^[3][4] (bottom, weekly) compiled data on "false or misleading claims", and "false claims", respectively. The peaks corresponded in late 2018 to the midterm elections, in late 2019 to his impeachment inquiry, and in late 2020 to the presidential election. The Post reported 30,573 false or misleading claims in four years,^[1] an average of more than 20.9 per day.

For me, once someone has demonstrated repeated, determined disregard for the truth, that person is not to be trusted, unless there's confession, apology for harm, and even then, anything such a person says needs to be carefully weighed against other, more reliable testimony.

Yet I know Christians who consider Donald Trump a trusted source and repeat what he says, regularly breaking one of the ten commandments and doing a thing scripture says God hates. I also know preachers, far too many, who brazenly, emphatically repeat Trump's lies, stirring their congregants' emotions and sowing anger, fear and discord in families and communities.

Both cases undermine and compromise Christian witness and regard for truth. Here's an interesting challenge: spend some time on Bible Gateway, checking how much scripture says about lies, repeating lies, aligning with liars. I promise, there's plenty. Not nearly as much as about caring for the poor, or the stranger, or creation, but enough to make clear: God really really hates falsehoods and those who align themselves with liars. How to avoid the snare of misinformation? How to avoid repeating lies? One quick rule: don't repeat a source that has lied in the past. Even if he's the president. For a more in-depth approach, there are plenty of resources online offering fact-checks, assessing media bias, giving step-by-step instructions on countering misinformation. I like this thorough guide provided by the Austin Community College Library Resources. It's worth sharing some of their resources, or links they provide. And worth reading the page about why misinformation is harmful. The reality, though, is that most folks bearing false witness and sharing rumors and lies will not be convinced by fact or fact-checking websites. There's a whole body of research on why that's the case, a post for another day. NPR offers a thoughtful discussion of connection, not correction. I've tried much of what the article suggests. I'm not sure it works. From what I can see, once someone has given their loyalty to a liar, truth has a hard time breaking through, and the torrent of accusation and misinformation from Trump loyalists can be wearying, even dangerous.

I know friends who have gone silent rather than run the risk of constant friction or personal attack. I know politicians who go along with lies rather than risk their political careers by insisting on the truth.

Silence in the face of lies is rarely a lasting option. A quote attributed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, killed for his resistance in the final days of World War 2, is a grim reminder that most German Christians were actively complicit, while others were silent in the face of Nazi brutality: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” We can pray that God will change hearts and minds, that God will intervene as policy is shaped by distortions and deception. But sometimes the call of justice, mercy and righteousness demands words, from us. A first step is to refuse to repeat, affirm, or stay silent in the presence of false witness.

Drain the Swamp? Beware!

We've been hearing for years about draining the swamp. It's a metaphor for dismantling government as we know it, but the metaphor itself should have warned us. 

A swamp is a priceless treasure, according to one National Geographic article: "one of the most valuable ecosystems on earth." Swamps serve as sponges, protecting coasts and inland areas from flooding. They also serve as filters, cleaning water that flows through them, capturing pollutants, absorbing toxins or trapping them at the bottom, "buried in sand and sediment."

Swamps provide rich habitat for fish, birds and other creatures. Recent research also shows they're far more effective in capturing and storing carbon than even the most mature forest. Acre for acre, swamps are among the most effective ecosystems in combating climate change and preserving biodiversity, but also the most at risk of vanishing. 

Globally, wetlands (including swamps) are disappearing three times faster than forest. In the US, the rate of loss of wetlands doubled between 2009 and 2019. 

Before draining a swamp, it's worth stopping to wonder: who will benefit? for how long? At what cost?

Swamps and other wetlands can take thousands of years to form. Fill them in and their benefits vanish. Attempts to reclaim them are expensive, time consuming, and never fully effective. 

So - do we really want to drain swamps? Not if we understand what they are, what they do, and what we've lost when they're gone. 

But swamps are not really on the top of my mind. The Drain the Swamp battle cry was about government. Not just government corruption, but government as we know it. Checks and balances, regulations, administrative procedures.

How do you drain a swamp? You bulldoze it. 

That appears to be the plan for the US government as we know it. 

Ethics rules? Reverse them. 

Commitments to non-partisan entities, support for longstanding programs, respect for international neighbors, treaties and laws? 

According to President Trump, there's nothing in place he can't overturn with a hasty executive order. 

He signed 37 executive orders in his first week in office.

At least one is clearly unconstitutional: 

“Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship” purports to revoke citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants, despite the 14th Amendment's promise that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.". 

The National Immigration Law Center, commenting on another order, "Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program”, states; 

This Order does not appear to provide any exceptions for people being trafficked into the United States, unaccompanied children, or those whose deportation would send them back to persecution or torture. The Order thus stands in clear violation of U.S. federal law and the United States’ obligations under the international Refugee Convention, which prevents countries from deporting refugees back to harm. 

"Withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization," "effective immediately", in reality by law requires a year to take effect. Lawrence Gostin, professor of global health law at Georgetown University and director of WHO's Center on Global Health Law, calls the order "the most cataclysmic decision . . . .  a grave wound to American national interests and our national security." Another infectious disease expert said "“This represents one of the darkest days of public health that I can recall.”

Every order so far raises questions, so many that it's a challenge to say which is most alarming and bizarre. Every one of them suggests a deep lack of understanding about how systems work and the harm that results when systems are bulldozed without caution or review. 

“Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid” "places a 90-day pause on foreign aid or assistance to U.S. allies while the administration evaluates current aid programs." What happens to aid workers, hospitals, children on life support during that 90 day pause? "Those workers were told to stop working and “please head home.”

A ProPublica article describes the challenge facing aide workers in Sudan: Defy President Trump’s order to immediately stop operations or let up to 100 babies and toddlers die. 

“I’ve been an infectious disease doctor for 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything that scares me as much as this,” said Dr. Jennifer Furin, a Harvard Medical School physician who received a stop-work order for a program designing treatment plans for people with the most drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis. Infectious diseases do not know borders, she pointed out. “It’s terrifying.” . . .

Critics say the past week has also undermined US security by opening a vacuum for international adversaries to fill, while putting millions of the world's most vulnerable at immediate and long-term risk.

“A chaotic, unexplained and abrupt pause with no guidance has left all our partners around the world high and dry and America looking like a severely unreliable actor to do business with,” a USAID official told ProPublica, adding that other countries will now have good reason to look to China or Russia for the help they’re no longer getting from the U.S. “There’s nothing that was left untouched.”

The actions of the Trump administration suggest a deep disinterest in the rule of law and a dangerous lack of understanding about how government works and what happens when structures and protections, developed across decades, are cavalierly ignored. 

I lived for fourteen years in Northern Virginia, where many friends and neighbors worked for the federal government. I knew people who worked in environmental regulation, international aide, security for US embassies, protection of US currency, intelligence, defense. All underwent lengthy security clearances. All had strict standards for conduct and communications. All were dedicated, caring, hard-working civil servants who cared deeply for our nation. 

It's painful to me to see leaders who would never pass those clearance reviews stepping into leadership in roles they don't understand, without respect for the laws that govern those roles or the conscientious career experts they're attempting to remove. When those people are gone, when the laws are dismantled, we will all be in a more dangerous world. 

Of course there are needed reforms. Of course there are ways to streamline and save funds. But a bulldozer is not the right tool for evaluating what works and what doesn't and ensuring careful reform.

And like swamps, governments, once dismantled, are very hard to rebuild. 

Twelve years ago, I helped start a group called Friends of Exton Park to protect fragile habitat, including a small wetland, in a park a few miles from my home. We convinced the township that owned the land that over-development would create more flooding at a library just downstream. Since then we've helped expand riparian buffers and supported work on a new master plan with less ball fields and pavement and more passive open space. On that scale, activism was successful.

Nine years ago, I helped start Fair Districts PA, an organization dedicated to ending gerrymandering in Pennsylvania and changing the PA constitution to create an independent citizen redistricting commission. The bills we supported weren't passed in time for the 2021 redistricting, but citizen action and advocacy helped yield better maps for this decade. This past week I was part of a press conference announcing co-sponsor memos on new bills, House Bill 31 and Senate Bill 131. On the statewide scale, activism is hard, but attention can make a difference.

On the national scale? On a global scale? Is there anything one citizen can do?

I'll be writing more on this in the weeks ahead. 

Humility: The Circumference of Mystery

For Christmas my granddaughter gave me a Wendell Berry book I hadn't seen before: A Small Porch: Sabbath Poems 2014-2015 together with The Presence of Nature in the Natural World: A Long Conversation. 

The "long conversation" starts in the psalms, continues through early English writers like Chaucer and Spenser to modern poets and farmers, centering on the role of nature, the appropriate care of land and creatures, and the ways nature and faith intersect. The poems echo similar themes.

This one caught my eye, along with a small penciled note referencing the Christmas Eve homily at our church about the miracle of the incarnation: 

They believe they've understood
belief in "the transcendent" 

by disbelieving. 

Some mental feats remain
impossible even to the best

of human minds.

For Berry, science and nature are not at all the same. Science has its place, when  used with humility, "subordinate and limited, dedicated to the service of things greater than itself." 

He reflects on the wisdom of a fellow farmer, Wes Jackson: 

"I have heard Wes say many times that 'the boundaries of causation always exceed the boundaries of consideration.' The more I have thought about that statement, the more interesting it has become. The key word is "always." Mystery, the unknown, our ignorance, will always be with us. . . The farther we extend the radius of knowledge, the larger becomes the circumference of mystery. There is, in other words, a boundary that may move somewhat, but can never be removed, between what we know and what we don't.

I found myself thinking of mystery and humility today as our church celebrated Epiphany, the feast day celebrating the journey of the magi to find the newborn king. 

The record of their travels is slim: twelve verses in Matthew 2. 

Were the magi magicians? Astronomers? Sorcerers? Kings? No one really knows. 

Were they from Egypt? Babylon? Persia? Someplace further? There are theories, but again, no one knows. 

Were there three? That number may have been prompted by the three different gifts they brought. 

Was it a conjunction of planets that set them on their journey? A lunar eclipse? An unusually bright star? 

Did they have camels? 

Were they kings?

Here's a short summary of what's known and not known: Who were the Magi?

What I've always loved about the magi is that whoever they were, they were willing to act on what they knew while knowing there was much they didn't know. 

They came in search of a king, not sure where to find him, not sure what his presence would demand. And when they found him, they fell on the ground and worshipped.

Adoration of the Magi, Taddeo di Bartolo, Siena, ca 1400

It's interesting to me how closely wisdom and humility are linked. That's the case with the wise men searching the newborn child, and in the long conversation Wendell Berry documents.

It's evident in the Proverbs, my current morning reading: explicitly so in Proverbs 11:2 "When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom."

It's also clear in James 3:13: “Who is wise and understanding among you?  Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.”

Science itself is driven by an awareness of all we do not know. I was wondering why some illnesses need only one vaccination, while others require an update every year. A 2018 article in Science reminded me of that all of science is part of the long conversation about what we know, what we don't know, what we may never know. 

What if instead of lining up for a flu shot of unknown effectiveness each fall, people could receive one vaccine that protects against all strains and lasts for many years, if not for life. It could spare incalculable amounts of suffering, and even eliminate terrifying pandemics. Scientists have spent decades trying to concoct such a "universal" flu vaccine and, at times, they seem to have made solid headway. But it remains an "alchemist's dream," as one virologist declared last month at a gathering on the topic organized by the Human Vaccines Project, a nonprofit based in New York City.

An infusion of funding has boosted the research: $160 million next year from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in Bethesda, Maryland, up from $60 million 2 years ago. But the effort is an exercise in humility, several leading flu researchers acknowledged at the meeting. "Every year we learn that we know less and less about this virus," says Martin Friede, a biochemist who coordinates the Initiative for Vaccine Research at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland.

The magi's journey was prompted by their study, their knowledge of the skies, but also by their longing to know more and their faith beyond their knowledge.  

Science, medicine, education, farming, so much else of human enterprise, done well, is prompted in the same way. We know enough to begin to take action, but never enough to be certain of the outcome. So we study more, we learn, we pray. 

My prayer this year is for humility. For myself, for our leaders, for our churches, for our world. For humility, and the wisdom that accompanies it. 

I'll finish with another poem by Wendell Berry (2007):

I go by a field where once 
I cultivated a few poor crops. 
It is now covered with young trees, 
for the forest that belongs here 
has come back and reclaimed its own. 
And I think of all the effort 

I have wasted and all the time,
and of how much joy I took 
in that failed work and how much 

it taught me. For in so failing
I learned something of my place,
something of myself,

and now I welcome back the trees.