God’s Constitution, Pt 16: Oaths
Matthew 5:33-37 33“Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break “swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; 35or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. 36And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. 37All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.
Deuteronomy 6:13 13Fear the LORD your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name.
James 5:12 12Above all, my brothers and sisters, do not swear—not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. All you need to say is a simple “Yes” or “No.” Otherwise you will be condemned.
For a long time I’ve thought of James as my favorite book of the Bible because it is so down-to-earth and relatable to modern society. But Matthew is a close second. As I’ve read Matthew over the years I’ve wondered about this ‘oath’ thing because it seemed far too formal. I’ve found James to be more to the point because he just tells the reader, “just be honest and forthright”.
In modern society people hardly engage in oath-taking anymore except in more formal ways. Government officials take oaths that they will engage in honest and ethical behavior, and witnesses in court take oaths to swear they will tell the truth and that sort of thing, but hardly are oaths heard in any other ordinary conversation. But we do hear the word ‘promise’ used in the sense that people say they promise to do a thing. Actually this is a sort of mild oath. If a person says in ordinary conversation that they intend to do a thing, it is accepted as real intent, but if they ‘promise’ to do it a sort of extra weight is given to the thing. Why is that necessary?
For all the import modern society puts on honesty and truthfulness, it seems mostly people color their truth- telling by what they deem to be important, not necessarily what is true in the larger picture. This is why one’s moral code is so important today. Here’s the problem: In real life, an oath is necessary only if one’s word alone is unreliable. Having to take an oath basically meant one could not be trusted to tell the truth. It was much the same way in ancient times; a great deal of legislation developed over those ancient centuries to govern truthful interactions. Then and now people split hairs: “I promise before God” was considered binding, but “I promise by Heaven” wasn’t. Then, Rabbis would engage in complicated unsound reasoning to declare one oath was binding when another wasn’t, even as today the Supreme Court will engage in the same kind of overly detailed analysis to separate the case before them from wider application.
But Jesus and James get down to the basic principal: The underlying issue is that one should be honest and truthful in everything he or she does. Every time and all the time.
One of the problems regarding honesty and truthfulness is that they are attributes difficult to pin down. What is truth? Is it just the truth each person holds to or is there a universal standard of truth. Of course as a believer and pastor, I hold that God’s Word is the universal standard of truth. But this posting is not so much about truth as it is about honesty and integrity. Oaths are spoken mostly to give a person an objective goal to strive for and by which to measure success. But why does a person need an oath in the first place? Is their personal word insufficient?
America in the 21st Century is a society governed by law and justice, at least ostensibly so. At its beginning, that wasn’t so much the case. It wasn’t that there was no law or justice, but in the years of its development America was a land of individuals exploring, expanding, and setting boundaries. People were on their own as there was no established universal government. All a person had that was of true value to him was his integrity and honor. That’s not so much the case these days as we let society set our standards and this society has done a woefully poor job of doing so. It is still true though that the only value one truly has is one’s integrity. When Jesus says anything beyond a simple yes or no is from the evil one, he is saying that one’s internal integrity is so paramount that to modify it in any way is to somehow dilute that integrity with something lesser. If a person says he has integrity but cheats on his income taxes, at best he is inconsistent with his own integrity. If one promises to ‘love, honor, and cherish’ his or her spouse on the day of marriage but soon develops a wandering eye how is that person honoring the spouse?
The problem is that the only reason oaths seem necessary is because we live in a world where words are often used to deceive and manipulate and threaten. Words are used to help the speaker appear to be trustworthy, and credible whether he is or not. In such a world, we often do not know if a person is for real or not. And we know that most words we hear are empty, and designed to be that way. In a world like this, we are conditioned to respond with “Whatever!” But can we go through life with these attitudes and have kingdom hearts? Are kingdom hearts ones of exaggeration and manipulation or skepticism and cynicism? Of course not! This is why Jesus stands opposed to inflating our words, why he insists that a yes is yes and a no is no and we leave it at that.
Giving extra weight or force to our words seems necessary in a world where the character of those who speak can never fully be trusted. And this gets to why Jesus brought this up. Knowing God and living in his kingdom is all about having a kingdom heart. In God’s kingdom, words have power and force and meaning, because they flow from the heart of God. We don’t need to try to add more power to them because God’s words flow from God’s character which is never corrupt, never duplicitous, never manipulative. God’s words are trustworthy and true and dependable, because just as our words reflect our character, the words of God reflect God’s character. And so what Jesus tells us is to avoid embellishing our language with all kinds of extra things that are supposed to give it extra weight, extra credibility, extra force or power. We’re to learn to use words the way God uses words. Deliberately. Carefully, with the conviction that we will do all we can to deliver on our promises and do not need to take any extra measures to persuade anyone of anything.
So the point of all this is to be real. We should offer the world the real us, not some false, embellished us. What a difference that would make.