Alex and I swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But as followers of Christ, we strive to only deal in truth all the time. Among people of faith, there should be no need for oaths. Jesus teaches us the folly of swearing and taking oaths. Anything more than ‘yes’ or ‘no’ is unnecessary and comes from evil. When I first encountered this teaching, I had to change my habit of adding “I promise!” to statements. Even now, I sometimes find myself creatively emphasizing my ‘yeses.’ It’s tricky! Our sinful nature desperately wants to hedge bets and secure trust with more than just truth.
Our legal systems are built around the fear of consequences of all kinds of severity. Trust works in the world if everyone is controlled by a baseline fear. It is all too natural to use each other’s fears to assuage our doubts—and we call that trust. We’ve built huge industries around it, too, with a huge variety of attorneys. Leave it to the world to monetize the truth.
If any of you has a dispute with another, do you dare to take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the Lord’s people? … The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?
1 Corinthians 6:1, 7
But our trustworthiness, at its core, is grounded in love. We have received the fulfilling love of Christ, and so we don’t need assurances from each other. We seek the genuine betterment of the other because we are family. We can open ourselves up to personal loss without needing to guard our words or ourselves. We can love each other sacrificially as Christ loved us!
Jonathan Duncan
EFCC Member