8th Commandment

There are Ten Commandments.  Most of them are pretty easy to keep because they are blatantly obvious.  Don’t steal.  Well, yeah, if it doesn’t belong to you, don’t touch it.  Don’t kill.  Well, yeah, it is not up to me to end someone’s life.  I could go on through each of them but the one that is not so blatantly obvious and that I am struggling with is the 8^th Commandment.  According to Luther’s Small Catechism, this is the commandment with explanation:

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

What does this mean?–Answer.

We should fear and love God that we may not deceitfully belie, betray, slander, or defame our neighbor, but defend him, [think and] speak well of him, and put the best construction on everything.

Yeah…. ok…. its not just don’t lie.  It’s not just avoiding deliberately slandering my fellow man.  It is also defending him, speaking well of him and, here’s the kicker, put the best construction on everything.

Why is this coming up?  I had an e-mail from someone yesterday that was pretty bad.  Bad as in socially unacceptable in a racist kind of way.  I asked the sender why it was sent and the reply was that the person has a virus on their computer and they are trying to fix it.  This is a plausible explanation.  And makes me glad that I thought about it for a few hours, and asked the advice of my pastor, before I responded.  My first reaction was anger, horror and to write back something sarcastic and rude. Which would not only have exacerbated the situation but it would have been breaking the 8^th Commandment all over the place.  I just assumed it was deliberately sent.  Easy assumption to make but you know what they say about assumptions.

Since I knew I was going to see my pastor last night at church, I decided to ask his advice before I responded.  He advised me to just ask why it was sent.  Good advice.  It helped calm a situation down before it blew up.  When I let him know the outcome, he pointed out how the 8^th Commandment applies to the situation.  Which made me think about how much I have been struggling with this particular commandment.

It is so very easy to speak first and then think about it later.  To just blurt out a response to something, either verbally or in e-mail, without thinking of the consequences of what I said.  Granted, I am doing better than I was doing.  I’m trying to learn to listen more and thinking of the proper response rather than just offering my two cents worth of advice or comments whether it was needed or not. I’m hoping, as I get older, this thinking before speaking will be less of a struggle and more of a habit.  Not only because I don’t like to break commandments but also because I think it is the wise thing to do.  I would hope that we all do our best to get wiser as we get older.  Otherwise we just stagnate and that can’t be a good thing.