The Judeo/Christian world recognizes the divine command which reads: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” Although the ninth commandment is most often cited using only the first six words: “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” While leaving “against thy neighbor” off the ending, doesn’t necessarily change the message, it does however create a convenient caveat to evade biases and/or questions about who qualifies as one’s neighbor. For example, one might plausibly argue that only one’s kinsmen, co-religionists, or fellow countrymen qualify as “neighbors,” thus safely justifying the “bearing false witness” against non-relatives, people of a different religion, nation, or ethnicity.

It seems as though “bearing false witness” might have been originally intended to prohibit lying in a court of law. Ancient Hebrew custom was such that anyone caught lying during their testimony could be forced to submit to whatever punishment would have been imposed upon the accused — including death. (A seemingly harsh deterrent for a legal system that didn’t include a position of official state prosecutor, so anyone coming forward to accuse someone of a crime and “bear witness” against them served as prosecutor for the people.)

A general understanding and acceptance of, “Thou shalt not bear false witness” is widely held by society today, but only in a much broader context as prohibiting all forms of lying. Even in the United States legal oaths are taken to “tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” Most people will agree that lying is wrong, but at the same time people will also agree that there can be circumstances in which lying maybe the seemingly appropriate thing to do. Some have even tried to further limit the scope of this commandment arguing that behavior like gossiping and boasting do not qualify as “bearing false witness against thy neighbor.”

Prohibitions against such acts might not be fair, because even though gossip may be “against one’s neighbor,” but if the gossip is true then it can hardly be “false,” and boasting might be “false,” but in most circumstances it wouldn’t be “against one’s neighbor.”

There is a fine line between telling the truth and telling a lie and some people seem to habitually try to see how close they can get without crossing over it. Unfortunately, it has become common in the United States to misrepresent the truth when selling or speaking to ordinary people and even our legal system has come to learn to use the “bearing of false witness” to exploit loopholes within the investigative process.

San Francisco Chronicle culture critic Steven Winn contends, “We live in a society of widespread duplicity and deceit,” and American culture is “reveling in falsehood.” His cynical conclusion warns that it’s difficult “to know anything for sure.”

Winn apparently is not alone in his worries. A Gallup Poll conducted shortly after the scandal over New York Times reporter Jayson Blair’s fabrications, indicates that 77 percent of Americans rate the “overall state of moral values in the United States today” as “poor” or “only fair,” while 22 percent respond with “good” or “excellent.”

An unknown blogger has said:” Of all the kinds of lying, the most damaging and most despicable, practiced by only the most cold-blooded and spiritually empty human vessels, is “bearing false witness.” Bearing False Witness is not a typical lie to duck accountability for something you did wrong, nor even a lie to get some undeserved reward. Bearing False Witness consists of deliberately and with malice aforethought testifying falsely — in court or elsewhere in public — in order to “convict” an innocent of some heinous crime or moral turpitude. It’s not merely saying “I had nothing to do with raping that woman,” when the speaker was the one who held her down. It’s saying “I saw John Smith rape that woman,” when in fact the speaker knows that Smith is completely innocent.”

It takes very little effort to consider the cost to the victims of a false allegation. As an example, the divorced father accused of child abuse loses his reputation, his livelihood and all contact with his children. One study found that some 70% of child abuse charges in custody cases were proved to be unfounded. The accused are forced to go through a long investigative procedure, which may cripple them financially and emotionally, shrouded in a cloak of suspicion.

Author and Therapeutic Foster Mom, Nancy Thomas reported on the sad consequences that serial lying had on a child that came into foster care after accusing his mother of subjecting him to a child prostitution ring. His mother and another adult went to prison. Another accused person committed suicide. His social worker lost her license. But as the story unfolded, Nancy found out that there was no child prostitution ring: the father had coached the child to make these charges, as a way of hurting his ex-wife. Nancy also reports that of all of her troubled children, this was the one who never really recovered.

The greatest cost of allowing false accusations to go undetected and unpunished is that those who get away with lying become more and more proficient at the art. Getting away with the lie empowers the liar and they easily become drunk on that power. With every lie they get away with the more disturbed and bigger threat they become.

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse said: “if you or I pulled the fire alarm because we liked to see all the excitement of fire trucks, we’d be in big trouble. The public safety officers in this country take a dim view of people who harm the public good in this way. False or frivolous charges play the same havoc with the court system and in the lives of many innocent people. At the very least, society needs to impose some penalty for inflicting those kinds of costs on others. The first step is recognizing the problem. People get away with making false allegations every day. Innocent people suffer from being falsely accused. It is high time we notice.”