We've all experienced the pain of someone breaking their promise to us, or the guilt of us breaking our promise to someone else. We're hurt when others let us down, and we beat ourselves up when we let others down. Sadly, we've all experienced the pain of someone -- including ourselves -- "overpromising and under-delivering," as we are wont to say in the business world.
Which leads to an interesting question -- why is it we feel the need to even make promises or oaths in the first place? How did we get to the place as a society where we determined it was necessary to cajole or coerce people into telling us the truth by stringing just the right combination of magic words together?
I believe the roots of it go back to very beginning. Genesis 3 tells the story of Eve believing the serpent's lies, and the avalanche of lies that then followed. Adam and Eve hid because they were naked and afraid, because they deeply felt the guilt and shame of having disobeyed God's command. They covered themselves with fig leaves in a vain attempt to cover their shame.
And ever since, we have been hiding and trying to cover ourselves. One of the ways we do that is through lying, lying in an effort to prove to others that we are better than we are, or to show that what happened really wasn't our fault -- like Adam blaming both God and Eve ("the woman you put here with me") in the same sentence to rationalize his terrible choice. Or like Eve blaming the serpent. Nothing is our fault, you see.
Oaths are nothing new. In Matthew 5:33-37, Jesus ridiculed the Pharisees' hypocritical loopholes in their oath-making. In their sincere desire to avoid taking God's name in vain, they allowed oaths to be sworn to heaven, or earth, or Jerusalem... But Jesus, as always, goes right to the heart of the matter, asking why oaths are even needed at all. A simple yes or no should suffice. That you need to swear an oath at all means you have already lost, or as John Stott says, it's "a pathetic confession of your own dishonesty."
So let's recommit this week to using our words properly. Both our lies -- and our truth -- have tremendous power to impact others.
