The Ninth Commandment and the Corruption of Living by Narrative —by Rich Gordon

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor (Ex 20:16, NKJV)
 
The entire storyline of the Bible is one of conflict between truth and lies, with the result that the ninth commandment forms a golden thread that runs the entire length of the tapestry of scripture, from the serpent of Eden to the wedding feast of the Lamb. This thread is abrasive and chafes against the will of man and devil alike. I would argue that there is no such thing as a sin that is not, at its heart, a conflict between the truth of God and the lies of the flesh.

The perpetual arrogance of the flesh leads every age of man to think its time in history unique. The secular man believes himself to be the most enlightened, most highly evolved, and the most self-aware. The Christian man, afflicted with that self-same arrogance, believes his lot to be uniquely troubled by the world, the flesh, and the devil. There is yet a third category: the self-identified Christian who believes the faith once delivered to all the saints must also evolve to engage and adapt to the demands of the moment. All three categories of man face the same choice—to live by the truth as established by the Creator, or to live by the narrative, guided by voices wholly other than divine revelation.

Our postmodern culture yammers on incessantly about “truth,” yet in the next breath discounts its very existence. We are told to express “our truth,” and that who we are, where we come from, how we have lived, and the color of our skin contribute to shaping this self-defined truth. Truth is reduced to fabrication by assertion by authority, social or otherwise, and/or by repetition. Truth is whatever the media talking points are today, never mind that they contradict yesterday’s points, we have all moved on. Didn’t you get the memo? Every man is Pontius Pilate, asking, “What is truth?”

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​And so, the blessed narrative is born out of this constant series of declarations from our political, cultural, and even religious power brokers. The narrative tells me that Caitlyn Jenner is a woman, though biology (general revelation) and Genesis 1:27 says otherwise. If I accept that narrative, I bear false witness against Mr. Jenner, because his Creator made him male, not female. The narrative tells me that gay marriage should be celebrated, though Romans 1 specifically declares that such people have exchanged the truth for a lie. To embrace gay marriage is to bear false witness in two ways. First, against heterosexual marriage in that it is no longer the marital union exclusively established by God. Second, to say a homosexual union is legitimate is to bear false witness against the Holy Spirit of God, whose revelation declares it to be otherwise. The narrative joyfully celebrates a mother’s freedom to murder her unborn child, but Psalm 127 declares them to be gifts from God. To embrace abortion is to bear false witness against the child by declaring it deserving of a death sentence, when Genesis 9:6 reserves that punishment for a crime the unborn could not possibly commit. Here again, the false testimony extends to the Holy Spirit, as we declare the sixth commandment null and void. The narrative wags one finger in my face and threatens to slap me with the other if I live, speak, or act out of the lordship of Christ, yet Christ himself commands otherwise.

Edie Wyatt elegantly and powerfully captured this conflict: “We are being divided by our willingness to lie about what we see.” She writes further, “’Is a transgender woman a real woman?’, is not a question of science, is not a question of kindness, or inclusion, it’s a question of religious purity.  If you don’t believe it, you are blown to the chaff floor of unbelief.  You will be excluded from the fold.  It is a key doctrine question of the progressive left.”

Transgressing the narrative increasingly risks consequences. Most of us, comfortably obscure as we are, do not care a wit about the prospect of being “cancelled” or otherwise scolded on social media. No skin off my nose for thirty days of Facebook jail, or so we think, until a Karen outs our cultural transgression to corporate HR. Very real people are facing very real consequences for choosing, and, more importantly, expressing truth over the narrative.

Conditions that require mendacity as a requisite for success or prosperity are called corruption. To be fully woke, that is, to fully embrace the increasingly anti-Christian progressive world view and its attendant narratives, is to embrace corruption. To embrace corruption is to live in a state of sinful transgression of the ninth commandment. This is not a place any faithful Christian should dwell, even briefly, yet many are allowing themselves to be bent, even if in small ways, to the corruption of the narrative.
For most of my life as a Christian, which began in 1973, the culture around me was content to ignore me and even tolerate my evangelistic impulses. Rarely have I ever moved a conversation into spiritual territory and had someone respond in open hostility. Those days are coming to a rapid close, I believe.

A few years ago, the city of Charlottesville saw its anti-panhandling ordinances fail a First Amendment legal challenge. The result, then, was to render panhandling legal on public property, such as roadsides and medians. In an effort to raise money for my Honduran mission trips, I began panhandling. I took with me a yard sign to put in the ground that read “God is Love.” In addition to raising enough money to cover my trip (I averaged $40 an hour), I came to love the small conversations I had with motorists. When asked, “Why are you out here?” I loved to respond, “I’m trusting the Lord to get me to Honduras one open window at a time.”
Some people yelled and cursed at me, and one even spat at me after gesturing me to his car, but I chalked that up to garden-variety anti-panhandling sentiment. I had one encounter, however, that I think is diagnostic of the demands of the narrative.

My chosen spot was in the median at a major intersection. One afternoon I saw the traffic behind me had stopped, even though the light was green. One car had stopped, and the driver had gotten out of the car, taken my God Is Love sign out of the ground, and put it into his car. He then came back to the median and walked up to me and began screaming at me about how I was not allowed to preach my messages in public. I thought he was going to physically assault me, and I was trying to decide how much abuse I was willing to take before defending myself. Ultimately, he finished his rant, walked back to his car, and drove off.
But I want you to think about this: how deep must someone’s hatred of Christ be, and how much had he felt empowered by his beliefs, his culture, his narrative, that he felt free to literally stop traffic, get out of his car and excoriate me in public?  I submit there is something more than just animosity at work here; this man felt not only self-righteous but entitled to act out that self-righteousness with a belligerence that bordered on violence.

In the past year we have seen this belligerence play out in riots across the country in which enraged mobs of the hyper-privileged destroyed property, firebombed police stations and courthouses, and assaulted and even murdered those who stood against them. The narrative declared their angst legitimate, the result of oppressive “systems” no one can actually elucidate, and stood by and let the rule of law erode in a flood of lies.

What we saw play out in cities across America was nothing less than the dawn of a new age of corruption.
If the government, local, state, or otherwise, is willing to, at best, write off violence in the streets, or, at worst, celebrate, even encourage it, to whom would I turn if my employer turns the entitled belligerence of the narrative on me for misgendering a coworker, refusing to wear a rainbow pin during Pride Month, or for speaking the truth of Christ in a cube farm? The answer, in short, is: no one in authority, for every brick in the palace of the world is stacked against me.

As Jesus would say, the time is coming, and now is, when non-Christians will no longer view us with bemused indifference. To transgress the narrative is to become a thought criminal, a dissident, an “other.” More and more of us will be faced with the question: Will I participate in the corruption in order to protect my livelihood, my social standing, or my education? Am I willing to make a stand and count the cost? Given that the way of the Cross ends at Golgotha, am I truly willing to take up my cross and follow Christ to the Place of the Skull, even if only socially, professionally, or economically?

Peter, already having been arrested for preaching the Gospel, continued to preach in the face of increasing persecution. When threatened further, he boldly declared, “We must obey God rather than man.” Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 7:23, “You were bought with a price, do not become slaves of men.”
Revelation 12:11 reminds us that we will overcome the accuser, the author of the narrative and its corruption, by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony. The way of the Cross is the road of conflict with the world, the flesh, and the devil. Without that conflict there can be no testimony, and without testimony there is no triumph.
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To reprise Edie Wyatt, “We are being divided by our willingness to lie about what we see.” The sheep who follow their shepherd’s voice of truth are already being separated from goats who chase corruption’s rewards. The time is coming, and now is, to make the choice, to take the stand, to count the cost.