Do YOU think bearing false witness or wanting someone's possessions is equivilent to murder?

Question

Take for example the Ten Commandments. Technically, bearing false witness against someone can be equated to murder in that any violation of the Ten Commandments warrants eternal damnation. We pervert our sense of right or wrong by rationalization and relativism.

Do you minimalize some of the Ten Commandments while condemning someone else for violating a Commandment? Please explain.

Answer 1

I think that most people in general do downplay some of the commandments that are considered "less important" Even thought this shouldn't be the case. How many time have you seen on MTV or somewhere else spoiled kids saying stuff like "Dad I hate you" or "Mom you HAVE to buy me this" the Bible says honer your mother and father. Since when is demanding your parents buy you the latest cell phone or whatever "honoring" them? All these things are bad but I think that the laws we abide by in the country enforce our sense or what is right or wrong. It is illegal to murder someone so that is horribly wrong. However it isn't illegal to cheat on your spouse. Is that some how less wrong? If it were made illegal to cheat on your spouse does it become more wrong. I think that we are just a country that has been jaded. We see it at work, home, school and on TV and somehow we have become used to it.

Answer 2

You either don't understand the Bible or are going by some other teaching. The Bible does not teach that if we break 1 commandment that we are condemned to hell. Neither does it teach that all comandments are of equal seriousness.

Of course, to murder someone is worse than to bear false witness, (Unless it leads to the death of the other person, as someone suggested). But to realise that to break some commandments is worse than breaking others, is not to minimalize anything.

I personally do not condemn anyone for breaking a commandment, however, that doesn't mean that it's ok to break them.

Where you may have gotten confused, is that St. Paul said that we cannot be "saved" by obeying the law, because to break 1 law is to break them all. He only meant that it is not possible for us to obey all of the commandments all of the time. To think that we can be be "saved" by obeying the law is eronious. It can't be done. He then goes on to say that we are "saved" by the Grace Of Jesus Christ.

In both the Old Testament and in The New Testament, God realizes that we are going to sin at times despite our best intentions and makes provision for it. Psalm 51 states if we confess our sins and repent, that God will not only forgive us, that He will forget it ever happened! Somewhere in the New Testament, it says, "that if we confess our sins that God is rightious and just to forgive all our sins and cleanse us from all unrightiousness"

I can see that you can think and that you seek the truth. I would encourage you to read the Bible so that you know what it says. Then you will be able to tell when someone who calls themself a Christian is correct or not in what they say. I am very sad about how many people who call themselves Christians don't know anything about Our Father's precious Word.

God bless you.

Answer 3

Who thinks that violating the ten commandments warrants eternal damnation? If it was to be as bad, it would have been included with the others into one commandment.

The Ten commandments weren't the full law that the Israelites were to follow anyway. They are a quick and easy guide for stupid, hardheaded people for avoiding sin.

The Israelites survived plagues, heard God, walked across the Red Sea, and received free food from heaven. Moses took off for a month, and they started worshiping some gold cow. How smart do you think they were?

Gods laws were obvious; made for the oblivious - Don't kill, don't steal, no screwing your buddies wife.
Sin can always be cleared up anyway.

Answer 4

I was taught by the nuns that each one of the Ten Commandments had both a venial sin and a mortal sin attached to them. So when you say "bearing false witness" to me that means lieing, any kind of lie, and that's a venial sin. Murder on the other hand is considered a mortal sin.

I understood it to be the venial sins you can get erased by sincere apology, asking for forgiveness, and doing good works to counteract them, but the mortal sins meant eternal damnation. Although later in life I heard mortal sins can be forgiven only by God and that sometimes human nature glitches as in insanity cases.

Responding to your question: no, I hold myself to the same standards that I expect others to live by.

Answer 5

Dear Search for Truth: You have received so many good thoughts and answers for your question. I now humbly submit my thoughts on the subject:

While false witness or wanting another's possessions can lead to murder itself - even if it leads to less - you stand in ignorance and error in your thinking, if you have those urges. The Holy Spirit - your Guide and Comforter - is unknown - and unheard -inside the minds of those who covet and take - or cause false witness, or kill. No Commandment was meant to be minimalized. It is ignorance and too great a separation that causes these behaviors. Rationalization and relativism - is a type of thinking - only accomplished in the human ego-mind. Your Father knows not of such thinking, since Spirit simply has knowledge and does not logic as humans. We pervert our sense of right or wrong through our alone-ness - without our Father, without Jesus and without the Holy Spirit. Alone, indeed!

But, I tell you - there is no greater arrogance than to believe you can take another's life from them:

1. We have no ability to do that! Physical death is a great illusion. The entity is simply "out of sight." But quite alive and conscious and thinking. Your Father created you as an Eternal Being, like Himself. Spirit-Mind. The Resurrection is your demonstration. As is the story of Lazarus.

2. But the greatest aspect of that arrogance and a display of "lost-ness" is to kill in the belief that you CAN . Then you know NOT any of them: The Presence of your Father, The Holy Spirit within you and Jesus, your Teacher.

You are not allowed to touch any of your Creator's Children. They belong to Him. Not to you! War is an outrageous assault that denies any value to the life our Father created. The Old Testament is filled with wars. But, truly, it was man's thinking and labeled God's. God would have known another method!

As a non-denominational-based person, I would like to present to you - there is no Eternal Damnation. Hell is not a location, nor a destination. It is within. A hellish mind. Your Father's Plan takes care of that dis-integration of Mind - that ignorance - by giving to the World, Jesus as His Teacher. Jesus works to change wrong thinking to right thinking which is to learn to think and perceive the situations of your life as They see it. Your mind is brought into alignment with Their thinking. That is where correction must be made - in the Mind - where the error took place.

I hope you will find some of these lines profitable for your contemplation.

Answer 6

If you were to read the bible you would know that we are no longer eternally damned for braking any one of the Ten Commandments... we live an era of forgiveness, anything we do can be forgiven. The Ten Commandment are just guidelines to help keep us on the right track.

Answer 7

If it says that we shouldn't then we shouldn't. The big thing to remember is that we are saved threw the blood of Christ. By being saved threw Christ we are no longer under the law but we must up hold the law. We are saved threw grace and with forgiveness and admitance, our sins are washed away. One of the biggest sins that can be comitted is unforgiveness because we were forgaven. All of the 10 commandments are equal to eachother.

Answer 8

Although I very much believe in the 10 commandments and try to live by them I believe Jesus forgave us all..He said "The greatest commandment of all was LOVE...and forgiveness...I try not to judge and I keep an open mind. Not any where near perfect as I'm only humane...

Answer 9

False witness includes giving false testimony such as that that could cause another to spend their lives in prison, wanting someones posessions you cause someone to kill them for what they have, hence each situation is unique and hard to point a finger at.I try not to judge but it is personally my choice to try and hold to all the commandments as God intended them as an aid not a hindrance.

Answer 10

and wanting someone else's stuff puts you into the Envy part of the seven deadlies...trying to get that which you envy can lead in all sorts of bad directions such as Pride, Theft, Kidnapping (which isn't technically a sin because they really didn't mind that so much back then), and other things.

Basically, just try not to do those things, and you'll be ok.