Michael Fitzpatrick is a parishioner at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Palo Alto, CA. After growing up in the rural northwest, he served over five years in the U. S. Army as a Chaplain's Assistant, including two deployments to Iraq. After completing his military service, Michael has done graduate work in literature and philosophy. He is now finishing his PhD at Stanford University.
When people in our community recognize us as Christians, what gives us away? What marks us as disciples of Christ? These questions are not merely academic. “By their fruit you will recognize them,” Jesus says (Matt. 7.16), referring to those who profess to follow Christ but whose deeds lead others away from Jesus. The “fruit” we are to be known by, especially in our wider community, is of great importance to Jesus.
St. Paul echoes this emphasis on the fruit of our lives when he writes, “In your teaching show integrity, seriousness and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us” (Titus 2.7b-8, Cf. Col. 4.5-6). Our lives lived for Christ should embody an “integrity” that earns the respect of our wider communities. Which raises the question, if the wider culture does have something bad to say about us, and does not feel shame at doing so, perhaps it is time for us to re-evaluate the fruit our Christian lives produce?
As we work to figure out how to live as Christians in contemporary society, I want to focus on a particular fruit that we should be known by: truthfulness. Imagine a world of partisan strife where, when it came time for fact-checking, the wider society sought out the Christians, much as when Ahab sought out Micaiah (1 Kings 22), because of our honesty and integrity.
Alas, as I listen to the rancorous discord in my own country, the United States, I fear this is not a fruit we are known by. Yet if we are a people who claim to follow the Jesus who is “the way, the truth, and the life,” we cannot allow ourselves to be disassociated so easily from the truth. Jesus’ most common phrase in the Gospels is, “Behold, I tell you the truth…”
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The issue of truth hit me personally recently, when I came across a friend’s post on Facebook. The link was to partisan news website, LifeNews, which was founded by a Christian couple. Posted by “Liberty Counsel,” the article claims that a California state judge issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) prohibiting a parish from meeting under Gov. Newsom’s restrictions on churches. The authors lament, “[N]on-religious services are acceptable but religious services are banned. People can receive food, but not take communion. People can be housed overnight, but cannot hold a short worship service, Bible study, or meet for prayer. People can receive counseling to find work but cannot be counseled on finding eternal life.” The piece concludes with a quote from Liberty’s founding counsel Mat Staver angrily claiming that Gov. Newsom (who did not request the TRO) is “the same governor who encourages mass protests, [but] bans all worship” (1).
Sounds like a constitutional crisis! Or at least it’s meant to. As I read, I felt a growing anxiety. Here was an issue plainly concerning the relationship between church and state, and I was worried about our integrity in reporting the situation. Doesn’t the ninth commandment still hold, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor?” As Christians we should bear true witness to the TRO and the state governor’s restrictions, right?
So I searched the internet to see what a less partisan news source might say, or at least one with different interests. My first result was a report at CBS news, which described the situation this way: “On Friday, Ventura County Superior Court Judge Matthew Guasco granted the restraining order, which requires Godspeak to close its indoor services and move its congregation outside and requires congregants to wear masks and socially distance” (2).
Wait a moment. I thought the TRO banned the church from holding services at all? That they couldn’t take communion or gather for prayer? The CBS version is much less alarmist and the TRO is more modest. The TRO was an injunction requested by the county because the parish in question insisted on holding its sizeable worship services indoors. And all it required is that they do so outdoors.
Just to be sure that I was pursuing the truth, and not what I wanted to believe, I investigated further. Ventura County has a court website, and although it requires a bit of digging, I was able to locate the official court ruling in a publicly-viewable pdf. Reading the TRO for myself, I found that the judge draws the following conclusion: “The Court weighs heavily the First Amendment fundamental right to religious worship. Respondents and their parishioners are not restrained from all worship by the TRO; they are only restrained from in-person, indoor services during the current phase of the pandemic. They are permitted to conduct out door services so long as masks and social distancing occur, and they may conduct online services” (3).
Not only does the LifeNews article falsely suggest that the TRO bans all worship services (at the behest of the Governor), but it also fails to mention that it is indoor worship alone that is at issue, or that the judge advocated for their First Amendment rights. Whether we agree with the TRO or not, we should at least be able to agree that the LifeNews report bears false witness.
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Why would someone write a report that so blatantly distorts the truth? I’ll propose a hypothesis, one that I fear Christians of every political stripe have been guilty of at some point. We put a slant on the truth because it stirs up anger in our tribe and encourages people to fight for our side. The LifeNews article angers some in a way that the CBS article does not. Does stirring up anger to rally people to fight justify bearing false witness? Well, what does God think?
Proverbs 6 contains within it a rather unsettling list. Verses 16–19 enumerate seven things that “the Lord hates.” Yes, hates. And the last of the seven is one that can hardly be misinterpreted: “a person who stirs up conflict in the community.” God hates it when our fruit is turning people against each other. The LifeNews article functions as a piece of rhetoric to sow distrust between citizens and cause dissension. Lest we think this is just some “Old Testament God” business, we should turn to those oft ignored lists in the New Testament, St. Paul’s litanies of exemplar sins. At Galatians 5.20, St. Paul lists four related sins that he admonishes the nascent Christian community to avoid: “fits of anger, selfish rivalries, dissensions, and the fomenting of factions” (what the RSV calls “party spirit”). In other words, Christians are to avoid causing each other to become so angry and defensive that we fight amongst each other and form opposing parties.
Truth then cannot be sacrificed in the name of party spirit. The same verses in Proverbs 6 include among the other things God hates, “a lying tongue” and “a false witness who pours out lies.” Sounds like honesty is pretty important to God! Instead of fomenting factions, as Christians we are “called to peace” (1 Cor. 7.15). St. Paul goes so far as to say, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone” (Romans 12.18). Speaking truthfully is an essential part of living at peace, because the truth is for all, not just our side.
Imagine a world where, when crises emerge, the people turn to Christians as a reliable source of information, because they have seen by our fruits that we are a people who will not distort the truth to stir up conflict or to benefit a party, but will faithfully bear true witness, even if we don’t like it. A world where we are known as a people who not only teach the ninth commandment, but live by it.
Michael Fitzpatrick can be emailed via m.c.fitzpatrick [at] outlook.com
(3) http://www.ventura.courts.ca.gov/CivilCaseSearch/ViewDoc/%7BA6E8FA29-1AFB-40DC-97AD-924417609DDA%7D
