You have heard that it was said to your ancestors,
Do not take a false oath,
but make good to the Lord all that you vow.
People in the time of Jesus were apparently treating the truth value of common speech as cheap. Imagine that. Good thing our own day is so different, right? Or perhaps not. But how did they handle it back then when they really did want someone to believe them, when people were accustomed to hear what was expedient for the speaker rather than what was true? They abused the use of oaths, as though to say, 'This time what I am saying is definitely true'. However, since people were known to be dishonest they now sought some guarantor above themselves in order to vouch for them. Yet they knew that oaths that swore by God were risky because of how seriously God took it when his name was invoked. They knew they wouldn't get off the hook if what they said proved false. But they wanted to imply God's confirmation, so they swore by everything that they could think of adjacent to God, heaven, earth, Jerusalem, and their own heads. These still nevertheless all implicitly involved God himself in the oaths they swore, and were not without fault when the oaths were not upheld.
When everything became an oath the special value of an oath became zero. They became so common that they couldn't be regarded with the special solemnity that was necessary for the true swearing of an oath. And this was implicitly recognized in the fact that they would not swear by God directly. Public oaths were sometimes necessary for the good of society, due to human weakness, when the common good demanded it of them. But they were not meant to be used as mere persuasion or propaganda about the truth of one's speech. Nor were they meant to be used when one merely really wished that something he said would turn out to be true, as though they were in incantation that would make God make it turn out as they promised.
But I say to you, do not swear at all
It is true that the problem in our own day is somewhat different than it was in the time of Christ. People say they swear one thing or another but they don't actually have a sense that they are invoking God or even making themselves particularly persuasive by doing so. Yet though it seems more frivolous, this is still problematic and disrespectful to God. If that part of the problem is different, one thing that is similar is that we haven't gotten any better about our regard for the truth value of common speech. If anything, the gradual decline in concern for truth has lately gone off a cliff. Truth has ceased to be a primary concern even in public discourse. In our society we tend to speak based on the utility value of words rather than on the truth of them. All pretense at truth is regarded with suspicion as veiled attempts to gain power. People don't consider the truth of what we are saying so much as what might be our hidden motives for saying it. Even oaths can't help us when we lose our conception that there is such thing as core or bedrock truth to be discovered.
We must do our part to help rebuild a respect for truth in our world. We do this not by swearing or insisting that others believe us. If we always tell the truth we won't need to swear on special occasions when we actually expect people to believe us. We can expect them to believe our normal speech. By speaking the truth we can demonstrate how much better the world can function when truth is our primary concern. Then people will be able to join in genuine relationships with others instead of mere transient alliances for the sake of gaining power. Then oaths will find their proper place in society, where they are reserved for the public good and not for our private purposes.
Let your 'Yes' mean 'Yes,' and your 'No' mean 'No.'
Anything more is from the Evil One.
We ought not add anything over the top to our speech to convince others, and much less should we do so to convince ourselves, when we are saying something we only really want to believe. Anything above and beyond is a pretense at a control over reality that is not meant to be ours. This calls for humility on our part, admitting that we are not in absolutely control, and entrusting ourselves to God's providence. But any degree to which we can help to once again ground ourselves and our world in truth will help to make it more fertile ground for the truth of the Gospel, the most important truth of all.
The love of Christ impels us,
once we have come to the conviction that one died for all;
therefore, all have died.
He indeed died for all,
so that those who live might no longer live for themselves
but for him who for their sake died and was raised.
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