HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, May 11, 2025 – The Ten Commandments are non-negotiable, which we, as born-again believers, well know. Every Commandment needs to be kept to the best of our ability, no excuses and no exceptions. The Commandments that garner the most attention (e.g., the ones about not killing and not committing adultery) tend to overshadow the less oft-cited Commandments and push them farther away from our spiritual awareness. But all the Commandments need to be kept, not just the “sexy” ones.

One of those less oft-cited Commandments is the one about not bearing false witness against your neighbor. In fact, it’s so overshadowed at times by the other Commandments that it’s even been misconstrued on occasion as “Thou shalt not lie”, which is not what the Commandment states. The Commandment is not about not lying: It’s about not bearing false witness, which, though it can share some characteristics with lying, is in a separate category by itself or it wouldn’t be a Commandment.

Bearing false witness against your neighbor can manifest in two different ways: 1) purposely twisting or omitting facts to cast guilt on an innocent person, either in a court of law or in the court of public opinion; or 2) openly speculating, again either in a court of law or in the court of public opinion, about the probable or possible guilt of someone, based solely on your opinion of the presented or presumed facts.

This article concerns the second violation of the Commandment, specifically, open speculation in the court of public opinion.

We all speculate. It’s not wrong to speculate. When we hear of a crime or a potential crime, we speculate as a way to make sense of the mystery that we’ve been presented with and don’t yet have a solution for, not being privy to all the facts of the case. Speculation in and of itself is not wrong. God gave us a mind and intends for us to use it. But speculation that involves the possible or probable guilt of someone we only suspect might be guilty should be kept between us and God. The instant we go beyond God and openly share our speculations on someone’s presumed guilt, we enter the realm of bearing false witness against a neighbor. We cross the line and we break the Commandment.

In the interests of full disclosure, I have crossed that line and nearly crossed that line on numerous occasions without realizing it. Case in point: Two children, age four and six, have gone missing from a rural community in Nova Scotia. This happened about a week ago, and speculation on social media has been rife with unsubstantiated claims about what could have happened to the little ones. Having lived for a time not far from where the children disappeared, I was immediately drawn to the case; and being a woman with latent but still intact maternal instincts, I also became emotionally involved with it. For every fact about the disappearance that trickled out through mainstream media, social media responded with a flood of what can only be described as salacious speculation. No-one who had access to the children before their disappearance was spared public pillorying. Given my emotional involvement, it was difficult for me not to get caught up in the rumors and innuendoes, and so I did get caught up in them, until God hauled me up short and showed me what I was setting myself up for.

I did not get involved in the public speculation about what happened to those children (who, at the time of publication, are still missing). When I say I didn’t get involved publicly, I mean I didn’t submit a comment on any of the social media forums or talk about the case with anyone. I kept my speculations to myself, but I was tempted on many an occasion to jump into the online discussions that form the widespread court of public opinion. I was tempted. I was very tempted. And I thank God I didn’t do it.

When we speculate between us and God, God will guide our speculations, if we ask him to guide us and if it’s to our benefit. God decides on both of those criteria. But when we breach the containment of our mind and shift to openly speculating in the court of public opinion, we run the risk of breaking the Commandment about bearing false witness against our neighbor. No, I don’t know the people involved in the case of the missing children in Nova Scotia, but they’re still my neighbors, according to Jesus’ definition. And no, the court of public opinion doesn’t take place in a designated court of law, but it still has the same spiritual impact. Even if you believe your speculations to be accurate and the person or people you’re speculating about to be guilty, you need to keep your speculations between you and God. You’ll be tempted not to, but you need to keep them between you and God. The minute you voice your opinion publicly (even just among friends and family), you cross the line and break the Commandment.

But what if your suspicions end up being correct? What if you’ve uncovered an angle that doesn’t appear to have been considered by law enforcement agents? What if your witness isn’t false? Are you still breaking the Commandment if you share what turns out to be true?

As long as the case being speculated upon is still in the realm of speculation (that is, hasn’t yet been solved beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law), you need to be very careful about what you share and how you share it. You can share your personal revelations without pointing fingers, but that’s a very tricky process that borders on breaking the Commandment. You can do it but be very careful. Unless you are an eyewitness and are 100% certain about what you saw, you are treading a very fine line that may wrongly implicate someone, which will then rebound to you spiritually and cause you enormous suffering.

There are no exceptions when it comes to keeping God’s Ten Commandments. The devil is always laying traps and offering temptations to get us to violate God’s rules, so we need not only to be aware of the Commandments at all times but to understand what each one looks like when it’s walked out in real life. If God hadn’t shown me, I would never have connected spit-balling someone’s possible guilt with violating the Commandment about bearing false witness. I would just have thought of it as discussing possibilities with people who are also discussing possibilities. But all words, whether spoken or written, have an impact on the hearers and readers, swaying them this way or that. You don’t want to be the one swaying someone to a conclusion that falsely accuses another of a crime, because you’ll be held responsible for that false accusation by God, which will have a far worse outcome for you, as a born-again believer, than if you’d committed the discussed crime yourself.

Be very careful of what you say and write. It’s better to keep things between you and God than to climb onboard the gossip train of social media and fall into the devil’s trap of bearing false witness.