Can Christians Swear or Take Oaths - Q&A - Zack Johnson - Followers of the Way

Any—do you want me to— Yeah. I have a comment. Yeah. There is a biblical and historical instance where an oath was taken, and it was beneficial. Let's hear it.

This is Genesis 22:16. And we'll start with 15. And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of the heaven the second time and said, "By myself I have sworn," saith the Lord, "for because thou hast done this thing and hast not withheld thy only son, that in blessing I will bless thee and in multiplying I will multiply thee.

Thy seed has the stars of the heaven and the sand which is upon the sea shore, and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemy." So that's Abraham with the son Isaac. Yeah. His point is that God is making the oath. That is what the Lord we swore. Yeah. God is the one swearing not man. Yeah.

It's really good to look at that. But just because God—it's a good point that God swore to him. He promised him. I would actually—I would try to make an argument that this was a covenant with God that he made, and that God is able to operate in this realm that who's God going to appeal to for an oath? Where if you look at that three-tiered component, can God appeal to a transcendent entity beyond himself? I don't know. Would you have anything to say to that instance, David, or anything? I don't think Dan was contradicting you. I think he was just pointing out that, yeah, God is the one person who can't take an oath because there's nothing above him.

Yeah. Right. Well, my perspective on that particular passage is that God was declaring that in the event that he failed to maintain his promise to Abraham, he would have to one exist himself. And that makes sense to me. When someone says, "Thou shalt not swear by the altar, but it's okay to swear by the gift of the altar," or whichever, I don't get that.

I know that you attempted to explain it, but when you say, "Well, this is a silly reference," but it points out my difficulty with this.

But a whale of a tale to tell you, lads, and it's all true. I swear by my tattoo. Right. What does that mean?

What's the difference between swearing by the gold of the altar and swearing by my tattoo? I'm still struggling with that. I've tried to get David to shed light on that, and he did the only service from his point of view, but I still don't get it. My brief, really simple answer to that is that the world has now acknowledged that people are liars, that we're not to be trusted, and that just because you say something doesn't mean that it's true. So that's sort of this default that we're operating on, right? That we go outside and people are expecting you to lie. And so what oaths have come in, the one that I say is you say something to someone and they're like, "No, I don't believe you.

I don't believe what you're saying." But you really want them to believe you, so you try to swear by something. A common oath where I grew up is, "I swear by my mother. I swear by my mother that this is true. I'm not going to lie to you because my mother is important to me." And you're trying to break out of this default baseline of truthfulness. And Jesus, in this passage, what I think he's doing and what people say is people used to swear by different elevations depending on how passionately they wanted people to believe them. So Jesus goes backwards in importance. He goes heaven, earth, Jerusalem. And for us in humanity, there's different things that you could—what's the most important thing to you?

I hope it's not your tattoo. Maybe it is. So if you want—so that's basically what's happening here is Jesus is saying, "We don't get to have these different levels of truthfulness. There's only one standard. It's truth." And the people who are trying to say, "Oh, believe me, I'll swear by my mother. I'll swear by my tattoo. I'll swear by whatever object they have," Jesus is saying, "No. Your yes is yes and your no is no.

No more swearing. You're always truthful." And we no longer get to or should try to say, "I'm telling the truth. I swear on my mom because my mom is important to me." And some people say, "My mother's grave." Has anyone heard that one? "Swear on my mother's grave that this thing is true." And that's what I think is happening there.

We should talk about it more. Any other points about oath-taking? Questions, comments, concerns?

I don't really have anything to add. I really like your point, how different levels. I never thought of that before, how he's trying to bring that whole thing down and we're not to have different. But there's one standard. There is one level, and that is like, "A-ay-ay-ay," and that. And I think that is a human problem. Lying is a human problem that we battle. And so I think that's why when Jesus comes along, he's trying to establish honesty, and it's at the very core of all humanity not to be honest.

And it's something I think, as Christians, we battle to become honest people. I don't think that happens every night. Yeah. I'd add on to that that I hear a lot that Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, he has the answers to all the world's problems.

That if we boil down, if you want to find somewhere with all the answers, look no further than the Sermon on the Mount. And I always ask people, "Has the oath-taking system worked to solve the problem of deceit?" What do you think?

Has the oath-taking system worked to solve the problem of deceit? So the world's answer for people being liars is to come up with an oath. They say, "All right, if we have an oath, then they won't lie." Has that worked?

No. No. Absolutely. If you go look at the presidential trials on the things that got said under oath, it hasn't worked. And so basically, the world substitutes a truthfulness. It's broken as well. And so now you get this even a conundrum that people are saying, "You lied under oath. You lied under this transcendent entity." And it just hasn't worked. And Jesus' solution is much more simple. He's saying, "We don't get to lie ever, even when we're not up on the stand or something like that." So I acknowledge that the oaths are a substitute to consistent truthfulness, and they haven't worked for the world. People don't even trust what people are saying up on the stand in front of the Senate and the members of the Congress.

If you go look at a lot of people said a lot of things that are like, "You said this and it's not true." So it hasn't even worked there.

That brings it back to your original framework too, that I'm not a person who tells the truth because I'm afraid of judgment, because I don't want that. I'm a person who tells the truth because I love the truth. And the oath is just a contradiction to that picture of a Christian person of integrity. It's not somebody who speaks the truth and is trustworthy because they love the truth. It's somebody who is a person of integrity because of a great possible way of judgment. Right.

And I mean, I think that just to add on to your point, this teaching is applicable in our everyday moments too. I think a lot of people sort of take this teaching and they put it somewhere else where they're like, "I'll never be in the—I'll never be in your shoes, Zach, where you're weighing oaths." But I'd say that you're making commitments. All of you are making commitments every day. And it's one of these things that Jesus, earlier on, he prefaces, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness." And Brother Finney makes an amazing—I always love his point. He's like, "Jesus is genius because we can't just hunger once. We have to consistently revise our decisions, our yes and our nos against what Christ taught here."

And it goes for oath-taking, but it also is applicable to all of us in any commitments that we make to be men of our word and women of our word. And we have to not take our words lightly.

Yeah. I think my takeaway is just to think more seriously about the words, every word that we say. And I read that a lot and think about that a lot. It's a scary thought kind of where he says that you're going to be accountable for every word.

And we somehow are constantly, I think, trying to undo that or justify our words.

That's just a very good reminder. Yeah.

Yeah. And I'll ask for one more prayer request while I can. One of my—I didn't bring this up in the sermon. I could have, though. I talk to a lot of people who are also interested in leaving the military. They get networked to me in some capacity. And a lot of the—I've worked with six. Four out of the six have actually come to the teachings on oaths and said, "That's too far for me."

Non-resistance is easy to wrap our minds around because I think we can all understand that shedding blood has consequences. But at least in the American system, the implications of not taking oaths are to lose your salary, are to lose your rank, are to lose your status. And it's so interesting to me that oaths become—when I was going through the whole process, they were like, "We'll take you if you're nonviolent. We won't take you if you won't take oaths." And so I don't know how much foresight Jesus had into the way that our structures would be set up, but I think he had an enormous amount of foresight that this really seals—in my mind, it seals the deal on government entanglement, that every single government requires oaths and some sort of wordplay in order to serve in their system.

And so it gives me an enormous amount of confidence in this separating ourselves from these positions of government who require these oaths because in my mind, it's like I'm not even—it creates a healthy distance where you say, "Oh, there's oaths involved. I have to stay a mile away from that." But yeah, thanks, Justin. I don't know if that tied to your point at all, other than there's a man I know that is considering whether or not he's going to take a—every two years, you have to take another oath. And so he's weighing whether or not he's going to do it again against Jesus' teaching. He's like, "The nonviolence I like, but the oaths are just—I don't understand why Jesus taught that, and it cost me a lot."

So I'm looking to you for what's next here. Do you have any more thoughts? I do. I have just a quick question. Do you have to take an oath or become a U.S. citizen? Yep. And so I guess that would be something if you knew Christians who are trying to come over here and say, "Well, yeah." There's an oath of citizenship, correct?

And we've walked with one person and pointed them away from it because of the dangers because it's very similar to the oath of office that I read about protecting and defending the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And followers of Christ just can't say yes to those words.

And yeah, so it has really big implications for people trying to naturalize here. I don't know. I haven't followed exactly if they've been able to escape the swear or the affirm and the so help me God. But even if they make citizens say those set of words, I would strongly, strongly say, "You can't say yes to those." So it's very important.

And then there's other oaths to look at too, very straightforward ones and very less clear. There's a Hippocratic oath that a lot of doctors take. Is anyone familiar with the Hippocratic oath? So a lot of doctors, they're put on the spot here about taking these oaths. And then there's even more clear-cut ones that not taking oaths keeps us away from even more dangerous things. So a lot of cult-like systems develop some sort of oath before joining them, like the Masons. If you look at the Masons here in America, there's a Masonic oath that people have looked at and been like, "You can't exist in both these worlds." But the citizenship one is a big one, has massive implications for people's lives.

I really enjoyed your point about the difference in our words, but also the thing of just changing the word from swear to affirm. I would have been brought up that if you did, you don't even really pay much attention to what it says. It's just something you got to do and make sure the swear word's not there. And so you're right to affirm or something like that on the document.

Yeah.

That's kind of how I was brought up and how I—yeah, just how I did. But I really appreciate the stuff you all had said and pointing out that inconsistency in ways that we think. I just really appreciate that. Yeah. Thanks. And I want us to kind of be on our toes here because, I mean, swearing comes in. My wife and I were just applying for a parking permit in the city we live in. And in order to get it, there was a thing online that said, "I swear everything on here is true." And we were like, "Why do they have to make it so hard for us?" So we couldn't print it out. We had to go in.

It took us another three months to get our parking permit because of the sensitivity that we wouldn't click that box. I was like, "I want to click it, but I'm not going to." And I think it just goes to show how Christ teachings have not permeated a lot of the systems that we interact with. So thank you.

Yeah. Thank you very much for your message. I like the simple definition of what it means to swear an oath, that it's three parts kind of helps you if you're in a situation where you might not know if you're doing it or not. Okay. Are those three things? So I appreciate that clarity there and also just exposing how much people are just so quick to say, "Well, what Jesus really meant was this is how absurd it is." Because that was the background I came from, and it really pushed me away from wanting to interact with the church because it's like, "Well, if I can't do anything that I clearly agree, then what good is reading this?"

And so that good historic perspective on it that, yeah, you really can just do what it says. It's so liberating. So thank you for confirming that.

Yeah. And people who make this interpretation makes them uncomfortable. They'll try to find a simple inconsistency and throw it at you and just say, "Haha, got you. You're off." The one that my favorite one I've heard was on non-resistance later. People will say, "Jesus said, 'Don't resist your enemy, but love him.'" And people say, "So Jesus taught not to resist your enemy, but then he says to resist Satan. So tell me about that. Haha."

And they treat Jesus as if he's not allowed to teach in different contexts, as if Jesus isn't allowed to differentiate between human enemies and spiritual enemies. And he obviously does in his teachings. And I like to just ask people, "Do you really believe Jesus was this inconsistent that what he says here undoes what he says here?" And I think just to affirm that point, Jesus is the genius, and we're the ones that should be studying his teachings instead of liberating ourselves from them by playing those gymnastics that I mentioned there.