Unbelievably, there are people who deny the Holocaust happened.
Some Holocaust deniers, while admitting that Nazi atrocities were committed against Jews, deny that over six million were murdered or that the gas chambers existed. Holocaust denying comes in many different flavors and forms.
Recently, I engaged in a heated written dialogue with a holocaust denier by the name of Adam Johnson. I stumbled upon his rants because he spewed his vile anti-Semitism in the comment section of one of Dennis Prager’s Youtube video’s ironically tilted “Do not bear false witness.”
Johnson’s post, along with the over 44 replies, is featured first in the comments. For those of you with time to kill, reading the entire thread will be an eye-opening education.
The Bible is not silent on the topic of lying and bearing false witness; both are crimes that are detested in the sight of God. For starters, the ninth of the ten commandments, “You shall not bear false witness,” is the crowning prohibition most people quote when the topic of lying comes up.
But this commandment is certainly not the only place in the Bible where God’s displeasure and even hatred for lying is found. Perhaps the second most quoted verse comes from Revelation 21:8:
“But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars–they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”
I am a firm believer that the First Amendment has been grossly distorted in America and our founding fathers never intended or anticipated the overly broad application it has been given. For most Americans, the First Amendment means they can say or write about anything they want.
Now, this is true, to a point, but this does not mean that I can, as a prank, yell “Fire!” in a packed indoor movie theatre when the lights are off. As well, libel and slander are prosecutable crimes, further showing we cannot say or write anything that pops into our heads our flows out of our pens.
I am a strong advocate for limits on so-called “free speech,” and believe that lying speech, such as Holocaust denying, should be illegal and punished in the same way libel and slander is.
Lies are serious business, capable of incalculable and irrevocable damage to the reputations of the victims of the falsehoods. When lies are uttered on a national scale by a country’s leaders against a specific member of the community, like Hitler did with the Jews, genocide often and does follow.
This is one reason why the Bible prohibits lying.
“I hate and abhor lying…” Psalm 119:163 (KJV)
“There are six things which the LORD hates, Yes, seven which are an abomination to Him: Haughty eyes, a lying tongue…” Proverbs 6:16-17
Liars will not be part of God’s Kingdom. Be exceedingly careful if you have a lying tongue.