Let your yes be yes and no, no

Christians, particularly campaigners and political activists need to take seriously the requirement not to give false witness. When a Christian campaign group accuses somebody of saying something which they did not say our good news is discredited.

This really irritates the hard work of folk who evangelise. Moreover, in the long run, it will ultimately result in the failure of the campaign and the credibility of the people behind it.

I work in the political forum in the UK and, from time to time, deal with campaigners who come from overtly or not so overtly Christian organisations. Given that I am quite aware of goings on and because I have a little experience in one or two areas of policy, I have witnessed first-hand some Christian campaigning organisations' lack of forthright communication with their supporter base.

It’s not that these organisations lie outright, though it would not be a surprise to learn that a quick one slips by from time to time. No, it’s more that they let their campaign become more important than a commitment to truth and a fair mind. They give a slant to their story which changes reality for the unassuming and trusting reader or campaign supporter.

It might not be done on purpose, but when putting together news stories to communicate goings on with their supporters, they sometimes lift almost directly what is printed in other news sources without checking the facts. I was once so surprised by a headline about results from an academic research project that I called up the professor and talked to him about his work.

It turned out that the papers had twisted his findings to mean almost the very opposite of what his work showed. Understandably he was dismayed. But I was saddened that the story then was recycled and in the meantime had not been checked properly.

To be a bit more specific and timely, an example which best illustrates my claim is one from the US. Conveniently it will also serve us by not embarrassing any well known organisations in the UK. Some days ago a former executive of Planned Parenthood - a large pro choice organisation - made a comment in that well know and oft read news source, The Napa Valley Register about global population growth and Barack Obama’s new initiative to make contraception freely available to US women.

The executive was in favour of Obama’s plans, and given his worry about global population rates he also said that he was in favour of China’s One Child Policy, which is sadly linked to genderside, abortion, forced abortion and sterilisation among other things. Nasty stuff indeed.

At the time I was happily unaware of the short article. Some days later though I received a campaign email in which the title of the first story read: “Planned Parenthood: Former Exec Says U.S. Should Adopt China’s One Child Policy”. That would be jaw dropping news since it would discredit Planned Parenthood by association, but given previous bad experiences with strange campaign emails it was worth plugging the supporting quote into a search engine and finding the original source.

The relevant opinion read: “Unless we act (this legislation [Obama’s plans for contraception], along with China’s “one child” policy, is a start), the world is doomed to strangle among coils of pitiless exponential growth.”

While support for China’s one child policy is deeply worrying due partly to the excesses of enforcing the policy, he did not say the US should adopt China’s drastic, sad and ill thought out one child policy. The “we” he was referencing was all humanity, not just folk in the US.

Truth, lies and spin are a huge topic, but it is something which we need to start taking very seriously if we are to be credible witnesses to the good news of Jesus Christ’s salvific work in all spheres of life. How can we be trusted about the very core of our belief system if we are willing to skimp on the truth for short term political gain or campaign financing?