The call by Lealailepule Rimoni Aiafi to Prime Minister, Laaulialemalitoa Leuatea Schmidt, to swear with him on the Bible that they had nothing to do with the death of the university student back in 2021 comes as a complete surprise, since the case is now in the hands of a police team that includes experts from the New Zealand police.

The Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) man would come with his Faife'au, he said, take the oath and then leave it to the work of God. What God was to do after that, he did not say. But what he said opens up a debate on the efficacy of such an oath and whether churchgoers, let alone Christians, should swear such oaths in the light of the teachings of the Bible.

“Above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath. Let your yes be ‘yes’ and your no be ‘no,’ so that you may not fall under condemnation” (James 5:12).

Jesus himself, in Matthew 5:33–37, taught this: "Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil."

Against that, it can be argued that God himself took an oath in Hebrews 6:13–18. And angels take oaths (Revelation 10:5–7). And Paul at least five times heightened his seriousness in telling this truth by saying he was speaking in the presence of God or Christ (see, for example, Romans 9:1–2).

The rebuttal is: Yes, that is important to take into consideration, but none of those examples diminishes the seriousness or applicability of Jesus’s words in Matthew 5:33–37 or James’s words in James 5:12.

Ia manuia lava le aso Sa.