THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS.

Does mother always know best? It depends on the individual. My mom asked me to do something that I found to be not only distasteful but immoral. Though I wanted nothing to do with my brother, Roy, I also didn't want to go to prison.

From my How I Was Razed memoir, here's how Mom put me in an awkward moral position after my dad died and his common law wife distributed his estate money.

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Though I crossed that bridge, I wasn't free of every burden and obligation. Mom phoned me one evening in January of 1988. "Why don't you put Roy's inheritance money in your account?" she urged. "He's on welfare and he'll be cut off if the government discovers he's received the payment. If they ask you about it, say he never got it, all right?"

"I can't do that, Mom," I exclaimed. "That's fraud!"

"But you have to do it - he's your brother. The government will take it all if you don't hide it. Just give him little bits at a time."

"Why can't somebody else do it?"

"You mean you don't even want to help your own brother - your own flesh and blood?" she cried, her voice rising.

"I don't want to get in trouble and go to jail."

"I can't believe you'd let the government take Roy's inheritance," she grumbled. "It's bad enough that Shirley is divvying up the money. I didn't get anything and neither do I want any of his filthy estate, especially from that woman." Mom badgered on, trying to goad me into handling Roy's inheritance, but I held to my convictions.

Shirley assumed control of my brother's inheritance several weeks later. That solved the problem but not in a righteous way

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I wrote extensively about that house church in my newly-published memoir, How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity. Please check it out at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Virtual Bookworm.