Should I swear to tell the truth?

In Matthew 5:33-37. “Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.’ But I tell you, do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.” 

We believe that these scriptures refer to the ordinary conversations an individual has in his personal life. The act of commonly swearing on the Lord’s name or on the Bible has the tendency to make a person less reverent to the Lord and more likely to break his oaths. These scriptures tell us that where the word is held sacred the avenues of possible sin, error and falsehood are measurably stopped. 

However, we believe that nothing in the above scriptures can properly be understood to apply to the taking of an oath in a court of law or signing documents for the government swearing that you are telling the truth. The fact that one swears what he says is true implies that he does not expect his hearer to believe his simple word, and this, in turn, presupposes that his word is not ordinarily worthy of belief. Such “swearings” are, therefore, necessary because not everyone in the world has the high standard of truth that we Christians have and is desired by God.