When someone tells you the truth in love
Maybe someone has questioned you, said something offensive and reprimanding, and followed it up with this disclaimer:
"I'm just telling you this truth because I love you."
Let's start with the truth: who owns it? Who gets to decide what is true and what is not? And before someone says, The Bible is the ultimate Truth, ask yourself if you're an expert in Hebrew literature and culture? Remind yourself that the Bible contradicts itself hundreds of times. Remember that the Bible was written in a culture and context that spanned some 1500 years by multiple authors grappling with different issues and problems and heartaches, all trying to figure out God and the world and how and where they belong in the middle of it all.
Remind yourself that Bible isn't the truth; it's just trying to find its way there.
The truth isn't as easy or as static as people would like it to be.
In the New Testament, the word used for 'truth' is the word Aletheia. Subjectively it means, truth as a personal experience. Objectively, Alethia is the truth and/or reality that is taught - it's something that we learn. In Jesus day, a Rabbi would teach their disciple by taking them on the road so they could learn in the living. It's the experience, the journey, the life we've lived; our truth.
Truth is lived into.
And yes, there is such a thing as your truth. You have your own personal truth about your experiences with God and your experiences in life. It's not a one-size-fits-all when it comes to the truth of how and where, and why of God and your experiences with God.
To speak the truth in love, you must be able to hear love's truth, too. The people who generally like to use this whole "speak the truth in love" thing are, from my humble observation and experience, not people who are willing to listen and engage and participate in your/others experiences of truth. They are all about the telling, and nothing about the listening, or being open, or being willing to be wrong. The very thing they expect from others (to change at the single word of their advice) they are unwilling to do themselves.
And to that, don't give it a single moment.
Yes. There are times to correct and speak up and tell the truth. Absolutely. The Biblical Text is full of people speaking truth to power, and telling the truth about the trouble they were all in together and the things they had experienced. That's a different thing than comparing, victimising, shaming and discrediting, and believing that you own the truth.
Most of our judgements on whether other people are living right or not are projections of our own fears about our own ability to do and be right and good and true. Lay that burden down, my friend. Your highest calling and vocation is to allow the single reality of love to burn away all that stops its flow, and to connect and reconnect and connect again to your own self, others, The Divine, the earth, and all the energies and spaces between us.
Rob Bell said:
"Decide now that you will not spend your precious energy speculating about someone else's life and how it compares with yours."
Decide now, dear friend: comparison will not live here.
And we also need to flip the dominant narrative of what is right and good and true: it's not a set standard; it's a value. Are people able to be true, here? Do we see goodness as part of our foundation or something that we achieve and uphold? Right, according to who? What is right will bend and flex and flow and must always be built on a foundation of love. And here is as good a place as any to start, to try again, to keep on going.
Thomas Merton said:
"The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them."
Consider this a collective apology for every time you've been "told the truth in love," and it has hurt you, broken you down, made you feel less and excluded, and destroyed your humanity, even if just a little bit. The truth about you is this: You are enough. Always. As you are. Loved.
LISTEN: Love is an act of creation in every instance. It's generative and causes growth and expansion. When trying to figure out how to best love your neighbour, yourself, and the earth - start with love. Ask yourself, does what I claim truth to be, bring growth and healing and health?
From this week’s series, "Here Is As Good A Place As Any", with a subscription, in the App.
