Truth, What Is It?

³²and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’(Jn.8)

I had a conversation with a friend, yesterday at lunch, and she was talking about someone who had asked my friend to read a letter she had written to her sister.  The person was very angry at a sister; and the letter was to tell her why she was so mad.

My friend started to read the letter.  Then immediately put it down and said: “If I received this letter I would not read it.”  

Her friend said: “Why?”

                                 “Because it is filled with anger and hate.”

“Well, I was just telling her the truth about how she acts and speaks.” Replied the friend.

Pilate asked Jesus, just before his arrest, “What is truth?”(Jn 18:38)

It is a great question don’t you think?

What indeed is truth?

But there is another question that is more to the point:  How do we, you and I, speak truth?  I would add: how do we speak the truth we claim to know/think?

What caught my attention this morning comes from two directions.  

One: the election results in Wisconsin’s vote yesterday.  

Two: something I read from, my most favorite author’s new book, ‘We Are All Jacob’s Children.’  

Election results can, and do, require delicate conversation.  

The privilege of voting, to me, is a most private and personally honest way of speaking the truth. 

A truth that comes from deep down personal ways of thinking.  Thinking about how we view what is good and not-so-good, right and the possibility of wrong, even the issue of moral and immoral. 

Whether it is religious, political, within family systems, on the playground or in the work place.  Truth is not always the obvious consensus.  Nor conclusion.

I am tempted to say that truth is a matter of personal opinion.

And, that is just the truth.  As I see it of course.

On the other side of this conversation, going on in my mind, is our way of speaking our truth. 

How we speak our truth? 

                                    In love,

                                                or otherwise?   

                

This is where Jacob enters the conversation.  The quote I read goes like this:  “While Jacob had always been inclined to speak his mind, he was more inclined to speak from his heart.”(p.10)

And I thought: I want to speak from my heart.  I want to speak with more tenderness, less critical, less un-civil, more thought-filled and gracious.  

As we all move through this day may God enable each of us to speak from our hearts with love.  

                         Not our need to be right.