Truth-telling is a spiritual discipline.

It’s also a life-giving practice.

It’s at the heart of confession and repentance—absolutely essential for true reconciliation to even be possible.

Because you can’t resolve an issue you won’t acknowledge.

So why do we avoid it?

1/19

If truth-telling is liberating, why would we choose to remain slaves to lies?

If truth-telling is healing, why would we choose to remain in critical condition?

If truth-telling makes for true peace, why remain in conflict?

In a word?

Fear.

2/19

Think about it.

When folks believe a lie?

Say, for instance, one like “America is—or has ever been—a Christian nation”?

There are consequences.

It starts off small.

Y’know.

A little genocide here.

A bit of slavery there.

3/19

But then you’re faced with a decision:

Tell the truth?

Or dig your heels.

Little by little, every choice to do the latter results in a mountain of truth you’ve neglected.

But truth, like energy, can’t be destroyed—just redistributed.

4/19

And so it sits, with the potential to destroy lies and falsehoods and ideological strongholds that keep producing injustice.

But the longer it sits, the greater the weight, the crushing force of the gravity of that honesty.

5/19

And the greater also the fear that truth-telling will destroy you.

That it’ll destroy your idols.

That it’ll destroy the images of family, friends, and mentors who’ve long been the objects of your hero worship.

That it’ll destroy your world as you know it.

6/19

So you run.

Away from the truth.

Away from that potential.

Away from freedom.

And into the slavery of living a lie.

Because to face the truth?

Would destroy you.

And though the thought terrifies you, the truth is?

That is actually the way.

7/19

When Jesus speaks of the way of the cross, he speaks in terms of his own suffering, rooting transformation in the life of a plant, beginning as a seed that must die in order to live.

The fear of death isn’t just of our bodies.

It’s also of the loss of...us.

8/19

The loss of who we were.

All of our convenient lies.

All of our comfort zones.

All of our self-congratulatory inclinations.

It’s the realization that who we are needs to cease to exist in order to be who we could and should be.

9/19

And for many, many people?

That cost is just too great.

They’d rather live the lie that gives them power now than embrace the truth-telling that leads to liberation.

They’d rather embrace a false narrative than truly believe the old, old story.

10/19

They’d rather remember their heroes fondly than kill their heroes to give life to their “enemies” who put their pretentious piety to open shame.

And in so doing, they must kill the part of them that daily whispers “this is not the way.”

11/19

The truth-telling they sacrifice makes it easy to embrace elaborate lies.

The truth-telling they sacrifice makes it easy to ignore the suffering of others.

The truth-telling they sacrifice makes it easy to destroy others who force them to face the truth.

12/19

Please.

Don’t make the naive assumption that there exists no connection between truth-telling and humanity, truth-telling and compassion, truth-telling and empathy.

The Venn diagram of those who refuse to face the truth and those perpetuating injustice is a circle.

13/19

To be humane, compassionate, and empathetic, I have to acknowledge the truth—about your worth, your hurt, and the systems of oppression that keep you there.

It’s been clear for a very long time that this nation was shaped by countless numbers unwilling to do that.

14/19

And so people refuse to wear masks and stay at home...like it’s persecution to do the absolute least to love their neighbors.

So they dismiss police brutality, systemic racism, and institutionalized injustice...like the world they call “fallen” can’t possibly be that bad.

15/19

So they storm a capitol building, killing and injuring and raging and destroying...like it’s their right to forsake all social commitments to basic decency because they can’t fathom living in a world where they aren’t the center and epitome of it.

16/19

And so many of us, gasping for air with the knee of never-ending nefariousness on our necks, faintly whisper still:

“Just tell the truth.”

And the battle cry we hear yet again:

“Never.”

Having sacrificed mercy, they’ve become monstrous.

17/19

Having sacrificed truth, they’ve become false.

They know not how to face the facts.

Because the fact is?

Accepting the truth would bring a kind of shame that would make them hide their face.

So instead they hide their humanity.

And fester in their hate.

18/19

To tell the truth would crush them—their world, their lies, their ways.

And that’s what needs to happen.

Before anything can change.

19/19