I’ma tell you what you need to know

I’ma tell you what you need to hear

Cause the truth would be too much

Macklemore , Chance, – Need to know

‘I swear by the Name of God that I shall tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’

This is the commandment/the mantra  I lived by. Truth was the absolute good, but the fresh waters that said ‘the truth will set you free’ ran muddied. Everyone knows the saying ; The truth hurts. It’s often thrown around and accepted as unavoidable reality….And so we blunder and we stab because, that’s what the truth does…right?

But what if we use true words to do untrue things?

Just in the same way that lies can be used for selfish gain, truth can be too.

It can be used to belittle, demoralize, to crush or inflate.

When you pass on information that wasn’t yours to tell,
When you reveal the sins of another,
When you use it to start theological debates without The Spirit,
When you use it to inflate yourself and show off your spiritual or intellectual achievements,

Is that really truth?

Does the truth somehow deweaponize every statement?

The reality is that “truth” wielded as a weapon , ceases to be the truth.
Truth is a Person. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life”
But even beyond this, we need to recognise the fundamental reality of what it means to be a person. It is to be relational and therefore, our truth has to be relational too.

It must be the right thing in the right way at the right time.  Our truth must never be separated from love. As the Scriptures say – we must learn to walk in Love. We must put on Christ and choose to be inseparably, fully truthful and fully loving

‘speaking the truth in love’ Ephesians 4:15

The word apokatastasis  appears in (Acts 3:21), in the story where Peter heals a lame man.

‘Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing  {apokatastasis} may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.’

The word refers to God’s unfolding of the story salvation. That unfolding is a movement towards truth in love. All created things are becoming more fully what they are meant to be in relationship with God and all things around them. This movement is “good.”

Just as the story of salvation was unfolded to us, maybe we too need to learn some origami.

Discernment and discretion are required of those who wield the truth. As we grow up into all things (Ephesians 4: 15) we realise that we need to judge every situation rightly. Just like how St Abba Marcarius  hid the sins of his brother that allowed a woman into his cell or like how Jesus was slow to unveil the sins of the Samaritan woman.

God speaks the worlds into existence and that alone would make us fearful at the words we utter. So let us take a moment before we speak and ask ourselves;

it is true?

is it necessary?

is it kind?