Letting Truth Lead

The inspiration for today’s message came from a moment this week when I heard myself say, for the second time in two weeks, “The truth really does set us free.” The first time was in a conversation with a young woman who had recently gone into a recovery program for alcohol abuse. She talked about what a hell it had been for her—literally—as she tried to hide her problem from those she loved. She described a normal, happy life that suddenly took a dark turn into lies and deception, hiding and pain. When the crisis came, she knew the only way through it was to begin showing people the awful truth. She was sick. She was hurting. She needed help. The moment that thought occurred to her, the truth began to set her free.

The second time was when I was talking with a young professional who seemed to feel like he had the whole world on his shoulders. He was burdened, anxious, and stressed. He had hit a dead-end with the project he was responsible for and he wasn’t sure what to do next. He didn’t feel like he could tell anyone the truth about that. He wanted to keep up appearances that he was confident, capable, successful. Internally, he was locked into a place of fear, hiding and isolated from others, and he had no hope of finding a way out. Finally he realized that admitting he was stuck was the only thing he could do to get out of that awful, lonely, overly responsible place. When he told a teammate he was struggling, the person offered him an idea. Together they began to solve the problem. Then more help arrived. What was awful and painful and shameful and hidden came out into the light, and things started moving again. Progress was made. Everyone relaxed. Answers came. Things began to get better the instant it occurred to him that he needed to tell someone the truth of his situation.

There is something deep within us that yearns to be authentic, real, honest, and open. We each know that that feels like, and living in touch with it feels good. Conversely, when we hide who we are, put on a false front, try to mask our feelings or go along with something we know is wrong, it feels awful. We are  stressed, on edge, uneasy. We don’t want to talk about it; we want to pretend it’s not there. And those bad feelings will only get worse. We know deep down that lies, deception, covering up who we are is not who we are, made in God’s image. And it’s no way to walk in the light.

Of course, our world right now seems to spin on the axis of marketing hype and news bytes. There is so much make-believe, so much that seems to be done simply to be outrageous and keep us watching. Social media is full of people hoping to gain “likes” and “followers.” It’s hard to know what’s real, what’s true, what’s really happening, how people really are. And that not knowing that can undermine our sense of trust in ourselves, in each other, and in society at large.

Quaker Howard Macy, in his 2014 lecture, “Becoming the Real Deal: Building a Life of Integrity,” suggests that

“…[It’s] a sad reality of our modern culture. People lie a lot, often routinely, whether using “little white lies” or “whoppers.” And many of us have learned not to trust people. We’re wary, even cynical, because the truth is so often betrayed. Beyond that, what we experience as common practice all around us may tempt us, even shape us, not to be truthful or trustworthy ourselves.”

And Richard Foster adds,

“In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says, ​“Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Anything more than this comes from evil” (Matt. 5:37). This teaching urges us to state what is actually the case without embellishing or distorting things in any way. Jesus knows that all our little embellishments are attempts to manipulate situations or coerce others. In fact, many today get handsome salaries by learning ever more clever and attractive ways to say yeses that are not yeses and noes that are not noes — we call them spin-doctors.”

When I was in seminary, 20 years ago now, I was in a Constructive Theology class when I first learned about modernism and postmodernism. A few definitions are probably in order here. First, constructive theology is a course offered often in the last year of seminary that seeks to help us organize and explain religious truths in a consistent way. The idea is that students get to explore how beliefs came to be accepted, what the wider influences might have been, how scripture addresses certain subjects, and how we can begin to ask the big questions, like, What is true about God and the universe? And How do we know that?

Our professor that day was talking about the influences of ideas from different eras and how they relate to what is believed to be true at the time. He said that from the late 1800s until the end of World War II, the world was in an era known as modernism, a generally optimistic time, in which people believed in progress, rationality, and building new things together for the greater good, reaching toward universal truths. Modernism valued purity, simplicity, and clarity and those values were reflected in art, culture, and literature, as well as in societal values, attitudes, and even the political discourse of the day.

Postmodern thought took root after the second World War as people began to see the flaws in modernism. Some felt modernism’s push toward universalism didn’t allow much room or voice for individuals and didn’t accurately reflect the complex social and cultural expressions of the time. So postmodernism pushed back in a big way on the consistent, rational, progressive, system-building approach of modernism and instead used skepticism, irony, and the rejection of common values to challenge existing power structures and make room for plurality and the subjective experience of the individual. In one generation, we moved from an age where you got a job at Indiana Bell and the company took care of you (with solid benefits) for your whole career, to a time when big companies have cyclical layoffs while the CEO salaries continue to skyrocket. No structure is secure for long in a postmodern world.

On that particular day in class, as the professor talked about the differences between modernism and postmodernism, he made one point which has come back to me in living color many times since: He said that in the age of modernism, we all generally agreed—and I’m talking around the world here—that there was an objective truth we could align with and discover. It was what we were largely building toward, a worthy and reliable goal. In the postmodern era, there is no longer any singular objective truth that we all agree on; rather there are a multiplicity of truths, and those truths can be set and defined by the subjective experience of every individual.

I still remember what I thought when I heard that: “Uh-oh, this is going to be a problem.”

Fast-forward to today. Look around at our world and you see just the sort of chaos that comes from having 8 billion people on the planet, and each one of them experiencing and defining truth for themselves in their own unique ways. You can understand how so many institutions we’ve trusted-–banks, news and media outlets, government bodies, and often, churches—feel less reliable and upright today, not as trustworthy as they once were. Maybe there’s corruption behind the scenes, we think. We see cracks in their image and begin to wonder: Perhaps they’re not really committed to the ideals we thought they were helping us reach.

The good news is that theorists suggest that we have now outgrown postmodernism and are heading into a new age of metamodernism, which incorporates the best ideas and approaches of modernism and tempers them with the skeptical and structure-challenging views of the post-modern world. One theorist describes the process as a pendulum, swinging back and forth between the two approaches, each balancing the other and creating—we hope–a more stable system that works better for us all. I imagine that most of us yearn to feel we are making progress, moving into a new era that cares about values of goodness, kindness, truth, and community, even while we have our eyes open to the flaws that do need to be addressed—like imbalances of power, injustice, inequality, and the care our planet needs. We’ll see how it all unfolds, but there is reason for hope. Integrating the best of what we’ve learned, taking new steps toward building something good for the many and the collective, a world restored to some semblance of right order sounds pretty good after the tumultuous and unsettling times we’ve all been living through together.

It can be a difficult thing to live up to a standard of truth when the world seems chaotic and mixed-up and it seems like “anything goes” for so many in our culture. And yet we each know that in the center of our hearts, there is a quiet place of calm and sureness, where we can hear the truth leading if we are willing to listen. In that place, we know what’s right for us. We recognize the honesty and kind voice of peace. Even with the impact of postmodernism and its multiplicity of voices and personal truths, there is one, even Christ Jesus, who speaks to us softly in the stillness within.

The psalmist knows this well. In the verses we heard this morning, he writes, “Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.” The psalmist knows God as shepherd, teacher, and guide; he recognizes that the truth he needs isn’t found in the battles and skirmishes of the world around him, but in the listening center of his own life. God will lead us into all truth, the psalmist offers: Step by step, as we choose to listen and follow and learn.

I remember well the first time I was led toward truth. It was a bit of a shock in the moment. I was in second grade at the time, and that afternoon at school, I’d gone to the nurse with an upset stomach. It wasn’t the first time I’d done that. The nurse called my mom, and she made arrangements to leave work early (she was teaching high school journalism then) so that she could take me home. That evening, after dinner, in the kitchen, she looked down at me—I remember this so well—and asked, “Do you know the story of the ‘Boy Who Cried Wolf?’” I said I didn’t. She told me the story of the little boy who lied and then when he really needed help, nobody believed him. I got the message. Before that moment, I hadn’t realized I’d done anything wrong. But now, suddenly I saw I hadn’t been honest. I knew it was time for me to straighten up.

We all need people in our lives who can hold up mirrors and help us see where we’re cutting corners on honesty or fudging the truth or embellishing a story to make ourselves look better. When someone holds up that mirror for us and we see ourselves clearly, it may sting for a moment, as we see the truth about ourselves, but in reality, we are being given a great grace, a chance to get back into integrity with ourselves. Then we can let truth lead once again.

In his book, A Living Faith, Wilmer Cooper—who was the first dean of Earlham School of Religion, wrote this about integrity:

“The call for honesty lies at the heart of Quakerism. It is a testimony rooted in the Quaker respect for truthfulness. The early Quakers were known as ‘Friends of Truth’ and ‘Publishers of Truth,’ and truth was a very special word in their vocabulary. Respect for this kind of integrity calls for a correspondence between what one professes and how one translates that into action in real life.”

Cooper goes on to say that of all our testimonies, integrity is the most important, because if we live with integrity in all we do, the other testimonies—peace, simplicity, community, equality, and stewardship—will happen naturally as a result of the right order integrity brings to our lives.

When we don’t have someone to mirror the truth of our behavior back to us—as my mom did that day—we run the risk of thinking that our inward and outward sidesteps, exaggerations, and white lies go unnoticed. We may feel that on the surface—especially with all the dishonesty out there in the world—it doesn’t matter whether we tell the truth or not. But it does matter, and deep down, we know that. Within us there is a witness to truth always present, a loving light that points us in the way that we should go. There is no fooling that quiet, affirming witness, no matter how hard we try to look the other way and pretend it isn’t so.

The passage in our New Testament reading takes place as Jesus is speaking to the people in the temple courts. Jesus addresses the many who are gathered there. Among the crowd are townspeople and disciples and friends, as well as scribes and Pharisees. To the Jews who have believed what Jesus has taught them, he said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Some in the crowd push back on this, saying they were Abraham’s descendants and not slave to anyone. Jesus uses this as a teaching moment to hold up a mirror to those in the crowd who were plotting his death. He tells them what he knows and says that if they were truly seeking the truth in their hearts they would understand and receive what he was telling them.

Those in the crowd that day were given the same choice I had in my mother’s kitchen—to listen to what was offered, to take its truth to heart, to accept that they needed to make a change, and to do better from then on. They were being given an opportunity to start again with a deeper understanding, this time aligned with the truth of eternal love, right there before their eyes. They simply needed to be willing to hear the truth and let it lead them to more honest living. No doubt some did hear. And some didn’t. The same seems true today. The choice is ours.

When we are open to knowing the truth in our lives, when we become willing to see the effects of our actions, to let the light of Christ reveal where we block the way of love, to see the ideas, beliefs, and behaviors that take us out of integrity with ourselves and each other, a new, freer life becomes possible. The truth really does set us free, releasing us from the ideas, beliefs, and experiences that bound us to fear and hurt. When the chains of self-interest fall away, we truly begin to love. No longer hiding mistakes of the past, we are able to show the world who we are. A new freedom emerges; our isolation departs—and even better, we look around and see that we are part of an ever-present kingdom of love that was always here, simply waiting for us to get honest enough to find the way home.

And so in closing, I leave you with a few queries to consider deep down in the quiet space of your heart:

• Am I mindful of the words I speak each day, taking care that they are simple and true?
• How important is integrity in my life? Do my choices and actions show that it’s a priority to me?
• Am I willing to let Christ’s light show me where I can be more truthful with myself and others?
• Is there someone in my life who serves (or could serve) as a mirror for my honesty?
• Do I turn to God for guidance on matters of conscience and care? And am I open to doing so?

RESOURCES:

• OT Psalm 25:4-5
• NT John 8: 31-32
• Macy, Howard. “Becoming the Real Deal: Building a Life of Integrity.” Beane Lecture, 2014. William Penn University. Available at: https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1446&context=ccs
• Cooper, Wilmer. A Living Faith. https://www.amazon.com/Living-Faith-Historical-Quaker-Beliefs/dp/0944350127