“You can’t handle the truth!” It is the legendary line of script that Col. Nathan Jessep (played by Jack Nicholson) barked in response to the goading of Naval lawyer, Lt. Daniel Kaffee (played by Tom Cruise) in the 1992 motion picture, “A Few Good Men.”As it happened, truth won the day in that story. Eventually.
“A Few Good Men” shows the power of truth, to bring about justice when it is finally revealed, and how it keeps people in situations of subjugation when it is hidden.
Truth is like wisdom.
“Wisdom is shown to be right by what it does,” said Jesus in Matthew 11:19.In this verse, wisdom is profiled operating as truth. It eventually arrives and once it does, it reveals.
There is nothing more compelling over the face of the earth or in heaven as truth.
Truth is the very basis and dividing line of righteousness and wickedness, good and evil. Revealed, it has the power to condemn or acquit. Hidden, people are protected who have no right to be protected. Covered up, harm is done to the most vulnerable, and those harms continue and are compounded by the scarcity of justice. And yet, when truth is brought to light, there is great potential for freedom, for healing, for justice.
The truth is costly. God spares no expense in defending what is right.
Truth is a light like a lamp at night.
Truth facilitates the fullness of true sight.
Truth brings forth opportunities to decide.
Decisions based in truth are powerful, just as decisions will be weighed according to the measure of truth.
Forgiveness is foundationally conversant in truth.
Once truth is determined and faced, relationally, forgiveness is possible.
A SHARED TRUTH THAT CAN BE CELEBRATED
Once a relational situation is understood for what it is worth—once the truth is determined and accepted—forgiveness is the next logical outcome for parties close to God. That is, when two or all parties accept the truth, or it is a shared truth that can indeed be celebrated. When this happens, there is true celebration, for truth has won the day, and all may share in the love that truth opens the door to.
Truth facilitates love.
Where truth is welcome, love prevails instantly.
Shared truth that can be celebrated gives all parties power to love because all parties have received love. The relational safety enjoyed is a bountiful blessing to all. Forgiveness, we can be sure, has been inherently part of these interactions.“The Lord Jesus himself said: It is more blessed to give than to receive.”(Acts 20:35)
Relationally speaking, truth offers relationships fresh opportunities at reconciliation, but for that to occur there is a need for mature parties on all sides to be humble enough to own their portion of contribution to conflict and to be gracious—to seek to be forgiven and to forgive.
Truly the power of truth in relationships is for the mature one to reach forth in humility, offering their wrong to the other person to be forgiven, so then justice is done, healing commences, and love holds sway.
TRUTH TESTS US ALL
Truth presents many uncomfortable realities for all of us.
None of us live this life without needing to face No matter how much we might be tempted to deny the truth, the truth will inevitably need to be faced. And yet there are so many temptations to deny it.
The truth can be very painful—very much in the vein of us not being able to handle the truth. We are tempted to come up with all kinds of justifications and even excuses to defend ourselves, and of course, it can be difficult to discern the difference between someone speaking truth to us and them treating us harshly and unjustly.
Truth tests our discernment, it tests our humility, and mostly it tests our heart.
Even how we receive injustice toward us is a truth about who we are, and where our heart is at.
Whether a truth threatens our confidence or the truth is something we cannot change the truth can seem larger than we would ever like.
But, still, it is the truth that will set us free.
Only truth.
Only in facing the truth is there the power of transcendence.
The truth that sets us free is the truth that we face.
Truly nothing stands against us when we can face the truth. But standing in all the truth is often too much for us. Praise God that perfection is not expected of us. But at least we may enjoy opportunities to journey in the truth day by day.
Each new day and indeed each moment ushers forth new choices for courage. If we have enough courage to party with the truth, and enough composure for kindness and graciousness, we can speak and do deeds of truth in love.
Forgiveness is at the intersection of both—truth and love. Only after the truth has arrived are love and forgiveness possible. Forgiveness is the grandest exemplification of love.
The concept of forgiveness being in its very nature, love, is the Cross.
TRUTH INVITES HUMILITY
Truth, of course, is an eternal invitation. How will we receive the truth as it arrives on our doorstep? Will the truth find us willing hosts? Or will it feel unwelcome? Humility is the key.
The first truth we must deal with if we are to party with both truth and forgiveness is humility. We must overcome, or at least acknowledge our sinful pride.
The grandest paradox in terms of personal character:
It takes humility to acknowledge pride.
We cannot transact with the truth without dealing with that externalization of locus that makes us want to cast the blame AWAY from ourselves. But every time we cast the blame toward others, we lose all power and agency to receive the impetus to change necessary that truth might actually change us.
Humility is the bedrock of growth.
There is no empowerment for life without humility.
“A look within, honesty for sin.”
Humility is the biggest ongoing test of our lives. That, or truth. Perhaps we can imagine truth and humility being close cousins or even brothers or sisters. When we are humble, truth is no threat at all.
Truth demands humility.
To face truth, we need humility.
But equally…
Humility prepares a heart for truth.
Humility is agency for truth.
Truth finds an ally in a humble person.
GOD, TRUTH, JUSTICE, FORGIVENESS
It does need to be said that God is bringing forth justice in this post-# #MeToo and post-#ChurchToo era. God is more interested in truth and justice than any of us can imagine. We too easily forget that God sees everything, including our own sin.
Where people have been abused, harmed, and traumatized, God is bringing justice to those situations, and the antecedent to such justice is our recognizing that we ought to be out of the way of such judgments. We do this when we give the assailant and predator over to the Lord in forgiveness, essentially trusting that God’s justice is truer than anything we could execute.
When we forgive, we honor the part of truth that affects us in terms of our response.
Reactive abuse is still abuse.
It is up to us to take the teachings of Jesus seriously.
Followers of Jesus know an eye-for-an-eye is inconsistent with the ways of Jesus.
There is perhaps no better example of trusting God than waiting patiently for His justice.
God understands and empathizes with our anger at the injustices done to us.
TRUTH URGES US TOWARD THE LOVE OF FORGIVENESS
God is a God of truth, and He urges us to live a life worthy of the love of forgiveness because this life transacts with the truth. Think of the significance of the word, “worthy,” as in “living a life worthy of your calling,” per Ephesians 4:1.
Truth calls each of us forth into The Day—the Day the Lord has made (Psalm 118:24). It shines like that light in the night, making visible what was concealed by darkness. Light that reveals what is plainly seen gives us the opportunity to transact with the truth and reconcile it.
All of life depends on the love that is in forgiveness, for anything else in this hard life leads to bitterness when the heart is hurt. Life is in reconciliation, and forgiveness deals not only in truth but it leads us onward in truth in that truth continues to herald the way to freedom.
Truth reveals many stark realities, yet there are so many people living so many versions of life that do not resemble life at all. So many people despise the truth, reflecting a point-blank refusal to transact in and with the truth.
Truly one of the best ways to ensure we transact with the truth is to forgive.
To forgive is to face the inconvenient and uncomfortable truth and to believe for even better.
To forgive is to invest faith in truth prevailing.
The God of truth heals us even as we forgive.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Tribework
Featured Image by Michael Olsen on Unsplash
[…] Open the full article on the kingdomwinds.com site […]