Knowing and Speaking

                 “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)

                Since we have been considering wisdom off and on recently, I thought I’d continue with the subject today. Jesus was speaking to people who had believed Him. And as usual, His hearers misunderstood Him.  They proclaimed that, as descendants of Abraham, they had never been enslaved to anyone. What about Egypt, the Medes and Persians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, and the Romans?  Then, of course, they were slaves to sin, to unbelief, and to mistaken beliefs. But, no, they had never been enslaved.

                But let’s deal with Jesus’ statement for a moment because it’s bold. If the people who had believed Him so far would hold to His teachings and become His disciples (v 31) then they would know the truth. That suggests that those who had believed Him didn’t necessarily hold to His teachings. They did not necessarily become His disciples. And failing this, they failed to know the truth that would set them free. And what is the truth? The truth is reality. It is the thing that if we work within it, we are practicing wisdom, and if we fight against it, we are demonstrating folly  (and fighting against God.)

                Of course, every worldview is preached by its faithful as being the truth even if that worldview maintains that there is no the truth. The question we must ask is which worldview best describes reality as it is rather than as we want it to be. The moment “as we want it to be” gets involved, we’re no longer dealing with reality.

                Some people are quick to point out that the greatest commandment is to love. That’s almost correct. We are to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strengths. We cannot do that if we reject His teaching to placate those who are not gods. The second part of that law to love is to love our neighbors as ourselves.  In order to properly and healthfully love them or ourselves, we must deal with the reality of who they and we are. When it comes to the choice between what God says and what they say, it also comes to the choice of which will be our god(s). The one to whom we bow is our god and determines what we may believe as the truth.

                So, what do we do with the idea of “speaking the truth in love”? That depends on your definition of love, and there are a number of possibilities. Among them are eros (sexual love), phila (brotherly or friendly love), storge  (familial love), agape (selfless, unconditional compassion) and mania (obsessive emotional intensity, in which I’ll include a love for some food, TV show, book, sports figure/team, etc.)  This is why when someone says “Love is love,” I have to bite my tongue to ask whether the love of which they speak is the same as a love for pizza. Is the love involved between a mother and child eros?

                There is some sense in which the best of the kinds of love seek what is best for the beloved. We don’t really care what happens to the pizza we love, but we do care what happens to our pets, our friends, our families, etc. By extension, we’re supposed to care what happens to those to whom we speak truth. That requires that we be as gentle and kind as we can and should be, but not that we bow to their idea of truth. We must spare their feelings if we can, but not at the cost of truth.  I suggest that we begin speaking the truth in love by adamantly refusing to call people names or otherwise seek to demean them.