It’s kind of weird to think of the fact that everyone has their own relationship with the Truth.
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But before I jump in and unpack that statement, I need to apologize in advance because this post is a bit heavy. I’m frustrated today — not with someone or something. I’m just frustrated with myself and my own very complicated relationship with the Truth. So I’m going to try to work some of that out today, and I hope maybe you’ll still join me.
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For me at least, “Truth” is a living, breathing fire that guides my life, and compels me toward one thing or away from something else. It lives outside of me and inside of me, too, and it’s the thing I pray about every single day. Truth is the heat inside of me that makes me seek and yearn…and thrive. Truth gives my life passion and reason.
Truth is the centerpiece of life as far as I’m concerned, and while I believe that there is an Absolute Truth that comes directly from God, the fact that every person was purposely created with a free will is the very thing that ultimately makes Truth relational. How one person interprets something might differ from how I interpret it, and that reality creates the slippery slope we’re always climbing up when we’re trying to do life with others.
But the way I see it, there is a difference between my truth and my honesty.
My truth is connected to my soul, whereas my honesty is more related to how I manage the details of my truth for the consumption of others. I laugh at myself sometimes when I’m editing one of my trickier posts for this blog because I’m often tempted to write a statement with “honestly” as the lead word as a way to buffer things somehow.
I catch that word showing up all the time when I’m editing The Imposition Tour posts in particular, and I realize now that I’m just trying to protect my raw truth by pleading for my readers not to judge me too harshly because at least I’m “being honest.” In my mind, honesty has a social coating that truth seems to lack, and that coating somehow lubricates my worries a bit, I guess. Honesty has opinion mixed into it, and so even when I’m self-reflecting and openly sharing my real thoughts, my honesty controls the narrative in a way that my truth simply can’t.
That’s because my truth might actually offend you.
Ugh. That kills me to write because I can’t stand how awful I feel when I hurt someone with a careless delivery of my truth! But Truth is offensive sometimes inside of this culture of ours, and no matter how I try to buffer that fact in the things I’m trying to write, I can’t get around it. Truth stands even when I can’t sort it all out for someone else, or find a way to make it seem different in the eyes of others.
There is so much carelessness going on in this world. People seem to freely blast one another with their words, opinions, ideas, and blatant versions of honesty in the name of their politics or their religion. None of that is a perfect stand-in for Truth, yet it’s often presented as such. I want to be able to share my actual truth and not just my honesty, but I don’t know how to sometimes!
The fact is, I sincerely hurt when I hear stories where people have bashed one another with an “agenda called truth” because I see how easily we as a culture tend to disregard the fragility of the human containers where real Truth actually resides. In my eyes, we aren’t taking care of each other very well, and we’re not preserving the individual space Truth needs to thrive so it can be revealed inside of our free will. Absolute Truth exists regardless of our will to see it. But Absolute Truth becomes a part of us when we let it in because we desire it — not because it broke us.
To me, it feels like the “collective we” is trying to squeeze and force worldly meaning into Truth that doesn’t belong, and that effort chokes off my voice because it creates a loaded kind of “truth” that doesn’t ring True for me. So I often catch myself trying to come up with a “better way” to express myself in a careful, more guarded manner so I don’t expose myself to a battle I didn’t mean to instigate. And for me at least, God shows up in my fight to understand His purpose, His dominion, and His Truth in my life — not in the battles I end up waging for or against others.
There’s a great saying that my mom used to say — but I’ve also heard it said by a few of my adorable Southern friends, and it makes me think every time I hear it: “So-and-so isn’t one to let the truth get in the way of a good story.” As a fiction writer, that saying is perfect!
But as a blogger who is looking for a way to genuinely connect with others, the question I’m pondering today goes more like this:
How often do I let a good story get in the way of my truth?
It’s just one more thought to think about, I suppose…
