A Community of Truthful Speech
For Meditation (Ed Satterfield)
When the truth is not told, life breaks apart. When we cannot be sure that people are being straight with us, life becomes very difficult and certainty is difficult to gain. When we seek to get work done on our homes, explore treatment for our health, or choose between insurance plans, we have to do our own research to make sure we will get what we are paying for. With polarized news sources, we have to work extra hard to weed through bias, explore multiple sources, and think carefully and critically to get the real truth about what is happening. Marriage is a 50-50 proposition statistically. How can we trust the person we are making a lifelong commitment to? It all breeds skepticism and uncertainty.
Jesus addresses a critical foundation for everyday life when He calls us to be a community of truthful speech. Since the garden, humans “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans 1:18). Failing to trust God at His word, we put our trust in people and things that are ultimately a lie – they cannot deliver what they promise. The result is that life is broken. We don’t see ourselves or our interactions accurately any longer. We fail to see our own faults clearly and instead shift the blame. Getting clear on why we have the problems we have is impossible and finding remedies are likewise elusive. The failure to find and know what is true keeps us in an insoluble dilemma.
Jesus is our only hope. He is the Word made flesh who revels the truth to we who are stuck in a world of deception. He is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). In His faithfulness to live and die for us, He breaks the cycle of suppressing the truth and shines His light revealing the truth about ourselves and our problems. When we come to know and trust Jesus and His Word – the truth sets us free. In restoring trust in the only One who speaks the truth, we find life restored and brokenness mended. Jesus is the foundation for any certainty.
Jesus calls those who follow Him to a radical honesty. We are to be people who mean what we say and tell the truth. We are to be people who keep their word and fulfill their promise. Set free from our deception, we can see ourselves and our problems clearly again. Following Jesus, we can know the truth and it will restore us and our relationships. All flows from our connection to the One who is Truth. Trusting Him and learning the truth from Him, depending on the guidance and work of the Holy Spirit, we become His agents for healing and restoration. The believing community of followers of Jesus can speak the truth in love and see Him heal us and our world.
Passages for further study: Romans 1:16-25; James 3:5-10; John 1:1-5, 12-14; Ephesians 4:15-25, 29-32; 1 John 1:5-9
Matthew 5:33-37
33 “Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’ 34 But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. 36 And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. 37 All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.