“Speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.” (Ephesians 4:15)
We are urged to hold to both truth and love.
However, lately I’ve been wondering if there isn’t a default mode for each of us. No one perfectly balances the two. We lean in one direction or the other.
I’ve been wondering what difference it makes whether you are more of a “truth person” or more of a “love person.”
How could we devise a Myers-Briggs kind of evaluation to determine this?
Do you warm to these words: objectivity, absolutes, doctrine, right? Does it often seem to you that words like love, tolerance, and compassion can become very sloppy?
Or do you warm to these words: nuance, mercy, tolerance, and unconditional? Do words like doctrine and orthodoxy often sound like weapons to destroy instead of pillars to support?
Again, let me say that we all know both are needed. Truth without love is but a “clanging cymbal.” And love without the guidance of truth can be harmful.
And yet . . . my guess is that all of us are inspired more by one of those words than by the other. And I would also guess that this difference could explain a lot about our political inclinations, our worship preferences, our family styles, etc.
What do you think?
My guess is that the greatest of these is love. I think I read that somewhere.
I am a harmful clanging symbol born from frustration; I have been shown grace without returning it on this blog. I can definitely say my blue collar theoology has caused more “somehting” without the grace and love shown me at this blog.
Love slows truth and this frustrates me.
In the Mark account of the rich young ruler he uses the language…”Jesus looked at him and loved him”. I always thought that was a good insight to Jesus ministry. Counter to our natural instincts, sometimes love hurts.
I’m not sure if I tend to respond to one more than the other as a rule. But I am convinced that neither really means much without the other.
Maybe this is telling about me….I think truth is the core. It is what makes us different. I believe that non-Christians are capable of love. I would even go so far as to say that they can be quite good at it. But truth is different. Truth belongs to Jesus and he has shared it with us. But truth without love, to me is not truth at all.
I don’t know mean this as argumentative as it might sound, Kyle, but Jesus didn’t say that the world would know we were his disciples by our truth, but by our love for one another. It’s easy to forget just how radical pure agape love is.
(That first sentence should have begun, “I don’t mean this as…”)
I wave the banner of eclecticism - embracing both, rejecting neither truth nor love. Hopefully. I’ll grow more into this balanced life.
And Leland, your response at 8:57 this morning caused me to want to reach through cyberspace with a huge hug for you. Love you, brother and am so glad you continue to share your thoughts here.
I have always said that there is a fine line between honesty and kindness. I think you’ve stated the same idea, just in a different way. It’s difficult to find a balance.
“Truth belongs to Jesus and he has shared it with us. But truth without love, to me is not truth at all.”
Kyle, I wouldn’t say that truth “belongs” to Jesus or even that Jesus came to teach us truth (although his teachings are indeed true) as if it were some inanimate object that could be passed around. Jesus is Truth. There is a mystery there that is too big for words but I think the idea is that when we say that Jesus is the Way the Truth and the Life, he means that truth is embodied in the person of Jesus and truth can only be known through a loving relationship with him. Through that relationship we come to know Jesus as Truth, and what living with him is all about.
While I feel I am more “warm” for words like mercy, etal., I feel like a disappointing trend is for people who espouse such things to still speak with vitriol about those for whom “absolutes” are so important- not just the other way around. The difference in their attitude about each other seems very hard to distinguish. Of the more than 2 million hits on this site, how many have been in the interest of some controversy among believers and the sparring that results here? There is so much we do not know and what we do know is cast in the light of our environment. Anyone who claims complete understanding of any topic in the world is mistaken. Though I believe God gave up His Son for us, I do not understand it. I suppose that is truth even without complete understanding. I am not sure to what degree our understanding has on how we speak truth, though. Perhaps Jesus has the ultimate truth and we should just have trust. That forces us to rely more on Him than to lean on our own understanding thereby making us more free to love. Of course, I’m just a layman who plays with cows and goats, so what do I know? I just know that all the bickering makes me tired.
It is becoming clearer and clearer to me as I get older that love’s primacy is unchallenged in the kingdom of God.
Fortunately, there is no obvious reason that love and truth are incompatible; in fact, although eros can flourish (for a time) in the absence of truth, agape cannot. By definition, agape seeks the best for the one loved, which requires a clear-eyed view of truth. I do not help you achieve or realize what is best for you if I operate on the basis of (a) unchallenged preconceptions, (b) careless self-delusion, or (c) flattery or demonization, all of which are perversions of truth in some way.
qb
Great questions.
My default is definitely “love”. But just as the Myers-Briggs is made up of sliding scales, I think we would do well to be aware of our imbalances and seek to stay as close to the middle as we can on the truth/love continuum.
Sometimes actions that may seem “loving” are actually enabling, and therefore become unloving in the long run. On the other extreme being so dogmatic and “right” can actually become wrong as we miss the point like the Pharisees so often did.
A thought about truth: as I am rearing children I see the importance of teaching them about how important honesty is. It would be so easy to let things slide because I am too busy to deal with piddly things. But if one of my children tells me they brushed their teeth and the toothbrush is dry, then the dishonesty becomes the issue more than the teeth!
Trite as this may sound, I think truth is heard and exists best within the confines of a loving relationship. While we may all have a default, it is hard sometimes to be heard on either end of the scale if there is no balance. All sugar and no reality make me nod my head and often I devalue the words. All truth (usually with aggression) and no love make me consider the source and weigh the words. However, when the people in my life who I am in community with speak truth into my life and help me see myself in ways I am blind to on my own, I emerge a healthier version of myself and in deeper community with the truth teller. Truth, love, community it is always hard but good.
Community is good but is there a reason why we seem to be hearing it much more these days? Every blog I read seems to talk about community. I like community but I also like privacy.
Allison
It is hard for me to respond to your comment because I do not know where you are encountering the idea of community and what the given context is for it. But from where I sit, I wonder if the reason we hear more about it now than before is because we need it more now than before. As the American Christian experience continues to unfold it is ravaged by the same sense of individualism that is hurting the larger culture in which we find ourselves.
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control, discipleship, intimacy, mercy, justice, generosity, hospitality all seem to grow in community.
God at his core is a relational God who revealed himself to us in community with the Son and the Spirit.
Please do not hear me say there is not room for solitude. It is essential.
Just my thoughts.
The older I get (nearly 75) the more I struggle with this. My early life was shaped by truth (as I interpreted it) at the expense of love. Amy’s response “just as the Myers-Briggs is made up of sliding scales, I think we would do well to be aware of our imbalances and seek to stay as close to the middle as we can on the truth/love continuum” resonates with me and motivates me to prayerful discernment.
Matt,
I wouldn’t disagree with you at all. I don’t think I wrote anything contrary to that. Maybe I was using a more worldly version of love (the kind that looks very good and is lacking only in truth). I had a good friend in college who I always thought was just a tremendous person. He was very kind and gentle with all. He was self-sacrificing (more than I was). The kind of guy who would do anything for anybody. I would always think, someday this guy is going to be a tremendous servant for Christ. It seems a bit insincere to me say that he didn’t know how to love. But I do know that he didn’t yet accept the truth (he wrestled with it). So was it love that set me and him apart? Maybe it should’ve been. Maybe I should’ve been better at love. But I just don’t think I was.
Joel,
I agree with you. I was using truth as a concept. I objectify it that way a little, but my point is still that in my opinion you have to make a conscious decision to follow Christ before you can really have truth (I’m not 100% on this absolutism). However, shades of love can be grasped outside of Christ. Love still originates from God but it can be embraced to a point without endorsing God or his word.
Allison,
To me community is simply a more accurate description of relationships that exist between a group rather than just 2 people or beings. It also implies that my relationship with 1 can have an impact on another simply because we are all in community. A strengthening of a single relationship (me and God or me and a brother or sister) has benefit for other members and their relationships. Maybe community and family are somewhat interchangeable but in our society if you use the term family too much with respect to church, people start thinking you’re in a cult. So community is much more agreeable to post-moderns and makes good sense to moderns as well. Just my .02.
One of my favorite all time camp/devotional songs.
Love, love, love, love, the gospel in one word is love!
And a favorite quote:
“Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: “Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love.” “If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us.” Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.
We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: “Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word”.
Martin Luther King from speech delivered 4 April 1967 at Riverside Church in New York City
Peace.
There are many times when the greatest act of love is to tell someone the truth. Did I read some where, “….speaking the truth in love”?
It was at the risk of life and limb that Paul continued to tell the truth about the futility of religion and to make clear the claims of Christ. True love is always risky, edgy, and requires faith.
Perhaps before we can honestly talk about truth vs. Love we must define which “truth”. If the “truth” is that our church is better than yours,and our pet doctine is superior to yours, and our worship methodology is more genuine than yours, then it would not be a loving act to communicate that. But, if your message is the good news about Christ and His love for wicked sinners, then to withhold that message is not loving, but sinful.
His peace,
Royce
I find that I have a hard time separating the two… it seems to me that Truth without Love is problematic in many ways. I would say that Love is the foundational structure and carrier for Truth.
vapor
My ego would love to always be aware of “speaking the truth in love”. So…I’ll speak the truth. I struggle with this at times and even to the point of being truthful with myself with love much less others. I cling to the rest of the verse, growing up in Him. I love His ways which are not mine. “He” will grow me up! Praise His name!
ZZpuck, thanks for those words from MLK. I am moved to tears. The only hope we have is that love will win in the end. That is the hope of this season….if not, what are we celebrating anyway?
“Leaning in one direction” is probably pretty normal. The problems seem to crop up when one (truth or love) is favored almost at the exclusion of the other. It sure looks like a backlash is occurring. There is this disdain for the old Bible banging of several years (decades) back. Who wants to come across as shoving truth down someone’s throat?! So the backlash is a tolerant love that seems to never speak truth. As in most things in life, wouldn’t a balance be nice? The Christ followers I am drawn to most are those who put Jesus on display through their love while not being embarrassed to speak the truth by the power of the Spirit. I witnessed a balance example today at a crisis pregnancy center. The counselor I was shadowing told a girl who had come in for a pregnancy test how deeply God loves her and how she was made in His image…. the ultimate love. She continually reached out with love as she told the girl about God’s plan for sexual integrity…. speaking truth. It was truly beautiful. The girl was touched by His love deeply and spoken words of truth.
I pray that we will find as Christians a center. A complete balance. Is that what Jesus was praying in John 17? A Oneness.
God help us to stop judging others in order to be self-righteous. Help us to be guided by both love and truth. Let us see your Church as a place where people find both truth and love. May we ask Christians display to the world both truth and love that they may see you in us because you are love. Help us to love despite our opinions and differences. Let us understand that you have made each person differently, given each person different backgrounds, talents, gifts, to be a wonderful masterpiece of what is your Church. Help us to grow more or and more in truth and love. Help us to answer the prayer of Unity.
I like the take of John Paul Lederach who says that reconciliation is the place where truth, peace, justice, and mercy meet. Truth-telling is critical for there to be true forgiveness (mercy), peace, and justice. But truth-telling that is distanced from those ends is either hurtful or incendiary.
Mike,
You might be able to develop an instrument to help measure where we are but more significant might be the why. In my opinion our default is most determined by the spiritual road we have traveled thus far. Those who have never attended one of our lectureships or colleges or Tulsa workshop or attended a congregation whose elders and ministers have attended such will probably predominantly default to doctrine.
Same is probably true for those who read only books by members of our brotherhood [c of c] and only those “conservative” authors then. Same would be true if they attend a congregation where the teachers have all the answers. Same would be true if they have not been involved in ministry to prison, to the down and out because there you see the need for love.
My thoughts.
Very interesting post. I probably lean more to love than truth, though I want to hold truth up too. What really gets me is those who call themselves Christians and seem to miss both truth and love in their speech. You know, those kind who protest saying “God hates….” Such a statement misses both truth and love.
Rex
Ithaca Church of Christ
Ithaca, NY
Which “truth” are we talking about here?
If we mean truth in the sense of a way of life that Christ calls us to, then truth and love are found in our participation in the life of God. Truth and love in this sense have less to do with us possessing it, and more to do with it possessing us.
But if by truth we mean a set of propositions, we’ll always be in disagreement about these things. I would like to think that I’m a loving kind of guy, but I know myself–I like good reasons and good arguments, and I too easily get annoyed by people who disagree with me (working on that). Problem is, I share very little in common with others in my tradition who identify themselves on the “truth” side of the scale. In fact, our “truths” are often competing. Which brings us back to why we need love.
The TRUTH is that the world needs more LOVE.
False dichotomy.
I think we do have “vocabulary” preferences, but I don’t think we can live in the LOVE / TRUTH dualism any more than we can live in the Helenistic SPIRIT / BODY dualism. Either you are becoming a more loving and truthful person, or you are becoming a more unloving and deceived (and deceitful) person.
Truth and love are inseparable and travel up and down the spectrum together.
I liked reading in two separate responses that “Jesus is the Way, the TRUTH and the Life,” and “God is Love.” If God in His Persons is both Truth and Love, then we can understand Truth and Love as being something like the persons of God: distinct, but also one. And I think that explains the response of a third poster, and my own belief, that as we grow and learn, we are more able to understand how truth and love are not separable, and that when we try to separate them, we are incapable of finding either one.
Our knowlwedge of love is explained to us in the word of truth. The more we explore the scriptures the more we will learn about how to love.The more we look at the glory of Jesus then the greater emphasis will be in becoming like Him. As some have already stated , it is both , it is a balance.
Truth and love are not mutually exclusive. Being “true” to someone means loving them. Sadly, we think of truth as being a weapon, and one of the most massive destruction at that.
Pure truth and pure love are mutually exclusive. I am talking about scientific truth, not some truth we have deemed truth without evidence. It would be more accurate to say pure faith and pure love are intertwined.
Truth is clouded by respect and also ego. People who have spent their lives on one single project are reluctant not to do some “gymnastics” to make it fit into modern reality, while denying their projects obvious contradictions to the real world.
They cannot see change and out of respect and love they are honored, much as tradition is honored. I have always heard in church we want to take baby steps out love for our brother. If we are taking steps at all it must be toward mutually agreed upon truth. Why not wholesale change to the truth we know; because of love.
Truth or love? Do we need brain or heart? We need both completely. Be careful trying for “balance”–one foot in ice and one foot in boiling water may be “balanced” but not useful.
The late Reuel Lemmons observed, “Unity at the expense of doctrine is unacceptable, and doctrine at the expense of unity is obnoxious” (One Body, Feb. 1984).
When we speak the truth in love , we have to first know the truth. How do we know anything about real love without first having it revealed to us in the word of God. We hear the truth and then we apply it. We must learn to discern and understand what it means to love.
edwardslv,
I don’t necessarily disagree with you but Paul does use the terms truth and weapon in the same context in 2 Cor. 6.
“3We put no stumbling block in anyone’s path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. 4Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; 5in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; 6in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; 7in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; 8through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; 9known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; 10sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”
I also note that love is in that passage. I would say love and truth are both weapons although they are not to be used against humanity but rather against evil on behalf of humanity.
Ray B,
“How do we know anything about real love without first having it revealed to us in the word of God.”
Ask Ghandi (know he’s dead) or a whole host of others who love but do not consider themselves people of the book.
You know this is a topic of great frustration for many us raised in the cofC. Because our poor hermeneutic and fundamentalist application of wooden literalism in biblical text it appears too many that we can only have one or the other. If we have this idea that we can only have one or the other truth or love then we have serious problems with our hermeneutic, and in a sense are saying that one part of the Bible is more important than the other.
At the root of this dilemma is CENI with an emphasis of restoring the work worship and organization of the early church. So “truth” was filtered and understood through the lens of ecclesiology driven by CENI trying to replicate any forms of doing church found in the NT. By default the nature of God was understood through what he authorized for the work worship and organization of the church. Very little effort was given to understanding truth through the nature of God by his Spirit. Jesus said that he was “the way the truth and the life.” A much better way to understand truth is not trying to determine how, what, and who can or cannot do something during a 1-2 hour assembly based on and inconsistent hermeneutic but rather understanding the nature of God of how he reveals himself through consistent contextual study of the whole Bible. Any time we use the Bible to hurt, neglect, publicly castigate or put others down we are wrong. The more we understand the nature of God in context the more we will see that truth is much more about the Spirit of God and not replicating the forms of the early church.
To love in the way God defines in His word. Not the way men define it.
Ray B,
You can only define love in human terms; this is the limits of your human vocabulary. Therefore the human definition is all you can practice.
Leland, Anyone who looks to the holy scriptures can understand the love of God . We will always grow in that understanding. It is illustated in the life and death of Jesus for when you see the Son then you will see the Father.
You know the fact that we are having this conversation shows how poorly we have interpreted the Bible. The idea that there is a balance between truth and love suggest that the two are in conflict with each other that the more you have of one then some how the less you have of the other has always seemed absurd to me. If the hermeneutic that we use to interpret the Bible, understand God and do church leads us to the thinking that there is a middle road position and that you can’t have more of one without less of the other; then in a sense are we not saying the Bible contradicts itself? For some many of us who grew up in the cofC truth some how ethnocentrically defaults to “the work worship and organization of the church”. What can and can not be done, who can and can’t do it, how it must or must not be done during a 1-2 hour assembly a week is most of what we understood to be truth. I the idea of love being the most important thing in the church as Jesus, Paul, Peter and John all give love the superlative in the their NT writing was not the bulk of what we spent our time focusing on and preaching. Some how the idea of chaos in the church and everybody just living and doing whatever they wanted with no moral foundation came to be understood as love. Neither of the ideas of love or truth which became prevalent in the normal cofC circles is biblical! Yet these poor understandings are the reason that we are having this conversation in this blog, and it is also why the idea of the two being polar to one another and some kind of balance or middle road idea is pure myth and pie in the sky. Here are two quotes from the scripture showing that truth and love are not polar to one another but rather synthesized into one divine being “Jesus is truth” and “God is love”! Any questions?
As I read through I wonder what our definition of TRUTH is. I often think when people talk of “speaking truth” that their “truth” is often their perspective or opinion. Since the definition of truth is Jesus, then only Jesus is “TRUTH” as I see it. Truth is unchanging or it is not truth. What is non-changing except for God. It is not science or culture or any aspect of life that I can see except for immutable laws of God and his person. I sometimes find myself using this scripture to try to find a “loving way” to state my opinion and am convicted as I read this blog. I believe this to only be about telling the “TRUTH” of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and doing it with love. As someone already pointed out, it by our love that the world will know us. In that Love is the door God uses to get the truth into other lives. This leaves the result up to God. The other process where I try to open the door with truth as I understand it, is me trying to get a result. I think I want God’s result. May the Lord richly bless all.
Also as I read Bobbie’s note from 12.17 I am reminded of my Grandfather who now resides in heaven and how he spent some of the last hours of his life I was ever to spend with him when he was well into his 80’s, making sure I knew the TRUTH of God’s LOVE and how un-surpassable it is. At his funeral his pastor spoke of the hours per week they spent taking one fruit of the spirit at a time and growing in them. I read through them tonight I see love listed often. I think God gave us the plan in 1John 4:19 We love him, because he first loved us. Scripturally, it appears that Truth comes in the person of Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ came because; John 3:16 For God so LOVED the world.. Who knows one day I may remember this post and consider it a “perspective or opinion”
Jesus Loves You
So TRUTH came as a result of LOVE…