The following is the script from our blog broadcast on the 16th August 2021
Mark: Hello and welcome to God’s Gym, the podcast where we consider how we can reach our full potential as human beings, physically, mentally, and spiritually. Jesus said he had come that we might have life in abundance, and we ask, what is abundant life and how can we live it?
I am Mark, and with me is Graeme and we are both Army Chaplains and today we are again talking about making decisions and specifically about telling the truth. Telling the truth is a commandment in the bible, one out of only ten:
"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour" (Exodus 20:16).
So we know that God takes truth telling seriously. Indeed, Jesus uses the word to describe his very being when he says he is the way the truth and the life. But when it comes to the rest of us there is a bit of a challenge isn’t there?
Graeme: It reminds me of a story Mark…A minister noticed a group of young boys standing around a small stray dog. “What are you doing boys?” “Telling lies,” said one of the boys. “The one who tells the biggest lie gets the dog.”
The minister was shocked. “Why, when I was your age,” he said, “I never thought of telling a lie.” The boys looked at one another, a little crestfallen. Finally, one of them shrugged and said, “I guess he wins the dog.”
Mark: Telling the truth doesn’t come easily to us, and recently as we have seen in politics alone, telling untruths or partial truths has become quite popular! Well let’s start at the beginning and I want to begin by blaming the children. Have you noticed how we have to teach children to tell the truth whereas lies and deceit seem to come easily and naturally?
Graeme: I am sure we have all had experience of this with all our children – but our youngest took things to a new level just last week – denying that she had reached up onto the kitchen counter and taken most of a bag of sweets…instead stating boldly that Marcus did it. Marcus is the family dog…
Mark: There is the apocryphal story of George Washington, the first president of the USA that goes like this:
When Washington was six years old, he received an axe as a gift and when he went out to play with it, he damaged his father’s cherry tree. When his father discovered what he had done, he became angry and confronted him. Young George bravely said, “I cannot tell a lie…I did cut it with my axe.” Washington’s father embraced him and rejoiced that his son’s honesty was worth more than a thousand trees.
Now apart from the fact his dad set him up by giving him an axe at aged six, seriously what was he expecting to happen? However, the story is making a big thing about telling the truth. Why is that?
Graeme: It is a big deal because from the beginning of time the issue of truth has had a huge impact on all of us. (Right back in the Garden…etc… people have faced consequences for not telling the truth – but also for standing up for the truth!)
Mark: So, we know that truth is a powerful force in our lives: Truth joins us together as human beings. Truthfulness makes social bonds and lying, and hypocrisy break them. If you doubt this, consider what happens when you find out that someone has lied to you. You feel less inclined to trust them next time, and less inclined to trust other people more generally. It is the same for others, if we tell lies, generally we are found out at some time and it seriously impacts how people see us. It also affects the bottom line.
Graeme: It is true that the people that I have felt most connected to/with in life are those that I have taken the step to let down all the barriers and take off all the masks and be entirely truthful with – about how I am doing, how my family really are, how my relationship with God is…It feels good to be honest – because it’s really hard work to lie!
Mark: Truth enables us to do business and work together. In court, we require witnesses to swear to tell ‘the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’, because only that way can justice be delivered. But that is also the way business is done. Whether it is the dentist or your car mechanic you need them to be truthful and not just want to fleece you of every penny you have.
But the most important point is that truth make us more resilient. We can relax because we are not hiding anything and as the bible says, Truth creates freedom – ‘truth will set you free’ – not just a truth but truth altogether. And that freedom means among other things, that you can relax because no one is going to catch you out. But truth also means we are truthful to ourselves as well. There is nothing worse than someone who is not self-aware. We have all seen Britain’s got Talent where someone has been told they can sing, and they believe it themselves and are devastated when the panel don’t also see it! Self-delusion can be painful.
Graeme: Why are we not honest with ourselves – yes about the things we are maybe not so good at in some cases – but also with the stuff we actually are. We don’t like to say ‘I can do that’ or talk about our strengths at all. Honesty is a huge part of resilience – for the reasons you’ve said Mark but also because living a lie is just a constant building of pressure and stress. Even if we aren’t hurting anyone else…and it’s simply about presenting a version of ourselves that isn’t accurate…eventually the pressure will end in explosion!
Mark: There are costs to not being truthful. I have worked in some parts of the world when bribery is a normal part of doing business and everyone owes something to someone else. But cultures that are given to corruption are often the most impoverished of the world, since it is more difficult and risky to do business where there is such a low level of trust. Similarly, if there is a culture of distrust at work then there will be higher costs of doing business. We went to one garage for a few years and each time I went they replaced all our tyres, and I was pretty sure they were not that bad but one year I caught them and so took our business somewhere else. Now that probably didn’t make much of a difference to them, but it might and nowadays a bad review on social media and it is game over, so honesty really is the best policy.
Is it Ever Right not to Tell the Truth? There are two possible ways not to tell the truth: not to provide any information, and to provide false information. First, you do not need to tell everyone everything. Excessive sharing of personal information is not welcome, even if it is the truth. Context is all-important, and you must consider whether people need or want to know. Too much information TMI, can be an issue.
Graeme: I think we’ve all been in those pastoral visits with a church member who didn’t know (or care!) where the line is…!!
Mark: You also need to be able to remain silent if someone has confided in you and asked you not to share the information further. Under these circumstances, it is therefore appropriate not to tell all the truth.
Graeme: It is the issue in the work on confidentiality in our role…from the perspective of sometimes we have no choice but to let the truth out? From a protection of others angle?
Mark: However, is it ever right to lie? When your better half asks, ‘Does my bum look big in this?’ what do you say? Well, maybe, in the changing room, before ‘this’ is bought that is the time for moral courage, but afterwards, nope! And I think that is because truthfulness is important, but so is not hurting others. We talk about hard truth and tough love when telling people stuff, they don’t want to hear but hurting people is not good either, so it is a tough one to answer.
Graeme: In a church context – this can go wrong!
I’ve worked for someone who didn’t know how to do this well – using the scriptural mantra of ‘I must speak the truth in love’ to basically say whatever they wanted…no matter how brutal. (Not in ministry now!)
Mark: And then there is the government agent or the spy. They may need to lie, or pretend to be something that they are not, for the sake of the greater good. It is interesting in Escape and Evasion training that we are never told to lie to interrogators if captured. We just give a limited amount of information and claim protection under the Geneva conventions.
Have you ever told a lie in order to make yourself look better, or to avoid trouble that you have brought on yourself? That is pretty clearly wrong and the least that will happen is that people find out, they are unlikely to trust you again.
Graeme: I mean, of course we have…well at least I hope it’s not just me. (That would be awkward!) But this is at the root of human brokenness, isn’t it? It’s ultimately pride which is ultimately not wanting to be honest about who we really are and our weaknesses and failures. And this is ultimately what shows us how much we need Jesus and the forgiveness he offers?)
Mark: Let’s talk about some serious issues for truth in our generation: fake news, alternative facts, propaganda, and dead cats; Foreign influence via social media, slogans on the side of buses promising stuff that cannot be delivered, scare tactics about mass movement of people.
Graeme: It’s apparently called ‘paltering’ – read an article on this recently – it’s how politicians dodge questions ethically!! But how do we challenge this? The reality is, that with the prevalence of lies/non-truth/alternative facts, our democracy is becoming worse…and I think we see that all around us.
Mark: We seem to be surrounded by more lies than ever but does that mean people are becoming more discerning?
Graeme: Maybe – but probably just more accepting of that’s how it is. It’s almost like that big game of let’s pretend that we’re all involved in now! The problem I suppose is that if we continue to play along, we are as much responsible for the consequences.
Mark: Freud and internalising our focus on “my truth” instead of “The truth” – from objective, external right and wrong, to how I feel and what is true for me. Is that true? Is ‘my truth’ valid? And what if it differs from ‘your truth’?
So, summing up, as children, and adults, we need to make effort to tell the truth and be people who are truthful and why?
1. Because otherwise we will have no friends, and no one will want to play with us: it is crucial to building strong relationships
2. It also makes us feel good about ourselves, gives us a clean conscience, and helps us understand ourselves better
3. I think that the big reason though is that in everything we do we affect the world around us, so we should lead by example and make a difference in the world one small truth at a time!
4. And over all this, as a Christian I know that when we are people of truth and integrity, we reflect the maker of the universe and obey his command which is no small thing.
Graeme: I read recently, “The most striking contradiction of our civilization is the fundamental reverence for truth which we profess and the rigorous disregard for it which we practice”. This is where, as Christians, we can stand apart. We can be truthful in our relationship with God and in our relationships with his people – because we are new creatures in Christ.
Mark: Well, there is so much more we could say about this and all the subjects we discuss. If you are listening and want to think let us know what you think then leave a message on our webpage at www.Godsgym.co.uk. Your comments are always welcome, and if there are topics or issues you would like us to address, we are always open to suggestions. Until next time, thank you for listening and remember that you are capable of so much, God tells us so, so keep striving to reach your full potential as God made you.
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