Tag: Truth

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Radical honesty and fierce conversations.

Reading Time: 3 minutes 
“In the end, people appreciate honest criticism far more than flattery.” Proverbs‬ ‭28:23‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Nope, not true today. ESV says, “Whoever rebukes a man will afterward find more favor than he who flatters with his tongue.” I know this is in the Bible, and it’s in the “wisdom” genre of the scriptures, but I have not found this to be true.

Oh, I have friends that have openly, honestly and even lovingly corrected me – I HATED it. I stewed and spewed for days, maybe months afterwards. Yet, after stubbornly accommodating their advise, only to try to prove them wrong mind you, I found their critique to be true.

I had a dear friend, some 15 years older than me, tell me two things that really bothered me. He said, “you stand with your feet too close together! Open up your stance, be more relaxed.” And, “You don’t smile enough. You have a great smile, but never lead with it.” I was AGHAST! How dare he. How personal. What does he know? All these flash thoughts about what he said kept cycling incessantly in my mind. So, I tried making the changes. Yeah, it was awkward at first. How often do you think about your feet or face and how they are “correctly” positioned – like, never for me.

I worked on the thinking “smiley” thoughts and purposely, methodically forced a smile before walking into a room or when meeting new people. One time, this radically honest friend of mine and I were meeting with a wealthy, well-connected client of ours and I had made some progress towards the feet-n-face area. When we walked in and met this person’s assistant I kept my feet more relaxed and tried out my not-to-forced smile. After meeting with our client and saying are goodbyes the assistant we greeted when coming in decided to spontaneously give me a compliment, “You have a great smile,” they said, “it made me smile today as well.”

I thought for sure that my friend had put them up to it and gave him a bad time the whole drive back to the office. He said, “I had nothing to do with it!” And, since he was right there when the compliment was made he simply said, “I told you.”

I have tried so hard to replicate that honest but sometimes personal feedback with friends that I really care about. I see these “blind spot” qualities that they either can’t or don’t want to see and after building some trust, I give them a little helpful feedback. Wow, you’d think I split on their mother’s grave. Almost 100% of the time, it doesn’t go well. And, most of them continue to reverse the whole thing to get me back by mockingly repeat what I said to them. BTW, it always sounds worse when it comes back through their perspective!

So, what am I supposed to do – stop? I hold it in for so long, often thinking, “if you just listen and see what others see,” they’ll find that someone (at least me and their life-mate) are trying to help them! At one point, our entire office tried to work this in as a cultural process – radical honesty. Yeah, you guessed it, miserable fail. It just became this mean-fest and looked like we’d be heading towards HR lawsuits.

What do you think? Is this verse true? Have you tried it? Or, have you been on the receiving end of this? Did it go well or not?

Prayer

Dad,
I’m getting the hint that folks don’t want this Proverb in their life. I get it. It hurt at first when I experienced it too. But, after leaning into the process, I realized I can’t see my own shortcomings – even when they are not healthy or detrimental to my growth and maturity. Should I just stop trying to be that loving friend and practicing these fierce conversations? Any help would be appreciated.

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Dumb Human Tricks of pretending Darkness is Light!

Reading Time: 3 minutes 
“Don’t be fooled by those who try to excuse these sins, for the anger of God will fall on all who disobey him. Don’t participate in the things these people do. For once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light! For this light within you produces only what is good and right and true. Carefully determine what pleases the Lord. Take no part in the worthless deeds of evil and darkness; instead, expose them. It is shameful even to talk about the things that ungodly people do in secret. But their evil intentions will be exposed when the light shines on them, for the light makes everything visible. This is why it is said, “Awake, O sleeper, rise up from the dead, and Christ will give you light.” Ephesians‬ ‭5:6-14‬ ‭NLT‬‬


New Living Translation’s attempt to communicate Paul’s intent uses the word, “fooled,” but really it’s don’t be apatáō – deceived, using tactics like seduction, giving dis­torted impressions and luring into deception. And we do so with kenos: empty, worthless, of no value, words. It’s a if Paul knows how humans justify our behaviors by just word-vomiting all over each other. Ah, yes, we spin and wordsmith just the right phrases and repeat them so often that we begin to believe our own lies.

It all begins by lying to ourselves, doesn’t it? We’ve got to. We know it’s wrong. Or, at least I believe that we have a God-given conscience that tells us we’re wrong, but we want to do it anyways. What else are we going to do? Should we go around admitting we’re wrong and acting foolishly? No! We want to DO WRONG but BE RIGHT about it!

We say to ourselves and others, with as much hubris vibrato we can muster, “I am not sinning, you just misunderstand truth.”

Distraction is the core of magic, right? “Look over here, I’ll prove to you that my behaviors are not bad, they are actually good and helpful to my soul and society.” Then the inevitable, “wouldn’t you love to join me in my own version of truth?” There’s no way I’m going to change my behavior, so I will distort the truth!

Paul kinda says that’s ridiculously silly. He says that’s like calling the darkness, light (probably vice versa as well). Yep, dark is dark and light is light. So to switch them means that you’ve gone mental, or traded a truth for a lie.

So that’s why it’s so important to drag behaviors or deeds of darkness out of the shadows, out of the night and into the daylight! To prop up a good lie, a dark behavior, to force EVERYONE to unilaterally admit it’s true and good – it has to be paraded and propagated in the actual light of day.

The best way to seduce the world into accepting a wrong behavior is to drag that thing into the daytime and get a whole bunch of people to agree that it’s good and not bad, it’s truth and not a lie!

Paul says that God’s light, which is not the daylight produced by the sun, but eternal light that emanates from the Son of God himself will EXPOSE darkness and make everything and everyone see truth. Paul says to BE a believer means there is no deceptively seducing yourself or others with ridiculous, empty spinning of truth.

You stand, full on in the light of Jesus Christ and see yourself as a sinner, exposed but also saved by His grace. And as this light of Christ penetrates our soul, there is no need to lie or deny but allow Him and him alone to SEE us and forgive us.

Prayer

Dad,
Wow, we are so creative to avoid truth! Why are we so good at being bad and constantly convincing ourselves that it’s okay? Are we so determined to get away from you and be “independent” of your goodness that we will spend our lives calling lies, truth and darkness, light? I am really that sinful, aren’t I? Forgive me. Forgive us. It’s so embarrassing to know that these thoughts and behaviors exist in our “freedom” and free-will. Come quickly Lord Jesus, for our sin is great and our deception has gone viral.