Speaking the Truth in Love, Part Three

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. ~ John 15:12-13

Thus far we have discussed the false dichotomy between truth and love and the necessity of verbally communicating truth. A reader might ask, then why can't I just speak love, and there is no problem with such a thing if that love is not separated from truth. But many attempts to reach someone with love or by "speaking love" are built on a notion of love that is separated from truth, a notion of love which is not truly love. Likewise, it is usually attached to the false expectation that love will be more readily received than truth.

Consider a woman contemplating abortion. Perhaps a gentle "I love you" from somebody whose love has been deeply demonstrated might convince a woman with a wavering conscience that she has the emotional support to carry her child to term. This happens because the expectant mother has some realization of both the truth about abortion and the truth of another person's love.

But what of a woman whose conscience has been turned away from reason and does not recognize even an inkling that she is about to destroy another human being. Her response to an "I love you" objecting to her choice is a request for a love which validates her destructive activity. The person trying to sway her must respond with a reasoned explanation of why she cannot have the abortion and hope that their sobriety of thought wins over her clouded mind. At the same time, the person trying to sway her must not lose control of their emotions and display a sense of anger, wrath, or judgmentalism that discredits love for mother and child.

In front of abortion clinics, there are surely women so desperate for a kind word that a "We love you and your baby" turns some away from the abortionist's door and to the sidewalk counselor. But others walk into the clinic with hearts hardened from hearing too many cheap "I love you's". This is not at all a criticism of the sidewalk counselors; rather, it is merely a recognition that the truth of love requires more demonstration than truths which may be conveyed by factual recitation and logical proofs.

And I am aware of women who turned away from abortion clinics after seeing signs with graphic images of the violence done to unborn children in abortions. And some would judge people who hold such signs as being unloving, but I am unaware of any woman who saw such a sign who went from wavering on abortion to thinking it was a good thing once she considered the images.

Postmodern society attacks any notion of truth on relativist grounds - this is common knowledge. But as much as we all want to be loved, the idea of anybody laying down their lives for us - anybody offering us truth or anything else that we cannot get for ourselves - is offensive to our notion of an autonomous self. Love offered from another reveals our own lack.

Christ spoke the truth with perfect charity in his heart. His Love, His Truth, His Very Person was rejected to the point of crucifixion 2000 years ago. He is still rejected on the same grounds to this day, and his disciples are called to love in the same way. Should we expect a different treatment than the master?

A person who loves or speaks love but avoids the wounds of love by withholding the truth is a person who does not love as Christ loved.

I am reminded of a poem by Amy Carmichael, a Baptist missionary to India:

Hast thou no scar?
No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand?
I hear thee sung as mighty in the land;
I hear them hail thy bright, ascendant star.
Hast thou no scar?

Hast thou no wound?
Yet I was wounded by the archers; spent,
Leaned Me against a tree to die; and rent
By ravening beasts that compassed Me, I swooned.
Hast thou no wound?

No wound? No scar?
Yet, as the Master shall the servant be,
And piercèd are the feet that follow Me.
But thine are whole; can he have followed far
Who hast no wound or scar?


Most truths are easier to speak than the truth of love. Most truths are easier to be believed than the truth of real love for another person, provided the interior work of love is abounding in the speaker. A lack of charity is an overwhelming obstacle in convincing anybody on any point of truth. In part four of this series, we will focus on love.

Speaking the Truth in Love, Part Two

Some people apparently assume Saint Francis of Assisi mimed instead of speaking. How else can you explain the use of his admonition to preach the gospel and use words when necessary as an excuse for an utterly silent witness? Of course, the reason we know the admonition is because Saint Francis spoke it. He spoke many words that had an increased weight because of the purity of the life he lived. That life was lived in love with God and neighbor.

Our secular society cannot perceive the fullness of liberating truth from a mere visual display of doing what is just. A faulty concept of each person having their own "individual truth" allows the dismissal of such witnesses as examples of good deeds or random acts of kindness. Perhaps a cross around the neck may testify to some Christian sentiment in the eyes of the unbeliever, but in their eyes it is merely a sentiment that will not fit the "truth" of their lives. That false "truth" is held by those in bondage to what Pope Benedict XVI calls the tyranny of relativism, and the Catholic is called to resist that enslaving tyranny.

So then, if liberation comes from knowing the truth, and if faith comes only after hearing, there is a necessary use of words to untangle the web of misperceptions held by the unbeliever. Consider the words of the Lord spoken through the Prophet Isaiah:

Come now, let us reason together,
says the LORD:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool.
~Isaiah 1: 18

It is the work of the Lord to invite sinners to come back to reason. In conformity with our Lord, we must recognize that even in the most unreasonable sinners, the faculty for reason still exists though warped by sin. A gentle invitation back to the table of reason must be extended for the sinner to come to repentance. And this invitation must be spoken by the reasonable, who will be there to aid the sinner out of his or her lack of reason.

Speaking the Truth in Love, Part One

"Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love." - Saint Paul's Letter to the Ephesians, Chapter 4, Verses 15-16, Revised Standard Version

Many of the divisions in the Church today are created by people who impose false dichotomies in place of the transcendent unity that is inherent in God's revelation to man. Some contend there is a division between orthopraxy (right action) and orthodoxy (right belief). Those concerned with matters of orthodoxy are portrayed as fundamentalists or Pharisees (sadly, sometimes a true accusation), and people are encouraged to do what is right. But without a grounding in what is right (a foundation in orthodoxy), these social activities carry people away from orthopraxy as they are co-opted by people with a similar recognition of social injustice and a lack of a Christian anthropology. True orthodoxy insists on orthopraxy, and orthopraxy is only possible if orthodoxy precedes it.

Indeed any work of true liberation of persons is dependent on the transmission of knowledge. Jesus said (John 8:32), "you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." Likewise Saint Paul reiterates it in Romans 10:14-17:

But how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher?
And how can men preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news!"
But they have not all obeyed the gospel; for Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?"
So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ.

There is no opportunity to obey the Gospel, to follow Christ who identified Himself as Truth (John 14:6), without the work of evangelization.

John Paul II called for a new evangelization of society, where the expectation of influencing society was not left to priests and religious, but was shared in by all Christians. Saint Paul had his same vision in the quote from Ephesians above. Each part of the Body of Christ grows up into Jesus as we speak the truth in love.

Here we reach another false dichotomy imposed on the Gospel, the division between Truth and Love. We are taught from a young age that "God is love" (I John 4:8), yet somehow skim over the fact that Jesus (God in the flesh), is Truth, and every little truth in all the world is a truth that exists in Him. The first chapter of Saint John's Gospel identifies Jesus as the Eternal Word of God, and that Greek word which means word is logos. Logos is the word from which we get the word logic, implying that there is an order and a sense of reason in God. God is Truth, and God is Love, and there is no division in God.

Yet in our relativist culture, Christians have caved to demands that claims of truth not be made. This live and let live attitude fostered by the false god of tolerance cannot satisfy the altruistic nature of any person who sees their neighbors dying. If the wages of sin really are death, personal destruction and loss, societal discord, and a slavery that keeps the person from being who they were created to be, then isn't it obligatory to rescue your neighbors from that bondage? And is there a way for liberation other than the one the Savior prescribed in knowing the truth?