My least favorite item in my entire house might be your least favorite item in your house too. It has made me feel bad many times over the years. Sometimes I’m downright afraid of it. And yet, deep down, I know I can’t get rid of it.
What item could cause such grief and consternation? The bathroom scale, of course. The feeling of seeing the number up by 5 or 10 lbs is a feeling most of us know, and one that (I would guess) almost all of us hate. Its presence is a haunting specter in times when I’ve been eating junk food and not getting enough physical exertion. Occasionally it produces the good feeling of seeing a lower number, but on the whole it can be a rather unpleasant piece of any home. If our scales produce so many bad feelings, though, shouldn’t we just get rid of them? Why keep around something that can make us feel regret, disappointment, or even shame?
Because, despite how unpalatable they may be, the truths the scales tell us are generally good for us. If my weight is creeping up, putting me at risk of heart disease, diabetes, joint pain, or any number of other physical ailments, it’s for the best that I know it. In fact, it’s for the best that I regularly check in on the truth so I can get a grip on those things before they happen. The most dangerous times come when I avoid the scale for months and tell myself I’m probably doing pretty good and probably not eating too much junk. Probably isn’t truth. It’s a feeling. And though it’s a more pleasant feeling than the one truth produces, truth is what I need.
Lest you think I just wanted to rant about my weight loss/gain trends over the years, there is a point to all this: truth matters too much to be ignored in favor of feelings. Spend any time observing online culture, though, and you’ll see that the prevailing belief is precisely the opposite: if I don’t like a statement, it’s truthfulness is irrelevant.
We are the people who want to have their ears tickled who Paul warned about in 2 Timothy 4:3. We don’t want truth, we want what sounds good to us and what makes us feel good. In that sense, there are blatant purveyors of untruth to be found on all sides. However, some have saved at least enough principle to know such charlatans can’t be trusted. So, they find generic truth tellers who will never cross certain lines in order to appease and keep everyone happy. These people demand that any truth be delivered be as sugar-coated as possible, typically robbing the truth of any of its necessary pain. I’ve written articles catering to that mindset, and the result is embarrassingly bad prose with a million qualifiers (“I’m not saying this, and I don’t mean that, but…”), and that kind of truth telling doesn’t convince anybody. The point gets lost in all the excess.
We need truth tellers, who will say what is right no matter who dislikes it. And, we need truth seekers, who will shove cultural pressure and personal feelings out of the way to reach truth.
Instead, we are increasingly a society and a church that responds in two ways to true but difficult statements.
“You can’t say that, because I don’t like it.“
A while back my mother-in-law posted the viral message about how the test of a good citizen is their willingness to return their shopping cart to the corral. It’s a general truth, and one we can all agree on when we see someone leave their cart loose in the middle of the road or let it roll toward another person’s car. One would think this would not be controversial. One would be wrong. Her post was instantly hit with comments about how insensitive the post was to the elderly, the disabled, and to mothers with young children. Rather than saying “Well, there are a few exceptions, but this is generally right,” the commenters dismissed the post entirely because it must mean that *they* aren’t good citizens and so such statements shouldn’t be uttered.
This is a silly example with little real-world import, but the same kind of self-determination of truth gets used in things that really do matter. When the Gospel Coalition’s Kevin DeYoung argued that the best thing God-fearing people can do to change the culture is get married and raise godly kids – a classic Christian doctrine that literally goes back to the Garden of Eden – he was absolutely slammed with comments about how insensitive his post was to those who can’t have children, or those who have been unable to find a mate. Essentially, “Your truth claim doesn’t apply universally, so it isn’t true and you shouldn’t say it.” I don’t know who is teaching people linear thinking these days, but they are failing. Yes, we must weep with those who weep, and give our love, support, and prayers to the childless and those singles who want to marry but have not had opportunity. But we must also affirm the biblical truth that godly families are a wonderful thing and should be considered desirous for God’s people. It is that very desirousness that makes it painful when one is not able to obtain a spouse and/or children.
However, the people in the (supposed) offended group are often not the ones making the protest. DeYoung’s claim does not step on the toes of people to whom his article can’t apply. It steps on the toes of those to whom it does apply, namely the Instagram-lifestyle young people who intentionally put off marriage and children for experiences, travel, expensive food, etc. The self-focused people who buy into the cultural idea that “your 20s are for you” need to be rebuked and re-focused with biblical truth. But they will always have people to shield them from that biblical truth, because they don’t like the sound of it, and those truth-blockers need to be rebuked, too.
We need Christians who will speak truth, popular or not, and we need Christians who are trained to stop asking how they feel about something and start opening up their Bible to see if it’s true.
It doesn’t matter if what you said is true; your tone was wrong.
The second group will concede the truth of a statement, but will then effectively wave it away because it wasn’t said the right way. This is partly an issue because of those who use the Scriptures to bash people over the head without any love in their hearts. But it’s also partly an issue because people don’t like being poked by the truth. Can you imagine seeing people respond this way in the Scriptures?
“Ok, I shouldn’t have taken Bathsheba, and I shouldn’t have had Uriah killed, but Nathan didn’t have to be so mean when he told me about it. That’s the real issue here.”
“Sure, Paul might have a point that we’ve been deceived by the Judaizers, but he shouldn’t have called us foolish. I’m not sure I want to read the rest of this letter.”
“Normally I agree with Jesus, but what was that brood of vipers thing about? He needs to be a lot more careful with His tone.”
“Whoa, Jesus. You called this a wicked and perverse generation. That’s painting with a broad brush.”
Sometimes truth is tough to swallow, which makes hearing it difficult. Sometimes it’s presented in a way that is uncomfortable, but sometimes that uncomfortable packaging is the only thing that wakes us up.
Sure, there is a time and place for correcting a teacher whose tone is overly harsh. But that is a separate matter from the truthfulness of his statements. If what is said is right, it is our duty to nod our heads and accept it. And, there is no biblical command to be nice. There is a command to be loving, and there is a time and place for gentle correction. But much of the false teaching trying to work its way into the church today is using niceness as its trojan horse. Effectively implying that we don’t have to accept a truth because it wasn’t said nicely enough is destructive to ourselves and those around us.
Every Christian who would attempt to teach must keep this truth in mind:
We do people no favors by soft-pedaling the truth.
Thank God (literally) that Peter didn’t hold back in Acts 2, nor in Acts 3-5, nor Paul in Acts 17 or in any of the other times people had a chance to call for repentance. The message of the Gospel made a lot of people furious, and made them turn up the persecution. But it’s that same message that led to repentance for countless people with whom we’ll spend eternity. I guarantee you they’re glad the apostles didn’t try to “nice” them into the truth.
Every Christian who would attempt to teach, along with every Christian who hears truth (so, every single Christian) must keep this truth in mind:
We dishonor God by acting as though truth doesn’t really matter.
If we don’t stand for truth “in season and out of season,” we imply to everyone that truth doesn’t matter as much as keeping everyone happy. That’s one of the most destructive ideas we could ever embrace.
In an age where people come and go in their attendance, show little to no commitment to the church and its work, bear no fruits of repentance, etc., we can’t soft-pedal the truth or avoid it so as to imply their negligence doesn’t matter. Confronting them is hard. Seeing the numbers go down on the attendance board can be painful – especially that contribution number, for those who are dependent on it. But the church without painful truths is useless, no matter how many people leave. “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (John 6:68-69).
Truth is too important. Coupled with love, it is the most powerful tool we have. Throwing it out or avoiding it like that mean old bathroom scale is the quickest path to spiritual heart disease.
