To Tell the Truth

“Moreover, the Eternal One of Israel will not lie or change his mind, because he isn’t a mere human being subject to changing his mind.” 1 Samuel 15:29

Truth; perhaps the most foreign concept to most of us. We like to think we are honest and we want to come off as truthful people, but we usually spend more energy maintaining an image than allowing our true selves to be found out. That is why so many relationships lack much intimacy or satisfaction at all. We never are sure whether others are being “who they are”, and we spend the same amount of time buffing up what we hope people will think about us.

We don’t want to be wrong in discussions, so we come up with spurious facts. We don’t want to lose, so we cheat, or challenge the rules. We want to be perceived as successful, so we embellish our stories. We spend most of our relational energy making sure that no one finds out the things we consider the darkest about ourselves.

What is worse is that our deception of others eventually becomes our own belief. We have presented an “image” of ourselves for so long that it is now almost unconscious action. When we begin, we are aware of a certain dichotomy between our “true self” and the one we engage others with. We know we occasionally cheat to win. We are aware that we tell others our income is actually higher than it is. But, after time, we are less aware of the gulf between the two selves, and we actually fool ourselves. It becomes harder and harder to even evaluate how honest we are being.

We humans are so subject to changing our mind that sometimes within the same conversation we will disagree with our own statement because of the weight of someone else’s opinion. We are so concerned with image that, given the opinion of someone with respect and who appears to be an expert, we change in light the stand that person may have taken. We are so committed to our appearance that we may even misquote someone to bolster our position, or manufacture facts or mention statistics we know are unreliable.

That is why we need the safety of God’s grace. God never lies, nor needs to change His mind because His “self” is not influenced by the opinion of others. We may spend a lifetime understand and knowing God, but we have this singular comfort: He will not change during the journey of our relationship. He does not deceive us in like humans may, concerned about how they may “appear” from one situation to the next. His truth is light years apart from our own inclination to shade the truth based on the pain it may or may not cause.

Our trouble is that we think God is like us. We are not thoroughly convinced that He is faithful. We are afraid that, like humans we have experienced, He will not keep His word after promising something important to us. Convinced of His power, but uncertain of His truthfulness, we hide our “real selves” from Him just like we do with people. Not until we know that He is always true, and that He cares deeply about the “real us” will we begin to take down the layers of religious fakery that plague much of Christianity.

In this story Saul has conquered an army and was told by the prophet Samuel to wait until he arrived to sacrifice what had been taken in the battle. Samuel appears to be late in coming, so Saul, apparently uncertain that God will keep His word, presents the sacrifice himself in direct disobedience to Samuel’s word. (And, sacrifices were never to be offered by the king!)

 Saul’s protest is that they kept only the best animals back for God. In other words, “I was doing God a favor, man. He didn’t even ask for these. We conquered that town, took all their stuff, and made sure that the best stuff got sacrificed to God. He should be happy with me.” But, as often happens to us, Saul entirely missed the point. God didn’t want a single one of the animals, he wanted Saul.

But Saul mistrusted God and jumped the gun. We are prone to do the same. We think God will come through, but when we aren’t entirely sure, or He seems to be taking too long, we act on our own volition, perhaps doing something just a little outside the character of Christ. We then excuse ourselves by acting as if we were being helpful to God all the while. I have seen people take over worship services, excuse living together outside of marriage, justify their hatred of other types of people, all in the name of doing something for God.

Once we realize that God is faithful and we are prone toward unfaithfulness, only then can we start out on a road to maturity and transformation. God really doesn’t care how many meetings I go to, He wants me. Our problem is, that we want to escape God so much, we will even use grace as a reason to stay at arm’s length. “God knows I can worship better in nature. Sunday morning is my sleep-in time.” Or as I heard someone recently say, “I didn’t do that (hurtful thing), it was my addiction”. Addictions are never meant to be a scapegoat for honestly facing ourselves.

All the while the “true self” is crying out, “Please, take me somewhere safe.” Our real self, the one created in God’s image and redeemed by Jesus at the cross is safe in the arms of God’s honesty. He will not promise you one thing and then pull the rug out from under you. He is not like people! It is only when we realize we are safe with God that we throw away our excuses, and say, “I need grace more than anyone knows!” And we live it out as well, in humble, honest lives.

I want to be a person who continues peeling back the layers of false living. I’m not talking about any major hypocrisy, although, there is enough of that to go around as well, both in my life and in others. What I am referring to is killing the urge to be right, dying to the necessity to appear “good”, and turning to the God who is always true with our own honesty; face to face.

We know His response will be acceptance and love because Christ’s death is the final expression from God about our crummy fake lives. He has died so we can know that everything we try to escape punishment for has already been taken care of. We no longer need to hide or deny our darkness or frailties. We can honestly take off the masks and come to the God who never wears one at all.