Truth Hurts
By Clif Roth
Living in and with TRUTH is painful. The truth really does hurt. Yes, the Truth “sets us Free!” It sets us free to be humans and live with agency and volition. And it sets us free to have limits. When we honestly accept our limits, we begin to experience the freedom of the truth. But the truth doesn’t set us free from the painful tension of what it means to live fully into our humanity, the truth invites us into a painful tension, a tension that we live with both internally and externally. For example, we experience this tension internally when we struggle between recognizing and honoring our feelings and needs and living in a state of reactive self-preservation. Externally, we feel the tension when we vulnerably express our true feelings and needs to imperfect people who may not understand them or who may ignore them.
Dealing with the tensions of living truthfully has major implications in our lives and in our world. The worst moments of our human history can be traced to our intolerance for the painful tension of the truth. And the best and brightest moments of history can be traced to our willingness and ability to tolerate the painful tension of the truth.
One of the tragic byproducts of the polarization of society is that it seeks to resolve many of the important tensions that of our humanity and keep us honestly and humbly living in the truth. What often parades as “truth” is an impaired attempt to bypass the mystery, paradox, and pain of honest personal expression. Both ends of the political/sociological (and theological) spectrum promote an idealism that is an attempt to distract us from the pain of personal, honest, humble, human truth. And it keeps us in bondage! I’m not saying that political, sociological, or theological ideals are false and unnecessary. I am simply saying that the loudest proclamations may actually be attempts to avoid the pain of honesty and humility. And when these loud proclaimers of “truth” are offended by curious questions and demand conformity, it’s dishonest and ultimately dehumanizing.
Truth exists, that’s not in question here. But before you think you have it figured out at the macro level, you had better attend to it on a personal level. I’m talking about the story that YOU tell about yourself and the story that you present to others around you. I’m talking about why you latch onto certain ideas and statements so tightly and defend them with such tenacity. I’m simply asking you to consider if the “truth” that you are presenting to the world may actually be a dishonest delusion that helps you avoid the pain of living in the honest truth. I believe that our world (not twitter, but the real world) could be missing out on some of the most brilliant expressions of personhood because we are afraid to tell the truth. Your conformity to your community could be diminishing your beautiful expression of your true self? I’m reminded of this line from Martin Luther King Jr., “The greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.” Are there new ideas that you have that have been squashed by your avoidance of pain? Yes, the truth hurts, but it’s truth that sets us and our world free.
And telling the truth can be quite a clumsy process. Frederick Buechner once wrote, “If we are determined to speak the plain sense of our experience, we must be willing to risk the charge of speaking what often sounds like nonsense.” In other words, it’s uncomfortable and unpopular to express the truth. And living in that tension is especially painful in our polarized culture with its graceless lack of nuance. It’s risky business to express in “plain sense” your honest feelings and needs, what you are truly experiencing in your life. There is a good chance your “plain sense” will be interpreted as “nonsense.” And taking that risk is painful and vulnerable.
This is an important insight for life:
Truth and Honesty = Tension
Tension = Human experience
Tension = Pain
True human experience = Painful human experience
Our instinct is to avoid pain! Understandably. We were created for peaceful communion not painful corruption. But, in Adam, we are all dying (even non-Christians, agnostics and atheists believe we are all dying). Pain is our human reality. Thus, avoiding pain is avoiding our human reality. To be clear, I am not saying that we ought to seek out pain on purpose or create unnecessary painful experiences, obviously living life on life’s terms provides enough pain by itself. But think about it for a minute, when we avidly seek to avoid pain no matter the cost, we end up inflicting more pain on ourselves and on others around us.
In my experience, the primary reason we avoid the pain of the truth, is because we are afraid of feeling it alone. Most of us expect pain to be a part of life (nature), but what leads to exaggerated avoidance of pain is the fear of feeling our pain alone (nurture).
But this does not have to be our story. The gospel of Christ is that we are NOT alone in our pain. Christ came into our world, God wrapped in human flesh (Phil 2:7), and he is acquainted with all our pain (Is 53:3). Especially the pain of truthful living! Spiritually speaking, we are never alone in our painful attempts to tell the truth of who we are, what we have lived, and what we are experiencing. Christ’s presence with us gives us the assurance and comfort that we need to tell the truth about ourselves to ourselves and to express all of it honestly to God and others.
And the Christ presence (Holy Spirit) that dwells within us is the power we need to SHOW UP to the pain of others who are seeking to tell the truth. We aren’t called to resolve all the tensions of life. Jesus didn’t do that. To avoid truthful and painful tension is to avoid our very selves, the same selves that Jesus wants to transform.
So, the invitation:
Tell the truth. Feel the pain of the paradoxical tension of being human, trusting that Christ is with you in your honesty even if it seems like “nonsense.” To quote MLK again, “The truth hurts, but love helps ease the pain.”
Invite others to tell the truth and be curious when their honest expression sounds like “nonsense.” Being curious means to suspend judgment long enough to learn something new. When we pretentiously assume that we can make sense of all the "nonsense” of life (and politics, and God, and pandemics), we may unintentionally (or intentionally) be dehumanizing others around us who are trying to live into those paradoxical tensions with honesty and truth.
And lest we get too idealistic about all this…let us remember that truthful living as a human requires forgiveness. Attempting to live honestly and humbly into the tensions of life is itself a tension and it requires a lot of grace and a lot of practice to keep our balance. So, when you fall in this process, admit it. And when others around you fall make space for them to do the same.
Here’s to hoping we can all live wonderfully and truthfully in pain together.
God is with us. Peace.
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