Speaking the Truth in Love

 

Pilgrims to the holy island of Lindisfarne have two ways of reaching the island. They can take a boat to the island at high tide. They can walk across the mudflats at low tide. A set of tall poles mark the safe path across the mudflats. Pilgrims who do not follow the path marked by the poles may find themselves up to their necks in water or up to their waists in quicksand. The mudflats have many hidden dangers.

In his sermon, “Taming the Tongue,” Jeff Rudy, pastor of Murray First United Methodist Church in Murray, Kenucky, provided his listeners with three guideposts to follow in speaking that may help us avoid the dangers of unguarded speech, speech said with little or any though to what we are saying. These guideposts are:

1. Is it true?
2. Is it necessary?
3. Is it kind?

There will be times when we must speak the truth in love to someone else, a fellow human being or a brother or sister in Christ. We must tell them about something that they are doing, and which is hurting or them or hurting other people. It may not be something that they want to hear or which we are not very comfortable in saying, but it is something that must be said.

First, we should look at our motives. Is what we are about to say motivated by love for them. We may have other motives, but our primary motive should be love for them. Other motives may be that something has come between us and them and we are seeking reconciliation. They are straying from Jesus’ teaching and example, and we fear for their spiritual well-being. They are doing harm to themselves in other ways. They are doing harm to other people.

We need to give thought to what we are going to say and how we are going to say it. We should be careful in our choice of words and open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We should be prepared to listen to them and to not jump in when they may pause in what they are saying. We should check with them to make sure that we understand what they are saying. We should convey to them by our attitude and our body language that we want to hear what they have to say.

We should speak in a gentle, loving tone of voice. We should be careful not to adopt a saccharine sweet fake "I love you” voice or to let feelings such as anger to creep into our voice unbidden.

We should be ready to forgive if they express a feeling of remorse for what they are doing and a desire to change, even though we may have doubts in our mind about the sincerity of their contriteness. They may indeed be feeling bad about what they are doing, or they may simply want us to get off their back. We give them the benefit of the doubt. 

We offer a silent prayer that Holy Spirit will keep nudging them to do more than acknowledge that they are doing the wrong thing and to take actions to show that they meant what they said when they expressed a desire to change—to show kindness and friendliness toward those whom they may treating badly, to do what they can to mend a broken relationship, to make amends for the harm they may have done.

The observation of Transactional Analysis (TA) that human personality is made up of ego states may be helpful in “speaking the truth in love.” An ego state is “a way in which we think, feel and behave, making up our personality at a given time.” These states are thinking and feeling as a Parent, an Adult, and a Child. A further explanation of what ego states are, written by Stephen Rigler, may be found on the CounselingTutor website at https://counsellingtutor.com/counselling-approaches/transactional-analysis/what-are-ego-states/. 

When we are having a conversation with someone, phenomenologically, we are talking to three different ego states. Whomever we are talking with may be responding to us chiefly from one of those ego states, but all three ego states are listening to us and at different points in the conversation may interact with us and exert influence on each other and what we perceive as the response of the individual to what we are saying. We ourselves are speaking from one or more of our ego states. It sounds complicated but it is helpful in understanding why conversations sometimes go the way they do.

When we are speaking the truth in love to someone, we want to be engaging the Adult ego state in them. Here is Stephen Rigler’s description of the Adult ego state.

“The Adult ego state operates in the here and now and rationally processes what we are thinking and feeling, which is based on facts without interference of unconscious contamination.

We are thinking and responding appropriately, displaying logical and consistent behaviour. Put simply, this is us being us, without those external influences of our Parent and Child ego states.”

Good luck with that! Their Parent and Child ego states will be listening in on the conversation and may join the conversation, We may say something that “hooks” one or both of them. They may determine the outcome of the conversation.

While we may be talking from our Adult to their Adult, their Child may perceive us as a parental authority figure. Their Adaptive Child may respond, “I’m sorry” and make some excuse, the kind of excuse the individual with whom we are talking has been in the habit of making to parental authority figures since the individual was a child. This may elicit a variety of reactions from us, with which the individual has learned to deal.

At the same time the Rebellious Child in that individual is thinking, “Who do they think they are?!” The Rebellious Child may determine the outcome of the conversation, frustrating our efforts to have what might have otherwise proved to be a productive conversation.

The individual’s Controlling Parent and Adaptive Child may keep the Rebellious Child from openly expressing anger due to strong inhibitions against open expressions of anger which were formed in childhood, but the Rebellious Child is free to express angry feelings in other ways, which include doing things that are hurtful to the individual or to other people. 

When someone is headstrong, willful, unfriendly, vengeful, unforgiving, spiteful, obstinate, sulky, and uncommunicative, it is a good indicator that they are responding from the Rebellious Child in them. These personality traits are forms of anger which the Child in them may safely express without hooking their own Controlling Parent.

Regrettably these personality traits can cause them to make bad decisions that will adversely affect them and others and to refuse to change their minds despite urgings from others. Over time these bad decisions will have negative consequences for them although they themselves may refuse to believe that they will.

Due to these proclivities of human nature before, during, and after we speak the truth in love to someone we should be in prayer for them and ourselves. No matter how kind our words, no matter how reasonable our arguments, we are dependent upon God’s grace and the Holy Spirit. God alone can change hearts and minds. What is impossible for us is possible for God.

Everything we do, everything we say should be infused with our love for them. Even if speaking the truth in love does not lead to the outcome for which we had hoped, we keep on loving them as God loves us. We do not withdraw our love for them. We keep loving them and we keep praying for them. We show them kindness and generosity, patience and understanding. We cherish them as God cherishes them.