The Truth Will Set You Free. Maybe?

We've all heard it.
Lot's of people say it.

The truth will set you free!

 

But does it always happen?
Does the truth always set us free?

Why not?

It was, after all, Jesus who said that truth would set us free.
Surely - He didn't lie, did He?

No - Jesus didn't lie.

However - as you can see from the image at the top, Jesus also said more than just "The truth will set you free".

These six words come from John, Chapter 8, Verse 32.
The entire verse, from the NIV, is -

John 8:32 "Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

The first problem with "The truth will set you free".

So - we see the first problem with telling someone that the truth will set them free.
They have to actually know the truth.
It sounds so obvious.  But it's not really all that easy to know the truth.

First - someone has to be willing to tell us the truth.  

I'm guessing that if this truth - whatever it is - will set us free (from something), then there's something hidden from us that keeping us captive.
Notice I said hidden.  There's a real good chance that we don't even realize that we're being held captive.  If we knew that we were captive to someone or something - then we'd probably want to be free of it.  And - if we were able - we'd make that a high priority to deal with.  So maybe we don't know.
Then, there's always the very real possibility that we do know, but don't want to stand up to that thing that's holding us captive.  Maybe we do know - but we're afraid of it.  So we hide from it.  Ignore it.  Pretend it doesn't exist.  And the last thing we want is for someone to come along and make us face the very thing that we're trying to hide from.

Given that - how many people have friends that are willing to be so open as tell us the truth?  Because if they know the truth, they also probably realize that we're in "pretend mode" - hiding from ourselves.  And since they know we don't want to face our issues - they also know that we don't want to know the truth behind those issues.  And - they don't want to lose us as friends - so they "pretend" as well - and nothing gets resolved.

The sad part is that the friendship is never the same when we're all in pretend mode - it probably hasn't been "real" anyway since at least one person has been pretending for a long time - and it will likely end badly because of all the pretending.  

So what was accomplished with all that pretending?  Extending a fake friendship for a period of time, during which everyone involved was miserable.

The second problem with "The truth will set you free".

We saw that the first problem is that someone has to be willing to tell us the truth - in order for us to know the truth.

Assuming that someone even tells us - in order for us to even be willing to listen - 
that person needs to tell us the truth in a way that won't shut down our desire to listen.

Now that's asking a lot.
You know how it is.
We don't even want to admit the truth to ourselves.  So why would we want to hear it from someone else?
The "truth" (pun intended) is that we don't want to hear it.

So telling it to us in a manner that we'll listen is a tough balancing act.

Many people have an idea that shouting the "truth" in our faces is the way to go.  Louder is better.  If it's loud enough, we can't avoid it.
Yeah - right.  Like when we've tried that on other people - how often has it worked?
So why do we think it's all of a sudden going to work on someone else when it's never worked on us?

And when we get to the ultimate Truth - the Word of God - the Bible - it gets even tougher.

A while back, I did an Alpha Course.  One of the images included in the chapter on telling others is the one below -

Now that's a great way to not do it!

It's the church equivalent of shouting.

And it's not real effective.

And yet - it's done.

Even though it fails.

Maybe it did work for someone - but Jesus is about love - not scaring His followers.

Which begs the question -

How did Jesus tell the truth?

This gets down to the core of the problem.