Please
forgive and stay with me for using “I” so much but my attempt is to reveal an
inner self that is not easy nor popular to do.
For example, I know I am continually perplexed when I tell a
lie so quickly and do not mean to at the time. I always think there are many
good reasons why to avoid truth: fear I won’t be understood and loved, covering
some secret I think important, avoiding a truth I have buried, or telling the
truth might hurt someone’s feelings. You see, there is always a good reason for
bad behavior. That is what our culture accepts so easily.
Frankly, I am tired of carrying a false load of sham and
pretenses and I hope you are too. I may start small, but I am going to work a
process. I am going to pick two hours in the morning and two hours in the
evening to practice total honesty. People better not ask me something between
those times unless they really want to know the truth. Of course, I will try to
be kind, but I will practice telling the truth in love. If I can get good
enough at truth telling, I will extend my hours, but for now, I am going to
start with the two-hour approach. I am not suggesting that “Wow, now I have a
legitimate time period around those honesty times I have excuse to lie.” Nope.
I just need to schedule myself as some kind of accountability measure. You may need
to find your own approach.
You see, I think one roadblock for truth is we all have
problems with self-deception. If someone attacks me personally, let’s say my
competence, I am quick to attack back because my upbringing taught me to defend
myself whenever.
Instead, as a person committed to Christian dynamic and
Biblical teaching, I should be willing to face the truth that I may not be
God’s only gift to the world. Some may even see me as a pain in the posterior.
Somehow, I must learn an attitude that responds with, “thanks for your perspective. I may disagree but I could be wrong.” I
have come to realize I experience a new kind of liberation to admit a wrong or
even some weakness to the right people.
In
the years of my doctoral dissertation, I developed a form called a “modelgram”
that measured people’s responses while in marriage groups. It showed that a
remarkably high percentage of participants responded favorably when the leader
of the group started a session by admitting a personal foul-up through the
week.
In
fact, most behavioral scientists will tell you that releasing a pent-up feeling
in a right setting, like getting it out in the open, may be 80 to 90% of any
helping process. May be that is another reason James 5:16 in the Bible talks
about “confessing our faults one to another.”
[more later]
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