Theology Basics: Truth or Love?

One of the greatest deceptions faced by modern Christians is the false dichotomy that loving someone and speaking truth are often mutually exclusive. After all, the truth hurts… and what I often hear is that people just need to be loved. Speaking truth is seen as unloving, and those who speak the truth and labelled as hateful, bigoted, etc.

Does this hold any weight? Is speaking the truth unloving? As always, good sound theology goes a long way towards clearing up confusion.

For the sake of brevity, we will assume a Christian worldview which affirms that objective truth exists (more on truth). When we say that God’s word is objectively true, we mean that it is correct in what it tries to communicate to us. The truth claims that it makes about the world and the nature of humankind are true, and whether I agree with them or not, in the end, doesn’t matter.

Sharing Truth with Love

So on the one hand, the truth is a hard thing against which bad ideas tend to shatter. Scripture itself has much to say about the relationship between truth and love. A great summary of the biblical view can be found in Paul’s oft quoted words:

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.

1 Corinthians 13:4-6 ESV (emphasis added)

Many times, this is a passage that is read in the context of weddings but the text is more about what our relationships with our brothers and sisters in Christ should look like than about marital bliss. There is much to gain from reflecting on Paul’s words here.

The immediate point to make is that love rejoices in the truth. This is something that seems to have been lost in today’s culture. Genuine love should always rejoice in the truth. Said another way, falsehood should be rejected regardless of whether it fits our preconceived notions or not. If I want something to be true, but I know that it’s not, shame on me if I pretend its true when I know that it’s false.

Truth should never be seen as a threat, and if someone’s worldview causes them to see truth as dangerous, there are serious problems that they will eventually need to deal with.

The reason love rejoices in the truth should be obvious. We know that Satan is a liar (John 8:44), and what has perhaps become his greatest weapon in today’s age is the saturation of information. The internet, while having plenty of positive applications, has undoubtedly contributed to confusion and chaos. Whenever something happens, there are handful of different versions of the story. The details get lost in the noise and the truth is ultimately drowned out by any number of narratives, which we then choose not based on the truth but based on which version lines up with what we’d like to be true. This is what Satan does, and he is fundamentally opposed to God’s work.

For this reason alone, the actual truth should matter more to us than what we want to be true.

A Little Nuance...

But that does not mean that truth should be used as a weapon. Conservative voices like Ben Shapiro have championed the sentiment that “facts don’t care about your feelings.” When approached this way, the truth becomes a hammer with which we want to smash everyone who sees things differently. As clever as a tumbler full of leftist tears is, God advocates a different way of speaking truth.

Paul’s words above show us that this sentiment, ironically, also misses the mark of how we are expected to act as Christians. The danger in the modern political climate, is to skim the first thirty-one words in the passage to jump straight to delighting in the truth.

Of course truth exists and should be rejoiced in, but don’t miss how that truth is framed.

God does not call us to win arguments; he calls us to be representatives of his love to a world that is desperately confused and needs the truth. While speaking the truth, we are called to do so patiently and kindly, not arrogantly or belligerently. Our goal in sharing truth shouldn’t be to offend. My goal in speaking truth should not be to see how many of the opposing political party I can upset.

Speak the Truth, but do so lovingly

This is where the false dichotomy comes in. Many well-intentioned but misguided Christians love to hop on the comments section on social media and try to come up with pithy little reductive sayings that, while not incorrect, are designed to make people with whom they disagree feel stupid and embarrassed.

Brothers and sisters, this should not be.

Please don’t misunderstand. The gospel is offensive to those who aren’t saved (1 Corinthians 1:18), and Jesus was very up front with his disciples that because the world rejected and hated him, we should not expect anything different if we follow him and associate with him (John 15:18-25). If you’re sharing the real gospel with someone (more on that here), there is a chance that it will offend them regardless of how carefully and winsomely you communicate.

At the end of the day, many people simply say no to Jesus (John 3:19-20). This is important to understand as a Christian because at the end of the day, the hatred the world has for you has nothing to do with you. The world’s problem is with God. You simply represent him on earth.

But this should not numb us to the fact that we are called to represent God to the world, and that we’re called specifically to speak the truth of God’s ultimate demonstration of love on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins.

Don’t Be A Bad Doctor

The truth is that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and that alone and unaided when they stand before God at the last judgement, they will be found unequivocally, even laughably guilty of sin. The punishment is eternal separation from God.

This is where the world gets confused, because as counter-intuitive as it is, the loving thing to do is to give them the honest diagnosis (in a gentle and loving way). The world’s definition of love has become simply endorsing everything about the person and being uncritical and non-judgmental. To embrace someone’s lifestyle and affirm them is to love them, and to try and correct wrong behavior is to be judgmental.

But consider the example of a doctor who has done a brain scan and discovered that his patient has cancer. To leave the cancer untreated is a death sentence, but nobody wants to hear that they have cancer. The doctor is left with a choice: do I preserve their good mood today by lying to them and telling them they’re fine when I know for a fact that they’re dying? Or do I ruin their day and risk their tears and anger by telling them the hard truth that they have cancer and that they are in desperate need of intervention in order to ensure their long-term wellbeing?

Nobody wants to hear that they have cancer, but if they really do have cancer, the loving thing is to tell them the truth. In the same way, nobody wants to hear that they’re a sinner who is guilty before a perfect and holy God. But sometimes sharing the truth, though hard, is the loving thing to do.

Another helpful element of this analogy is that there are very obviously loving and unloving ways to tell someone that they have cancer. The doctor has a responsibility to tell the truth, but the way he delivers the news is entirely up to him. A gentle, serious tone is far more appropriate than cracking a coarse joke. The news of having cancer might offend somebody, and they might seek another opinion from another doctor, but the doctor’s delivery could just as easily offend somebody if he takes the wrong tone or is irresponsible in how he shares the news.

If the idea of our guilt before God because of sin offends people, so be it. But we need to be careful that the stumbling block is really the truth of the gospel message and not our own blundering, poorly thought out words that unnecessarily create obstacles to someone else’s eternal life.

We are not ultimately responsible for changing anyone’s mind or winning debates (John 16:7-11). It is entirely possible that a believer might accurately and lovingly communicate the truth of the gospel message to an unbeliever, and that the unbeliever takes exception to the fundamental truth of their own sin before a holy God. Sometimes they will lash out or walk away altogether. In fact, I have seen this play out many times. If that is the case, the believer has carried out their responsibility and can move on knowing that they faithfully fulfilled their role.

But the goal in sharing the truth with someone living in sin should never be to win an argument or to make ourselves look good (or the person look bad). The goal of the gospel, and the goal in shedding light on sin is so that the person will come to repentance and find eternal life through Jesus Christ alone.

The goal should never be to offend, but rather we should seek to demonstrate the love of God, and the beauty of what Jesus has done so that we can have eternal life.