As I heard the words, "I hereby give permission to you, my trusted family members, to tell me the truth about myself, even when it hurts," my first thought was, Wow, that's noble.
And then it hit me: Oh wait, those words are coming out of my mouth!
My next thought was: I will regret what I just said!
Truth, I've come to realize, is like a powerful flashlight. I'd rather be the pointer than the pointee.
Children of light
We preachers are truth tellers. It's what we do. We shine the light of God's truth into darkness, illuminating broken and sinful situations with God's Word so that those who hear will, we hope, be drawn into the warm light of his love.
We can share the apostle Paul's words about being "children of the light." We can preach about how we're supposed to stop lying to one another and speak truth if we are to grow in spiritual intimacy as fellow members of Christ's own Body. We can preach about putting away those nasty attitudes that destroy unity—attitudes like malice and anger and rage and irritability—the stuff that's easy to get worked up about. And we can feel pretty good about our preaching, especially when we've shined that big old flashlight in other people's eyes.
But for us, light shining can sometimes become an occupational hazard. If we're not careful, when that same light that we have preached gets shined into our own eyes, it can be painful.
For instance, one Sunday on the way to lunch, after a morning flooded with God's light, when I was feeling pretty good about connecting with the congregation an hour earlier, my wife spoke up.
"I'd like to share an observation," she said.
The temperature suddenly dropped. Our son was in a different car with a friend, headed to the same restaurant we were, so she took these moments of privacy to "share her observation."
Immediately the phrase, "I hereby give permission to you, my trusted family members …" popped into my head.
"Of course," I said, keeping my eyes on the road. "Share away."
"When you were getting ready to start rehearsal this morning with the praise team, you were more impatient with your son than you would be with any of the other members of the team."
Frozen frame
Let me hit pause a moment. This is exactly the point at which the rationalization gland began secreting. No I wasn't, I thought. Or at least that was the first thought that leapt to mind.
"He was waiting for you, or someone else, to give the nod, letting him know that everyone was ready and that it was time to start," she continued.
Okay, well, that part might very well be true. My son was filling in for our normal worship leader.
"And if you had told him ahead of time that it was his responsibility to start the rehearsal precisely at 9:00 a.m. he would have taken that responsibility seriously. But as I recall, you hadn't told him to do that … had you?"
But he should have known it was his responsibility, shouldn't he have? Okay, well, maybe not.
"Uh, no, I don't believe I did," I said.
"And I noticed that when you told him that you were afraid you were going to run out of time if things didn't get started right away, your voice had 'that tone' in it."
And what exactly do you mean by 'that tone?' I thought. I hit rewind in my memory and watched myself saying what she had just said I had said. Oh, that tone. Okay, well, yeah, maybe so.
"And I noticed that immediately after you said that, your son's face fell and he had a hard time looking you in the eye."
Boy, she didn't miss a thing, did she?
"He had been vibrant right up to that moment."
I blinked hard from the bright light. Okay. She's right. Every bit of what she just said is true. I hurt my son's feelings this morning.
The light moment
Unfreeze the frame. After my wife had finished observing, I blinked. My intellect knew that what she said was the truth, but my emotions were still trying to avoid the light. However, I had given her permission to tell me truth. There was no wiggling away from that. So this was a moment of decision. I could either:
1. Deny and defy. I could resist what really happened, substituting my own version of the truth (a.k.a. a lie) in its place. This would mean, however, that if my version was true, then my wife's version was not. To do this, without coming right out and saying it, would be pretty much like calling her a liar.
2. Hide in the shade. I could put on sunglasses (the rose colored ones) and soften the glare of my sin by painting my own shady spin onto the events she was describing. That would minimize the damage done—at least in my own mind—even though it wouldn't change how I had made my son feel. I might make myself feel better by painting over the black and white lies and truth with less harsh shades of gray, but the hurt would still remain in my son's soul.
3. Absorb the light. I could come clean, admit that what she was saying was absolutely true and then accept responsibility by doing something about it.
What I probably should have said was something like, "Honey, I can't thank you enough for telling me the honest truth about myself. That's exactly what this relational accountability is all about!"
But, quite honestly, what I actually said, through tight lips was, "Observation noted and appreciated." And what I was honestly feeling inside as I said it was, I hate it when she's so stinking right.
Taking ownership of the truth is often a process with me. Even though I can hear it, understand it, and eventually accept it, it still takes a few minutes (or longer) for the attitude to catch up with the words coming out of my mouth.
Light can bring warmth
Five minutes later our family arrived at our lunch destination. I decided to man up and do something about what I had just learned. I stepped out of the car, walked over to my son who was parked next to us, put a hand on his shoulder and said, "Son, I owe you an apology."
"For what?" He acted like he didn't know what I was talking about. Maybe he didn't. I suspect he did know and was just being nice.
I talked him through the incident, very much the way my wife had talked me through it. After all, her version was quite accurate. "And so," I ended my story, "I'm really sorry about that."
"Ah," he said, "no worries. Really. But thanks." We hugged.
Almost instantly his countenance lifted. The witty repartee returned to his conversation. We enjoyed lunch. We laughed. We talked about the good things God had done in worship earlier. We goofed around with each other. We were at ease in our conversation. Our relationship was where it should be.
At one point in the conversation my wife glanced at me as my son passionately described something that had happened during worship—something that left us all feeling warmed by God's light-filled presence—and without saying a word, my wife's face said, "See?" and "Isn't this good?"
I did. And it was.
Clark Cothern is pastor of Living Water Community Church in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
Copyright © 2011 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
