Truth-Telling

Two weeks back, I sent an email to voice my concerns re some matters in church. Today, I had the opportunity to talk face to face with one of them concerned. I felt I should make it doubly clear that my intention of surfacing the concerns was not out of malice. This person told me frankly that the first instance the email was read, the reaction to it was not very positive. However, after much prayer and reflection, this person now thinks that I was sent by God to tell that message!

I'm reminded of what John Ortberg said in his book Everybody's Normal Till You Get To Know Them (a book my cell studied last year) in Chapter 9 - The Gift Nobody Wants: Confrontation:

"Everyone of us needs a few people to tell the truth about our hearts and souls. We all have weak spots and blind spots that we cannot navigate on our own. We need someone to remind us of our deepest aspirations and values and to warn us when we may be getting off the track. We need someone to help us question our motives and examine our consciences. We need someone to perform spiritual surgery on us when our hearts get hard and our vision gets dim. We need a few Truth-Tellers."

The author went on to consider the cost of truth-telling and why it rarely happens in our world. One answer is simply Fear. Fear that things will get messy, fear of rejection, fear of being accused of meddling in what's not our business, etc etc and then very often, we trade truth for peace.

I'm not sure if I was being a "truth-teller" with regards to the above-mentioned incident. But it took a hell lot of courage to press the Sent button after much prayer and numerous times of re-phrasing and re-reading of the email.

We may be burdened by many matters but we need to listen to God's prompting as to the timing of "confronting". Regarding the matter above, I was concerned about it for a long time but whenever I pray and ask for direction, I've never sensed the Go-ahead, until recently. I was told that my email fits into a much larger picture of change/response that God has intended with regards to that matter. I shudder to think what the response would be had I surfaced those concerns earlier, against the will of God.

The humility of the fellow Christian I talked to this morning is definitely something I can learn from. Instead of being defensive, this person chose to take the painful path of listening to the concerns and reflecting on how the situation became what it is today. This person thought it would be better to respond to me face to face rather than via email so that the feelings/responses are accurately reflected. And I thought this person was disappointed/angry/upset/discouraged etc and so didn't reply to the email. I greatly appreciate this gesture.

God has intended for both parties (me and them) to learn from this episode of "truth-telling". I'm glad in this instance I chose to "prefer the pain of temporary chaos to the peace of permanent superficiality" (pp 181).