The truth about you

Boy, we Christians are really bent on separating ourselves from the world and in the process, separating ourselves from the truth. Did you ever notice that there’s all this stuff you can’t do while you’re at church? You can’t cuss, you can’t smoke, and when you roll into the parking lot, you have to turn down your music. Even if that’s all stuff you do normally, it’s not kosher at church. And it’s not all that kosher to talk about all the other times you’ve sinned, either.

There’s something wrong when we can be ourselves in other places, but we get tense when we go to church. In trying to be so Christian, we forget about the importance of truth. Christians seem real big on truth – about doctrine, about God – until you start talking about the truth about yourself. You can’t tell the truth about some of the stuff you’ve done because at the very least you’ll make people feel uncomfortable. Or you might “make people stumble” or “ruin your testimony.” We forget that we have ruined our testimony by being phony.

Now, I’m not saying that we should all run around church trying to be provocative or doing things just because we can. “Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial.” (1 Cor. 10:23) But I am saying that church should be a place where people can be honest. We wonder how we can produce transformation, but we require that people are already transformed when they get to us.

The truth is important. Let’s be people of the truth.