Have you ever been in a situation where someone has asked you for your 100% honest opinion, but you really don’t want to say? Whether it’s to preserve their feelings or preserve everyone from the awkward moment, it can be pretty uncomfortable. How do you tell them that their haircut isn’t flattering? Or that the new outfit does make their “you-know-what” look big? (Ladies, you know better than to ask your husbands that!) It’s a sticky position to be in, but as a good friend, you tell them no matter how awkward it becomes.
Today, I want to talk about how to tell the truth…in love. And that starts with the facts.
Push Beyond Uncomfortable
How do we fix a problem we’re not supposed to talk about? Continue with self-serving optics? I suggest that we start telling the truth in love, no matter how uncomfortable it may be.
Truthful, factual optics, unfortunately, do not often seem to be set forth by politicians or the media on either side. Instead, carefully orchestrated, edited, and selective ones are. They do this to bring about a predetermined and preferred outcome, understanding that feelings move the masses far better than facts.
To be factual, it’s nothing new. It’s called “the straw man fallacy,” which is the oversimplifying or misrepresentation of your opponent’s argument to make it easier to attack or refute.
Still bewildered? I don’t blame you—it doesn’t make a lot of sense if you just look at the success rate of making decisions based on facts rather than simply feelings. Fact-based decisions bring about real change. Feelings-filtered decision-making only raises the needle on one metric—emotion. Therefore, anger often leads to outrage. Sadness leads to safe spaces. Criticism leads to cancel culture. And so on. Nevertheless, the herd marches ever forward with rarely a single person ever breaking ranks.
Again, why?
Because if we can change our optics, we feel as if we can change the truth about our lives without actually having to change any convictions or the way we behave.
That’s why virtue signaling is so popular today—almost no effort is required.
Is this Really Affecting Me?
Actually, it is.
Let’s be honest. Most of us would rather believe easier, tolerant, kumbaya stuff about the world over the tough issues that force us to confront what the Bible calls our “sinful nature.” So we tend to filter out the bad and accumulate only what makes us feel better about ourselves—true or not. And, as if this weren’t shallow enough, others don’t bother with the truth at all because it just takes too much effort to hunt down the facts. Better to let someone else take care of that, and hopefully—if it turns out we got it wrong in this life—we can just blame the truth-benders when we stand before God at the pearly gates one day.
Good luck with that.
All of this is because there is an uncomfortable journey into truth and some hard homework that needs to be done if you are at all interested in basing your life and commitments on facts and truth and on reality over optics. Like Neo in The Matrix saga, we’ll need to listen to Morpheus—even though he could be a real pill at times (pun intended).
In the movie, the red pill represents an uncertain future—it would free Neo from the enslaving control of the machine-generated dream world and allow him to escape into the real world, but living the “truth of reality” is harsher and more difficult. On the other hand, the blue pill represents a beautiful prison—it would lead him back to ignorance, living in confined comfort without want or fear within the simulated reality of the Matrix.
As described by Morpheus: “You take the blue pill…the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill…you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” Neo chooses the red pill and joins the rebellion.
We need more people to join the rebellion—not the anarchy but the rebellion. And to do so, we’ll have to start becoming more interested in facts than feelings. Sadly, most aren’t. Feelings trump facts for many today. And relationships trump anything that’s left. That’s why identity politics (politics in which groups of people having a particular racial, religious, ethnic, social, or cultural identity tend to promote their own specific interests or concerns without regard to the interests or concerns of any larger political group) is becoming a more powerful influence than personal responsibility for current generations.
Many millennials love social justice and the social justice groups and friendships that come along with it. They even have an acronym for the recently formed crusaders for the cause—they’re called Social Justice Warriors (SJWs). The Bible is big on justice. Not just social justice—all justice. Consider what the Bible has to say on the topic:
- How the just should live (Romans 1:17, “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘The just shall live by faith.’”)
- How God feels about justice (Luke 18:7–8, The Message, “What makes you think God won’t step in and work justice for his chosen people, who continue to cry out for help? Won’t he stick up for them? I assure you, he will.”)
- Justice being part of God’s character (Psalm 15:17, “The Lord is just in all his ways, and kind in all his doings.”)
What does truth have to do with all this? Well, the problem is that without truth, there can be no justice.
Why not?
Because justice meted out according to a lie or false narrative isn’t justice at all—in fact, it’s injustice. And if we go about social justice based solely on optics with a disregard for facts, we’ll end up as USWs (“Unjust Social Warriors”), and that’s the last thing really concerned, big-hearted, love-thy-neighbor people want.
My advice?
Take the red pill and read on. Answers lie ahead, but they will not always be what you expect. Press on anyway.
We will continue this discussion next Monday. It’s not always easy, but it is always the right thing to do.
If you want to dive deeper with me on how optics affect so many things in our lives, pre-order your copy of my book, Overliked: Finding Direction, Courage, and Meaningful Relationships in a Society Crippled by Social Media, where you’ll find ways to get beyond the optics to the freedom that facts and truth bring. TODAY is the LAST DAY you can immediately download three free bonus gifts.
Until next time, lean into Jesus, friends.
~Pastor Rob
AKA P-Ro